Photo By Capt. Alexander Watkins | A replica car from Gen. Patton's estate is displayed during a ceremony marking the...... read more read more
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MANNHEIM, Germany – Eighty years after his death, the legacy of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. endures, yet his life was cut short not by a final, glorious battle, but by a mundane traffic accident on a wintry German road. Patton, the celebrated and feared commander of the U.S. Third Army, succumbed to a blood clot while paralyzed, passing away in his sleep at the age of 60 in Heidelberg, Germany, on Dec. 21, 1945. The paralysis and subsequent complications were the result of a car accident 12 days prior.
On Dec. 9th, for the first time, at the intersection of Kaefertalerstrasse and Dudenstrasse where the collision occurred, his granddaughter, Helen Ayer Patton, the Mannheim Oberburgermeister, Christian Specht, along with military members and onlookers, gathered to honor George Patton’s life and to lay a plaque commemorating the significance of the spot.
“It was right here on December 9th, 1945, when my grandfather, Gen. George Smith Patton, Jr., suffered an accident that set the final chapter of his life into motion,” she said. “Now, these 80 years later, your presence here proves that his legacy continues to resonate, to provoke reflection, and even remarkably to bring people together.”
George Patton is best known for his commanding presence during WWII, from leading the U.S. Army’s I Armored Corps across North Africa and the U.S. 7th Army into Sicily, to acting as the commander of a decoy army to cover the Normandy invasion and commanding the legendary Third Army across France and Germany.
WWII was the pinnacle of Patton’s career but only a small part of it. Born in California on Nov. 11, 1885, he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he was commissioned in June 1909 as a cavalry officer. He went on to compete in the 1912 Olympic Games in the modern pentathlon, taking fifth place.
His early combat experience came when he joined Gen. John J. Pershing in a chase over the Mexican border to hunt down revolutionary Pancho Villa, a campaign notable for being the first time the U.S. Army used an automobile in combat.
When the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, Pershing brought Patton to France. By the end of that year, Patton became the first U.S. officer assigned to the new U.S. Army Tank Corps. He organized and trained the new units, and in the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives, demonstrated the combat effectiveness of mechanized warfare.
After WWII concluded, Patton was appointed military governor of Bavaria, a role for which his aggressive temperament proved ill-suited. He was relieved of command of his beloved Third Army in October 1945 after controversial public statements.
On Dec. 9, 1945, just months after the war's end, Patton was on his way to a pheasant hunt. At approximately 11:45 a.m., his 1938 Cadillac staff car collided at low speed with a U.S. Army truck. While others in the vehicle sustained only minor injuries, Patton was thrown forward, suffering a catastrophic spinal cord injury. Paralyzed from the neck down.
“Gen. Patton lived his life commanding his spine to stay solid and straight. No matter what surprises came along the way he never failed to order himself to be upright, dependable, facing … every single challenge that came,” said Rabbi Michael Shevack, the social responsibility rabbi for the Patton Alliance. “That the command of his spine would be loosened from him at that very moment, that only death could do that! Wars couldn’t do that, nations couldn’t do it, Death had to do it.”
The general, known to his troops as "Old Blood and Guts," fought his final battle in a hospital bed for 12 days.
“His injuries proved too severe, and he passed away on the 21st of December 1945, the shortest, darkest day of the year,” said Helen Patton. “A life of immense brightness closed on the year's dimmest day, as though the world itself was pausing in this shadow to mark his departure.”
Patton was laid to rest on Christmas Eve 1945 at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial. His final resting place was among the Soldiers of the Third Army, who had lost their lives fighting under his command.
“Patton’s legacy is one of strength, one of victory after victory,” said Michael Clauss, the command historian for U.S. Army Europe and Africa. “I think the German general, Field Marshal Von Mannstein, surmised it in one of the best ways, ‘He was your best.’”
| Date Taken: | 12.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 12.15.2025 04:32 |
| Story ID: | 554136 |
| Location: | DE |
| Web Views: | 34 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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