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limousine, a U.S. touring car specially designed for European motoring. It was one of the larger ones of the time,
boasting seating for seven passengers; it had space for two in the front seat, three in the backseat, and two stored chairs that were embedded in the floor but could be pulled up and used when needed. Presumably those hidden chairs were not deployed, so Patton and Gay had room in the back between themselves on the seat and a divider in front of them separating their larger compartment from the one containing the front seat and driver. The divider included a window that could be rolled down.
    When they came into Kaeferthal, a war-torn and dilapidated industrial area on Mannheim’s northern outskirts, they stopped at a railroad track crossing to wait for a train to pass. When the last boxcar had gone by, they continued on their way. They were traveling on a two-lane road that was practically devoid of traffic that Sunday morning. It stretched out straight in front of them for roughly half a mile with good visibility for the driver, Woodring. Recounting it later, Woodring said he saw a two-and-a-half-ton GMC army truck, a large vehicle with ten wheels, eight on two rear axles below a canvas-covered cargo bed—standard-issue at the time in Occupied Germany—slowly advancing in his direction in the opposite lane. It was nothing out of the ordinary, so he did not give it much thought.
    Behind the vehicle, the soldier identified in later histories as Joe Spruce, who was carrying the hunting equipment, pulled out and around the limousine in his half-ton jeep to lead the way to the hunting area which Woodring had never visited. Earlier, at a stop at a check point, according to some accounts, the single hunting dog riding in the open-air jeep was switched to the warmer Cadillac because of the cold. The dog presumably would have been in the front with Woodring as the big army truck in front of them slowly advanced. Woodring, however, listening to Patton’s backseat comments, was not paying much attention to the approaching vehicle.

    The only book author, as far as I could tell, to ever go to Germany and try and retrace what happened in the accident was Ladislas Farago, a Hungarian-born former U.S. naval intelligence officer and author of the acclaimed Patton: Ordeal and Triumph , 2 the book from which the 1970 Academy Award-winning movie 3 starring George C. Scott had been made. He had conducted the personal investigation for his 1981 follow-up, The Last Days of Patton , which later had been made into a television movie, 4 also starring Scott. f According to Farago, who interviewed some who had been at the scene and had access to other close-to-the-accident data that has now disappeared, Patton was looking out the limousine’s window, “his curious little eyes darting from left to right as he surveyed the countryside.” The roadsides around them were piled with litter and war ruin, “forming an endless canyon of junk . . . .Patton said, ‘How awful war is . . . . Look at all those derelict vehicles, Hap!’ Then he said, ‘And look at that heap of goddamn rubbish!’” 5
    At that moment, without warning or signaling, the driver of the two-and-a-half-ton truck heading toward the limousine in the opposite lane suddenly turned abruptly, almost 90 degrees, into the opposite oncoming lane. The bulk of the large truck was squarely in front of the advancing Patton car.
    Woodring later said he had time enough only to stomp on the brake while trying to turn the car to the left (toward the middle of
the road). But he was largely unsuccessful and Patton’s car hit the truck nearly head-on. The right front of the limousine hit the side of the truck just behind its elevated cab, damaging the right front fender and radiator.
    Woodring was uninjured. But when he turned to see how the passengers in the back had fared, he saw a scene that made his heart skip.
    Gay was not significantly injured. But Patton was lying across Gay on