Word: patton
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General Dwight D. Eisenhower celebrated his 55th birthday in fine style. He went to a Frankfurt am Main football game, raced his friend General Georgie Patton across the field. Into his box popped an impulsive WAC private, who bussed him soundly. Some 20,000 G.I.s rose and sang, "Happy Birthday, Dear General...
General George S. Patton Jr., embarking on his sea of paperwork as commander of the gill-sized Fifteenth Army (TIME, Oct. 15), announced that his most pressing need in the way of equipment was an eye dropper. He also announced, in response to a suggestion that he run for Congress, that he had never had anything to do with politics, "never even voted in my life." He further announced that another war was unavoidable: people who thought otherwise, said he, were wishful thinkers, or believed that wars were the result of logical events, whereas they were caused by madmen...
...Patton order such a desperate undertaking? One of the prisoners at Hammelburg was Patton's son-in-law, Lieut. Colonel John K. Waters, who was badly wounded in the fracas. Patton, denying that he even knew Waters was there when he launched the operation, displayed his personal diary to prove it; his motive, he said, was concern for all Allied prisoners. Some men (including Hearst Correspondent Austen Lake, who was with the Third Army at the time and told the story last week) wondered if Patton should not have shown more concern for his own soldiers. Major Baum, hospitalized...
Lieut. General George Smith Patton Jr. said: "All good things must come to an end. . . ." Erect and sad, he handed his beloved Third Army flag to his successor in command, Lieut. General Lucian K. Truscott Jr., a General who had fought with his mouth closed. The band played Auld Lang Syne. Some 400 soldiers and WACs, also erect and sad, watched him march stiffly away...
Thus last week, in Bad Tölz, did George Patton close a great if occasionally troubled combat record and a distinctly poor record as Military Governor of Bavaria. For comparing Germany's Nazi problem with U.S. Republicans v. Democrats, and otherwise flouting the orders and policies of General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower (TIME, Oct. 8), General Patton had been summarily dismissed and relegated to a particularly galling desk job (command of the almost non-existent Fifteenth Army, now writing a history of the German campaign...