Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General

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TRIANON PALACE HOTEL

VERSAILLES, FRANCE

OCTOBER 21, 1944

EARLY AFTERNOON

Just as Hitler is briefing Skorzeny, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower lights a cigarette in his first-floor office. His headquarters, a white stone French chateau one thousand miles west of the Wolf’s Lair, is spotless and regal. The only challenge Eisenhower should be facing right now is how best to celebrate a major turning point in the war. The American army has spent weeks leveling the city of Aachen. At 10 a.m. this morning the famous resort town became the first German municipality to fall into Allied hands. There is widespread hope that this marks the beginning of the end for the Nazi war machine, and that the fighting will end by New Year’s Eve.

Eisenhower smokes and paces. The fifty-four-year-old general played football back in his West Point days, but now he carries a small paunch and walks with his shoulders rolled forward. For security purposes, there is not a situation map tacked to the plywood partition in his office. Instead, he carries details of the German, British, and American armies in his head.

Eisenhower endures a daily barrage of worries. If anything, his life since becoming supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe has been one headache after another, punctuated by moments of world-changing success. But new expectations torment Ike. His boss, the four-star general George Marshall, has set in stone New Year’s Eve as the last day of the war. Ike believes that the proposed deadline will be impossible. Hence the deep frown lines on his high forehead.



General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his generals, including Omar Bradley (far left)

Marshall is back in Washington, thirty-five hundred miles from the front. He is chief of staff of the army and chief military adviser to President Roosevelt. No other officer in the combined Allied armies has more power and influence than this lean, tough-talking Pennsylvanian.

Marshall’s return to the United States came after a weeklong tour of the European Theater of operations. Now he has cabled Eisenhower his great displeasure about the strategic situation. The “October Pause” that enrages George Patton infuriates Marshall, too. He is demanding an end to the stalemate. Everything possible must be done to attack deep into Germany and end the war by January 1.

Per Marshall’s orders, this is to include the use of weapons currently considered top secret, and the placement of every single available American, British, and Canadian soldier onto the front lines. Nothing must be held back.

Eisenhower must find a way. Orders are orders, and his success has been largely based on obeying them—unlike George Patton’s. So Ike smokes one cigarette after another. A few top American generals are coming over for dinner tonight. The celebration of the victory at Aachen can wait until then.

Across the hall, pale autumn light floods the glass-walled foyer, where a bronze bust of German air force commander Hermann Goering has been turned to face the wall. Eisenhower smokes another cigarette. He doesn’t have a favorite brand, and doesn’t know how many packs he smokes each day. The number is actually four, as evidenced by his yellow-stained fingertips and the nicotine stench from his trademark waist-length “Ike” jacket. His breath reeks of cigarettes and the countless pots of coffee he drinks each day.

Nicotine and caffeine are the only ways Eisenhower can manage the stress. He certainly can’t play golf in the midst of war. And right now, it’s still several hours too early for either a weak scotch and water, time alone in his upstairs apartment with a dime-store cowboy novel, or perhaps even a furtive romantic liaison with Kay Summersby, his personal chauffeur. At age thirty-six, the divorced Irish brunette who wears a captain’s rank has been assigned to Ike for two years.

At first she was merely his driver, a member of Britain’s all-volunteer Mechanised Transport Corps assigned to guide Eisenhower’s official Packard sedan through the blacked-out streets of London. Eisenhower admired her confidence behind the wheel and arranged for Summersby to be transferred permanently to the U.S. military’s Women’s Army Corps, where she was commissioned as an officer.

The turning point in their relationship came in June 1943, when the American colonel to whom Summersby was engaged got blown up by a land mine in Tunisia. It was Eisenhower who held Kay in his arms as she sobbed in grief. A spark passed between them in that moment, and the relationship deepened. Now the former fashion model has become Eisenhower’s chief confidante. She travels with him everywhere, and even sits in on high-level meetings, which makes her privy to top-secret war strategy. The two chatter and laugh constantly, passing the rare moments away from the pressure of the war by riding horses or playing bridge. Summersby has even gotten Eisenhower in the habit of taking tea each afternoon at 4:00 p.m., just like the British. He is so used to her constant presence that recently, while back in America for a short leave, Ike infuriated his wife, Mamie, by calling her “Kay” on two different occasions.



Kay Summersby

The close relationship between Summersby and Eisenhower goes on in secret—most of the time. But as John Thompson of the Chicago Tribune noted, their fondness for each other surfaces publicly now and then. “I have never before seen a chauffeur get out of a car and kiss the General good morning,” Thompson told American major general James M. Gavin when asked if the rumors were true.

No less than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt can see the sparks between Summersby and Ike. After the landmark Tehran Conference1 in 1943, FDR confided to his daughter, Anna, that he thought Eisenhower and his chauffeur were sleeping together.

In many ways, Eisenhower is a victim of his own success. Even though he has never once fought in battle, he has risen through the ranks and accrued power through intellect, shrewd diplomacy, and, most of all, finding ingenious ways of turning the outrageous demands of men such as George Marshall into reality.

The problem is his forces are as stuck and immobile now as they were a month ago. The shortage of gasoline, guns, and bullets that ground George S. Patton to a halt outside Metz still afflicts all the Allied forces up and down their five-hundred-mile front lines.

If there is one positive about the situation, it is that for the first time in ages, George S. Patton is not at the top of Eisenhower’s long list of problems in need of solving.

* * *

August 3, 1943, more than a year prior. Patton is visiting the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital near the Sicilian city of Nicosia. He is exhausted after three straight weeks of managing the American attack on Italy, pushing his army past the unharvested fields of grain and the vineyards where ripened grapes dangle in enormous bunches. American and British forces are racing from the southern shores of Sicily to Messina, in the island’s north, where they hope to trap and capture the German army before its soldiers can flee to the Italian mainland. The fighting has been tough, with thousands killed on both sides. Patton’s army has captured more than twenty thousand German and Italian soldiers, as well as thousands of Sicilian peasants forced to fight for the Nazi cause. Always determined to win, Patton is more driven than ever because operational priority has been assigned to his archrival, British general Bernard Law Montgomery.2

Monty was given a plum landing spot in Sicily, on the coastal plains near Syracuse. British leadership, who had operational control of the battlefield, ordered Patton’s army to slug it out with the Axis defenders in the rugged Sicilian mountains.

This, Patton cannot allow. Nor can he stand to hear any more British gossip about Americans being inferior soldiers. He is determined to beat Monty into Messina and win glory for his army, despite the obstacles thrown in his way. “This is a horse race in which the prestige of the U.S. Army is at stake. We must take Messina before the British,” he writes to one of his commanding generals. “Please use your best efforts to facilitate the success of our race.”



General Bernard Law Montgomery

The end of the race is still two weeks away as Patton visits a small field hospital in the crags of Sicily’s central highlands. His love of the fighting man is profound, and extends to the aftermath of battle, where he is fond of personally presenting the wounded with their Purple Heart, a medal that recognizes injury during the course of combat.

The air smells of antiseptic and dust. Men lie on litters and improvised beds, their eyes glassy from sedatives. Many have their hands, faces, and torsos wrapped in gauze, speckled here and there with blood that has soaked through the dressings. Nurses and doctors weave through this sea of men, managing their pain the best they can before determining who will be sent back to the front and who will be transferred to a hospital far behind the lines for further treatment. “All,” Patton will write in his journal tonight, “were brave and cheerful.”

Except one soldier.

Pvt. Charles H. Kuhl of the First Infantry Division sits on the edge of a stool. He is being treated for exhaustion and anxiety. This is his third trip to a field hospital for this diagnosis in his eight short months in the army.

The general spots him.

“Why are you here?” Patton demands. His nerves are on edge. The race to Messina has him taking dangerous tactical chances. The ego that has so often defined him has pushed him to his emotional limits.

“I guess I can’t take it, sir.”

Patton seethes. “You coward,” he bellows. “Leave this tent at once.”

Kuhl remains motionless, sitting straight up at attention. The silence so unnerves Patton that he explodes. The general slaps Kuhl hard across the face with the gloves he is holding. He then lifts Kuhl off the stool by the collar of his uniform, shoves him toward the exit, and kicks him hard in the rear end. “You hear me, you yellow bastard. You’re going back to the front,” Patton screams at him.

The doctors and nurses working in the small field hospital are horrified, yet, surprisingly, they soon move on from the incident. As a professional soldier, Patton thinks nothing of it. Indeed, when news of the confrontation starts to spread, and eventually reaches his German counterparts, they are mystified that anyone would be bothered in the slightest by Patton’s treatment of Kuhl. In the German army, such men are not slapped. They are forced to their knees and a bullet is shot through their brain.

Patton writes as much in his journal that night: “Companies should deal with such men, and if they shirk their duty they should be tried for cowardice and shot.”

The press knows Patton’s arrogance. The British understand his competitive nature. The Germans believe him to be America’s top general. But now he is battling his own generals, who despite the rapid American advance toward Messina are appalled by his willingness to embrace unnecessary danger. But only those close to him understand how emotional he becomes at the sight of wounded American soldiers. He is deeply moved by their bravery, and thus cannot stand the sight of those he considers cowards.

Two days after slapping Kuhl, he writes a memo to each of his commanders, ordering them not to allow men suffering from combat fatigue to receive medical care. “Such men are cowards and bring disgrace to their comrades,” he writes, “whom they heartlessly leave to endure the danger of battle while they themselves use the hospital as a means of escape. You will see that such cases are not sent to the hospital.”

On August 10, as Allied troops approach Messina, and Nazi soldiers begin evacuating to the Italian mainland, Patton visits the Ninety-Third Evacuation Hospital in Santo Stefano, a city nestled in a long green valley. Patton steps from his staff car after a long drive through the twisting mountain roads and is surprised to see a soldier without battle dressings or a splint sitting among the litters.

“And what’s happened to you?” Patton asks the young man. His name is Pvt. Paul Bennett. He has been in the army four years, serving with C Battery of the Seventeenth Field Artillery Regiment. He is just twenty-one years old. Until a friend died in combat, he had never once complained about battle. But he now shakes from convulsions. His red-rimmed eyes brim with tears.

“It’s my nerves, sir. I can’t stand the shelling anymore.”

“Your nerves, hell. You’re just a goddamned coward.”

Bennett begins sobbing. Patton slaps him. “Shut up,” he orders, his voice rising. “I won’t have these brave men here who’ve been shot see a yellow bastard sitting here crying.”

Patton hits him again, knocking off Bennett’s helmet, which falls to the dirt floor. “You’re a disgrace to the army and you’re going back to the front to fight,” he screams. “You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you right now.”

Patton pulls his ivory-handled pistol from its holster with his right hand. With his left, he backhands Bennett across the face with such force that nearby doctors rush to intervene.

The medical staff is disturbed by Patton’s actions and file a report. Word of the incidents soon reaches Eisenhower. “I must so seriously question,” Ike writes to Patton on August 16, “your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness.”

But that is to be the end of it. Eisenhower needs Patton’s tactical genius. As Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy will later remind Ike, Abraham Lincoln was faced with similar concerns about the leadership of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. “I can’t spare this man,” Lincoln had responded to those calling for Grant’s dismissal. “He fights.”

Patton fights.

* * *

Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery is in his command post far from the front lines when he receives news that lead elements of the British army are marching into Messina. Montgomery beams. He believes he has won the race. Brigadier J. C. Currie of the British Fourth Armored Division, who will lead the British forces as they enter the ancient city, has even brought along bagpipes to celebrate their victory.

Currie and his commandos enter Messina. Many of the men are perched on the exterior of their American-made Sherman tanks as the overjoyed people of Messina spill into the streets and throw bouquets of flowers at them. But when the British column rumbles into the town center, Currie is shocked to see American soldiers standing in formation. Their uniforms are filthy from days of fighting, and many are so exhausted they can barely stand. But they have clearly won the race. And then, even as Currie struggles to make sense of this surprising scenario, George S. Patton rumbles into the piazza in his specially modified jeep command car, its three-star pennants on either side of the front hood flapping in the breeze. Patton’s arrogant grin is not lost on Currie.

The British general has no choice but to step down from his Sherman tank and extend a hand in greeting. “It was a jolly good race,” Currie concedes to Patton. “I congratulate you.”

Patton shakes Currie’s hand and thanks him. He revels in the victory, and in the look of surprise on the British officer’s face. “I think the general was quite sore that we had got there first,” Patton writes in his journal that night.

Any doubts about the efficacy of the American fighting men are now banished—thanks to George S. Patton. His picture graces the cover of Time magazine. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hails him as a national hero. To the victor go the spoils, and Patton’s glory spreads worldwide.



But that glory will be short-lived. Despite Eisenhower’s best attempts to cover up the slapping incidents, the story is leaked to the press. For three months, nothing happens. Patton personally apologizes to both soldiers and to the medical staff who witnessed his actions, and for a time the matter seems settled. But Ernest Cuneo, a liaison officer in the Office of Strategic Services, leaks details of the slaps to NBC radio correspondent Drew Pearson, who announces the story to the nation on November 21, 1943. Public outrage leads the American Congress to call for Patton’s immediate dismissal, even in the face of his battlefield triumphs.

“I have been a passenger floating on the river of destiny,” he writes to Beatrice, adding a hopeful comment: “At the moment, I can’t see around the next bend, but I guess it will be alright.”

Patton is correct. Ike firmly believes that Patton’s methods are deplorable, and he fears that Patton’s ego is so monumental that he will sacrifice the lives of other men to gain greater fame.

But Patton fights.

And more than anything else, Eisenhower needs fighters.

* * *

By October 21, 1944, as Eisenhower passes a quiet afternoon in his villa at the Hotel Trianon, and Hitler plots far to the east in the Wolf’s Lair, the fall of Messina is a distant memory. Since then, Dwight Eisenhower, a man whose keen sense of self-preservation has led him from civilian obscurity to wartime fame, did something extremely unusual: he defied the U.S. Congress and protected George Patton.

Patton has repaid Eisenhower’s largesse by enraging Russia, defying orders, instructing soldiers of the Third Army to steal gasoline and other supplies from other U.S. armies, and openly sulking when he is not allowed to do as he pleases. “I am not usually inclined to grumble or to think the cards are stacked against me,” Patton wrote to Beatrice during the Metz offensive, “but sometimes I wish that someone would get committed to do something for me.”

Still, Patton fights. And Patton wins. Army Air Corps general Jimmy Doolittle compared the relationship to that between a fighting dog and its master: “When Eisenhower releases Patton,” Doolittle notes, “it’s like releasing an English pit bull—once you let him go, it’s hard to make him stop.”



General George Patton confers with a lieutenant colonel near Sicily

What Eisenhower doesn’t know is that Adolf Hitler is furtively sending soldiers, tanks, and artillery toward a weakness in the American lines near the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. And that Operation Watch on the Rhine will utilize radio silence and deception in ways that will veil the attack from the Allied forces until it is far too late for them to effectively block it.

Eisenhower lives in the moment, trying to balance the many needs and demands of his lonely job. He has absolutely no idea how he will end the war by New Year’s Eve, but taking Aachen in Germany is certainly a good start.

The time once again to unleash his prize pit bull is about to arrive.