Free Target by Robert K. Wilcox

have wanted to know what he had seen of the strange accident, if he remembered the truck waiting on the side of the road as he passed by—if that, in
fact, is what happened. Where had he gone if he drove on? But he is never mentioned, at least with his name spelled correctly, except by Gay. And authors like Farago, who obviously did not talk to him, but got his name wrong from whatever source or sources they used, all but insured his anonymity after Patton’s death as subsequent historians and researchers followed their lead and made the same mistake.
    On the surface, Patton’s death in the hospital seems natural. He had a broken neck, seldom an illness with a good prognosis. He died of complications from embolism, a danger to patients prone and immobile. He had suffered the same complication in a long hospital stay in 1937 (but recovered). Mysteriously, just before he died, he was doing so well that his doctors had decided he could go home to the states. Although that was a long and arduous trip in those days, travel arrangements were being made. Farago wrote, “[Patton’s] progress became even more pronounced on December 18. . . . Patton amazed his doctors with his basic health. Even under the enormous burden of his condition, his vital organs continued to function almost perfectly....Captain [Dr.] Kent said, ‘The heart tones were good . . . no murmurs were audible. His blood pressure was 108 over 70’. . . was it just one of those typical Patton miracles?” 6
    Then came the sudden attack. He died alone. No autopsy was performed. But Mrs. Patton must have had second thoughts because her granddaughter, Helen Totten, an adult now, told Oliver North’s War Stories that her grandmother hired detectives to investigate his death. 7 They found nothing, she said, which is not surprising given the levels of secrecy and deception that must have been used at that time to cover up any plot. What had caused General Patton to request a guard outside his room, as reported in early stories about his hospitalization? The reason was never
explained—just that “he’d heard something he didn’t like.” What had he heard? What about the mysterious Russian colonel Mrs. Totten said approached her while she was abroad, claiming efforts had been made to induce pneumonia? She dismissed it on War Stories . Ultimately, it was the failure of Patton’s lungs from embolism that killed him.
    Curious, too, was something at the end of Dr. Spurling’s long memoir about caring for Patton at the hospital—something I had missed at a first reading focused on Patton’s condition: “General Marshall in Washington requested that a confidential medical report be sent to him daily. These confidential bulletins always told the stark truth and I am sure that there was never any question in Washington but what [sic] General Patton was done for. I always sent a copy of these reports to the Surgeon General of the Army.” Spurling was sending back secret reports? Why? Was this just confidentiality to protect Patton’s privacy? Or was there more to it than Spurling understood? The in-house medical reports were not released to the public. Would not those have sufficed to keep concerned colleagues like Marshall informed? Marshall, to put it mildly, in the words of one obituary writer, was a Patton “detractor.” 8 It is hard to believe he was monitoring the situation out of personal concern. He was notoriously cool and distant toward his colleagues—and others, for that matter, save his family. Patton was certainly, after the accident, written off as a potential field general for military action. But he had already been written off before the accident. Basically, in Marshall’s eyes, he was crazy. So why the clandestine reports? Neither Marshall nor Eisenhower attended Patton’s funeral, nor did Truman, who did not care for Patton either. 9 Patton reportedly specifically asked his wife to keep Eisenhower’s Beetle Smith from attending his funeral,