Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General (32 page)

An estimated seven hundred prisoners soon draped themselves atop tanks and halftracks, gorging themselves on K-rations the task force had brought along for just that purpose.
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Those well enough to walk followed along behind the column.

The Germans counterattacked at sunrise the next morning. The strength of the Nazi reprisal was terrifying. Swiftly and efficiently, they destroyed the American column and began rounding up the POWs for their return to Oflag XIII-B. Many who were not prisoners of war before the rescue attempt now found themselves in German captivity. Wehrmacht soldiers used dogs to hunt down the Americans now scattered across the countryside. Captain Baum was burned when a rocket hit his tank, and suffered a gunshot wound to the groin, yet he managed to evade the Germans for almost twenty-four hours before being captured and led into captivity.
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Nine days later, the American Fourteenth Armored Division liberated the POW camp. Patton’s initial raid, which had cost thirty-two men their lives, was all for naught.

George Patton immediately visited his son-in-law at a hospital in Frankfurt, where Colonel Waters had been taken to recuperate from his wounds.

Upon seeing Patton, the colonel burst out, “Did you know I was at Hammelburg?”

It was the first question out of Waters’s mouth, because he well knew that many considered him to blame for a horrible waste of American lives. Thirty-two Americans had been killed, and almost three hundred more wounded or taken prisoner. In addition, sixteen tanks, twenty-eight halftracks, twelve jeeps, and a medical vehicle known as a Weasel were destroyed.

“Not for sure,” came the answer from his father-in-law.

*   *   *

Patton has sworn a professional oath of honor that does not allow lying, cheating, or tolerating those who do so. Covering up the real reason for Task Force Baum was not the first of George S. Patton’s untruths. One lie, in particular, broke his wife Beatrice’s heart and almost cost him his marriage, and may now be coming back to haunt him. For the beautiful young woman with whom he was secretly unfaithful has once again entered his life.

The year was 1935. The place was Hawaii. Jean Gordon was visiting the Patton family on her way to the Orient. A willowy unmarried young woman who spoke fluent French, she was the daughter of Beatrice Patton’s half sister, and thus the general’s niece by marriage. She also served as maid of honor at the wedding between Patton’s daughter Beatrice and John Waters. Patton was old enough to know better, a career soldier and the father of three children who had long enjoyed the love of a wife who understood his unusual temperament. Beatrice was a remarkable woman in her own right, capable of making conversation in German, French, Spanish, and Italian. She had written a book, and had a passion for music and drama. And her ferocious passion for her husband was such that, on one occasion, she physically attacked an officer who had disparaged her beloved Georgie. Patton had to pry her off the man when she knocked him down and was banging his head on the tile floor.

When the eighteen-year-old Jean began flirting with her husband, Beatrice was unaware. George Patton was flattered. So it was that when Beatrice Patton fell ill shortly before a planned journey from one Hawaiian island to another, Jean went in her place. There was no chaperone to prevent what occurred next.

Jean Gordon in her Red Cross uniform

When a heartbroken Beatrice learned of the tryst, she told her daughter Ruth Ellen, “It’s lucky for us that I don’t have a mother. Because if I did, I’d pack up and go home to her now.”

That might have been the end of it, because for all intents and purposes the relationship between George Patton and Jean Gordon seemed to have run its course.

But in the summer of 1944, Jean arrived in England as a Red Cross volunteer and wasted no time in reconnecting with Patton. When Beatrice learned that Jean was in England, she wrote to her husband that she was aware that Patton’s former lover had returned to his side, but Patton denied spending time with the young woman. Still, once the Third Army began its drive across France, Jean managed to get assigned to the task of Red Cross “donut girl” for the troops, visiting them and providing them with donuts, hot coffee, and conversation. She became a regular at Patton’s headquarters, where she often spoke fluent French with the general.

Infatuated, Patton confided to a West Point classmate, “She’s been mine for twelve years.”

On March 31, 1945, Beatrice wrote to her husband wondering why Jean Gordon was still in Europe. Patton replied, “I am not a fool. So quit worrying.”

When, soon after, Patton learned that Jean Gordon was also having an affair with a young officer serving in a safe headquarters position, the general, as competitive as ever, ordered the young man transferred to frontline combat.

*   *   *

Late on the afternoon of April 17, Patton flies to Paris. His son-in-law has been moved to a nearby hospital, and he sits with Waters for a long discussion. The controversy surrounding the Hammelburg incident seems to be blowing over. Dwight Eisenhower reprimanded Patton, but little else is being done. It appears there will be no further repercussions.

Patton sits for breakfast the next morning with his old West Point classmate Gen. Everett Hughes. The two men are very close, and it is to Hughes that Patton confides his relationship with Jean Gordon.

The waiter hands Hughes a copy of the American military newspaper
Stars and Stripes
. Hughes smiles at an announcement printed in the paper, but says nothing as he hands the newspaper over to Patton.

Patton suddenly grins broadly as he reads the news that President Harry Truman has just nominated him for the rank of four-star general. He leans back in his chair as those all around him in the dining room who’ve already read the news wait to see his response.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

*   *   *

The biblical David was also a great general. He was said to be “a man after God’s own heart,” despite the fact that he slept with his best friend’s wife, lied about the act, and then ordered the husband sent to the front lines so that he might be murdered in battle.

Yet David ultimately paid a steep cost for his behavior, losing a son at a very young age and eventually losing his entire kingdom.

Like David, George Patton knows himself to be a flawed yet God-fearing man. His recent bouts of duplicity have also cost more lives than the duplicities of of King David. But as Patton flies back to his headquarters in a plane newly decorated with insignia denoting his four-star rank, it appears that he will not endure the divine punishments that befell David. In fact, Patton has weathered the storm unscathed.

But as the devout general well knows, David once thought the same thing, too.

*   *   *

Patton’s single-engine L-5 Sentinel propeller plane flies low over the German countryside, en route to his headquarters. It is the quickest way to travel from one place to another, allowing the general to visit several of his units each day. Suddenly another aircraft drops down on him like an avenging angel. Guns blazing, the Spitfire fighter bears the markings of the British Royal Air Force, and attacks head-on.

Patton’s L-5 is an American-made plane. Yet with its wings mounted above the fuselage and the slow speeds caused by its fixed landing gear, the L-5 also bears a distinct resemblance to the German Fi-156 Storch.

Tracer bullets fly past the right side of Patton’s L-5. The small plane has no weaponry, and thus no chance of fighting back. The Spitfire misses on the first pass, almost colliding with the L-5 as it roars past, but is soon banking high into the sky and coming around behind them for another strafing run.

It is either a case of mistaken identity or a bold attempt to murder George Patton in broad daylight.

Patton reaches for his camera. He snaps several pictures of the RAF plane, even as his pilot takes desperate evasive measures that make the Spitfire miss them a second time. Patton is so terrified that he forgets to take the lens cap off the camera. His aircraft is no match for the Spitfire, which was so famously effective at defeating German Messerschmitt fighter planes during the Battle of Britain.

But the pilot who has been assigned to fly General Patton on this April morning is extremely good at his job. He pushes the stick forward, pressing the L-5 down almost right against the earth. Just one slip of his fingers and the plane will nose into the ground.

The Spitfire comes in low and shoots again. The shots miss, and the careless Spitfire pilot realizes too late that his angle of attack places him too low to the ground. A split second later, the British fighter plane crashes into the German soil.

“It flew so close to the ground that it could not pull out and crashed,” Patton writes in his journal that night. “The planes in this group had RAF markings on them, and I believe they were probably a Polish group flying for the RAF. Why there were out of their area, I don’t know.”

George S. Patton has lived to fight another day. “Four other planes were circling over us, but did not engage in the attack.”

Patton must now contemplate an obvious nagging question: Was the Spitfire attack an accident?
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21

B
ERLIN,
G
ERMANY

A
PRIL
20, 1945

M
IDNIGHT

The man who will be dead in ten days is marking his fifty-sixth birthday.

Adolf Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, is in the mood to dance, but the Führer merely slumps on the blue-and-white couch in the sitting room of his underground bunker. He stares into space, paying no attention to the playful Eva or to the sleek blue brocade dress hugging her thighs. She knows that the prudish Hitler doesn’t like her to dress provocatively, but on this occasion Eva does as she pleases.

The two of them, along with three of Hitler’s female secretaries, sip champagne. It is the end of what has been another long and depressing day for the Führer.

Adolf Hitler once dreamed of establishing Berlin as the world’s most cosmopolitan city, even though its citizens have long considered him to be an unsophisticated bore. Back in the days when Germany held free elections, the people of Berlin were almost unanimous in rejecting Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Even now, thirteen years later, Berlin is considered the least Nazi of all cities in Germany. To spite its inhabitants, Hitler had planned to rename the city Germania during the grand postwar rebuilding, thus wiping Berlin off the map forever.

The advancing Russians know nothing about Germania. And they are also not waiting until the end of the war to wipe Berlin off the map.

The armies of Joseph Stalin have the city almost completely surrounded. It is just a matter of time before it falls.

Eva Braun

Per tradition, Hitler was joined in the bunker for his birthday celebration this morning by the Nazi Party’s most elite membership: SS leader Heinrich Himmler, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, and chief of the operations staff Gen. Alfred Jodl, among them.

But now these killers are gone—for good. They have paid their respects to Hitler and are running for their lives, desperate to get out of Berlin and save their own skins, planning eventually to adopt new identities.

Only the most faithful followers remain. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, continues to prove his loyalty by remaining in the bunker. Hitler is glad. It has been said that Bormann is so threatening that he can “slit a throat with a whisper.” A testimony to his character comes from none other than Hitler, the most callous of men. The Führer deems Bormann to be utterly “ruthless.”

Bormann is now upstairs on the top floor of the bunker, hard at work despite the late hour and the approaching danger.

There is still time for Hitler to find a way out of Berlin. The Soviets are closing in, but some roads remain open. As recently as yesterday, the Führer was planning to escape to his Eagle’s Nest retreat, high in the mountains of southern Germany. He even sent some members of the household staff ahead to prepare for his arrival. But he has since changed his mind, deciding to stay in the bunker, hoping against hope that the phantom divisions seen only by him will somehow repel the Russians.