ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GOOLRICK
FIFTY years ago today, one of the greatest soldiers in history died of pneumonia in a hospital in Heidelberg, Germany - contrary to his wish to have died from the last bullet of the last battle of the final war.
Gen. George Smith Patton Jr., "Old Blood and Guts," who led a World War II Army that gained more enemy ground faster than any before or since, had many connections to Virginia.
His great-great grandfather Robert Patton came to America in 1769 and settled first in Culpeper and then in Fredericksburg. His grandfather, George Smith Patton, attended Virginia Military Institute and lived in Culpeper until shortly before the Civil War. He served under his old VMI teacher Stonewall Jackson and was killed at the Battle of Winchester. Following the war, his widow was forced to move to California where her brother could help take care of the family.
George Smith Patton Jr. was born in 1885 into an affluent, well-connected family. Like his father, he attended VMI, but left after a year for West Point. Perceived rightly as a rough-and-tumble military character who could unleash strings of obscenities at the slightest provocation, Patton was also schooled in the social graces, and a skilled polo player and marksman.
A student of Civil War history, he walked the battlefields of the Fredericksburg area as a young officer, and during the early 1940s came briefly to Camp A.P. Hill in Caroline County to help direct training activities. Patton studied ancient history, and often identified himself with ancient heroes. He was convinced that he had been born to lead thousands of men into great battles, and believed in reincarnation.
He was no intellectual and no great philosopher, but more a man of action. His lack of tact and diplomacy often got him in trouble, but his great ability and loyalty to the Army always managed to save him.
Young Patton, a mere lieutenant, was assigned as an aide to General John "Blackjack" Pershing during the so-called Mexican War of 1915, after competing on the U.S. Olympic penthalon team in 1912. Patton finished first in fencing and narrowly lost the shooting competition.
He served with distinction as the first U.S. commander of an armor unit in World War I and was seriously wounded. During the postwar years, he often despaired as the country let the Army dwindle away to practically nothing, leaving America unprepared on the eve of World War II.
Patton came close to being fired by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied commander in Europe, after he slapped a shell-shocked hospitalized soldier. But Patton redeemed himself in France when his Third Army raced across the country, taking prisoner hundreds of thousands of German troops.
After the war, as a peacetime general in Germany, Patton was a fish out of water.
On Dec. 9, 1945, the day before he was to leave Germany for a Christmas leave in the United States, Patton was riding with his chief of staff en route to pheasant hunting. Not far from Heidelberg, an Army truck coming from the opposite direction swung to the left and there was a glancing collision at low speed. Patton was thrown forward and his upper forehead rammed against the back of the front seat.
Though there was only minor damage to the vehicles, the impact crushed vertebrae in Patton's upper spine, resulting in immediate paralysis from the neck down. Eleven days later he died in Heidelberg.
Not long ago I went again to the American cemetery at Hamm, Luxembourg. There among thousands of small white crosses is one that says: "PATTON, GEORGE SMITH, General, Third Army." He is buried next to enlisted men.
John Goolrick, a former Virginia political reporter, is an aide to 2nd District Congressman Herbert Bateman.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB