Target (2 page)

GAY, General Hobart “Hap”
—close aide to Patton who was with him when he was injured in the car accident December 9, 1945

GILLESPIE, First Lieutenant William L.
—Stephen Skubik’s immediate CIC boss in post-war Germany

GINGOLD, Lester
—Memphis, Tennessee enlisted man who took rare photos, including of Robert L. Thompson, at the Patton accident scene December 9, 1945

HADDEN, Lieutenant John A.
—General Gay’s aide-de-camp at the time of the December 9, 1945 accident

HAYNES, John Earl
—historian, author who has written on Soviet espionage

HENDRIKX, Peter J. K.
—Patton researcher in the Netherlands

HILL, Lieutenant Colonel Paul S., Jr.
—Head physician attending

General Patton when he first arrived at the 130
^th
Station Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany

HIRSHSON, Stanley P.
—professor, Patton historian, author

HISS, Alger
—State Department official identified by Russian officials and Venona decrypts as a Soviet spy

HOETTL, Major Wilhelm
—high-placed German intelligence officer who offered after World War II his Balkan spy network to the U.S. for use against the Soviets

HOPKINS, Harry
—One of the “New Deal” architects and Soviet sympathizer who became President Roosevelt’s closest advisor

IRVING, David
—author, World War II historian

IRZYK, General Albin F.
—World War II tank commander, author

KENT, Doctor Gerald T. Kent
—junior physician who attended injured General Patton when he first arrived at the 130
^th
Station Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

KEYES, General Geoffrey
—Commander of Seventh Army in whose jurisdiction Patton’s December 9, 1945 accident occurred. A friend of Patton’s, he conducted an investigation into the accident which is missing.

KLEHR, Harvey
—professor, historian, author who has written on Soviet espionage

KRUMMER, Frank
—alleged to have been one of possibly two passengers in the truck that collided with General Patton’s Cadillac on December 9, 1945

LARSON, Matt
—General Motors Cadillac expert

LAYTON, Lieutenant Hugh O.
—Military policeman said to have been at the December 9, 1945 accident scene

LEE, Duncan
—trusted aide to OSS chief William Donovan and NKVD spy

MACINTOSH, Colonel
—OSS officer (possibly fictitiously named) who dealt with Stephen Skubik’s intelligence about death threats to General Patton

MARSHALL, General George C.
—head of the U.S. Army, General Eisenhower’s immediate boss, answerable only to the president

MAY, Technical Sergeant Ralph E.
—one of two CIC agents partnering with Stephen Skubik in their 970
^th
Detachment office

METZ, Lieutenant John
—Military policeman and partner of Babalas who arrived at the accident scene

MILLAR, George
—British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, codenamed “Emile,” whom Bazata aided while in Occupied France. Millar later wrote
Maquis
, one of the more famous books about the French Resistance. Bazata is one of those featured in the book.

MITROKHIN, Vasili
—KGB archivist whose smuggled notes and copies of documents have been the basis for intelligence revelations about Soviet spying

MONTGOMERY, Field Marshall Bernard
—high-ranking British general and World War II Patton rival

MORGANTHAU, Treasury Secretary Henry
—vehemently anti-German New Deal cabinet member and friend of both President Roosevelt and OSS chief, Wild Bill Donovan. Author of the “Morganthau Plan” to prostrate Germany after the war.

MURPHY, Robert D.
—diplomat and special representative of President Roosevelt, sent to aid Eisenhower and the Allies in the World War II invasion of North Africa

NOLAN, Frederick
—British writer and novelist who authored fictional account of General Patton’s injury and death

OGDEN, Sergeant Leroy
—said by Woodring to have been at the scene of the accident and to have helped stop Patton’s bleeding

OSS—
Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA

PATTERSON, Robert P.
—One of President Roosevelt’s “Wise men” and Under Secretary of War to whom Patton expressed his wish to fight the Soviets

PATTON, Beatrice Ayer
—General Patton’s wife

PATTON, General George S., Jr.
—famed fighting commander who died in a German hospital December 21, 1945 after being injured in a mysterious accident on December 9

PROVINCE, Charles M.
—Patton historian, author

RODIN, Colonel Leo
—CIC or OSS officer (possibly a fictitious name) to whom Stephen Skubik reported threats against General Patton

ROMERSTEIN, Herbert
—author, intelligence expert

ROOSEVELT, Franklin Delano
—“FDR,” Democratic president of the U.S. throughout World War II and, as such, supreme commander until his death in April 1945

SHANAHAN, Lieutenant Joseph
—military policeman (MP) said to have been at the scene of the December 9, 1945 accident in which General Patton was injured

SHANDRUK, General Pavlo
—Ukrainian military leader and one of three sources who warned Stephen Skubik that General Patton was on a Soviet hit list

SHELTON, Suzy
—authored an article with a lengthy interview of Horace Woodring about the December 9, 1945 accident

SKUBIK, Stephen J.
—CIC agent attached to Patton’s armies in Germany whose Ukrainian sources told him of a Soviet plot to assassinate the controversial general. He later wrote a book about the plot

SNYDER, Captain Ned
—doctor at scene of December 9, 1945 accident who attended General Patton’s injuries and, along with his commanding officer, Major Charles Tucker, helped transport Patton to a Heidelberg hospital

SMAL-STOCKI, Professor Roman
—Ukrainian scholar and diplomat and one of three sources who told Stephen Skubik that General Patton was on a Soviet hit list

SMITH, Bradley F.
—author, World War II historian

SMITH, General Walter Bedell (“Beedle”)
—General Eisenhower’s chief of staff whom General Patton detested

“SPRUCE,” Sergeant Joe
—real last name Scruce—driver of the Jeep carrying the hunting supplies and guns in the Patton caravan when Patton was injured December 9, 1945

SPURLING, Colonel Glen R.
—General Patton’s main neurosurgeon while in the 130th Station Hospital, Heidelberg

STALIN, Joseph
—Dictator of Soviet Russia and one of the “Big Three” Allied leaders during World War II

STEPHENSON, William
—British intelligence officer, code-named “Intrepid,” who had close ties to President Roosevelt and OSS chief William Donovan

STONE, Major “Stoney”
—OSS officer in Germany, not otherwise identified, who referred Stephen Skubik to OSS chief William Donovan, and later warned Skubik his (Skubik’s) life was in danger

SUDOPLATOV, Pavel
—head of the Soviet NKVD’s “Special Tasks” department which included conducting kidnapping, sabotage, and assassination. He later authored a book about his activities

THOMPSON, Robert L.
—driver of the truck that unexplainably turned in front of Patton’s Cadillac resulting in General Patton’s December 9, 1945 injury

TOOMBS, Technical Sergeant Harry B
—one of two Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agents partnering with Stephen Skubik in the 970
^th
Detachment field office

TRUMAN, Harry S.
—new U.S. vice president who succeeded President Roosevelt following Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945

TUCKER, Major Charles
—officer along with Captain Ned Snyder who responded to the accident scene December 9, 1945 and transported General Patton to the Heidelberg hospital

ULBRICHT, Walter
—German communist organizer and later head of Soviet Block East Germany whom Stephen Skubik arrested, angering the Soviets

VANLANDINGHAM, Lieutenant (no other information known)
—mysterious visitor reported at the scene of the accident

WALLACE, Henry A.
—U.S. vice president under Roosevelt supplanted by Harry Truman on the 1944 Democratic ticket because of his Far Left views

WEDEMEYER, General Albert C.
—General Marshall aide and Patton supporter

WHITE, Harry Dexter
—assistant secretary of the Treasury under Henry Morgenthau identified by Venona decrypts and former Soviet officials as an NKVD spy

WOODRING, Horace L. “Woody”
—nineteen-year-old driver of the 1938 Cadillac limousine in which Patton was critically injured on December 9, 1945

ZHUKOV, Marshall Georgi K.
—high-ranking Soviet general

On a cold, dreary morning
in December of 1945, a dark green Cadillac limousine with trumpet-like horns on the hood and large white stars on its doors pulled out from a narrow street in Bad Nauheim, Occupied Germany,
^a
and began what was to be the fateful last ride for General George s Patton, Jr. He was the highest ranking American officer in Europe and America’s greatest fighting general. What exactly would happen on that car trip remains a mystery to this day. Key witnesses disappeared. Records are missing. Contradictions and questions abound. Not only did Patton have a dramatic impact on World War II, he is an American legend who might have shortened or even prevented the Cold War, America’s longest and most damaging conflict
¹
—had he survived.

But he did not.

Rumors persist that he was assassinated. Was he?

Nicknamed “Blood and Guts” for his ruthless approach to warfighting, the tall, controversial 60-year-old general was, as the large limousine left Bad Nauheim and headed south on the Autobahn, already a legend. From his days in 1916 hunting Mexican guerrilla Pancho Villa to his brilliant leadership in the liberation of Western Europe, he had displayed “a genius for war”
^b
unmatched by any of his contemporaries. He was a warrior, military scholar, disciplinarian, and tactician who achieved the rarest of military accolades: his battlefield enemies so feared him that their first question in strategy sessions was almost always “Where’s Patton?”

He had done things militarily thought impossible. Just a year before, he had quickly turned the huge and unwieldy Third Army 90 degrees north from its easterly drive through France in snow and bitter cold to help save outnumbered and besieged U.S. paratroopers at Bastogne, Belgium. When he had proposed the rescue, his contemporaries said it could not be done. But he had been planning it for days. His drive across France and Germany was itself one of the most brilliant feats of the European War, and it broke the back of the Nazis’ last major offensive—the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest. It was rivaled only by D-Day, whose success he had ensured by acting as a decoy to convince the Germans he was readying a force to invade at Pas de Calais, far from Normandy. The ruse had worked spectacularly.

In the limousine with Patton on this fateful Sunday were Lieutenant General Hobart “Hap” Gay, long-time aide and former cavalry man, and nineteen-year-old Private First Class Horace “Woody” Woodring, his relatively new driver.
²
Patton and Gay were in the back of the Cadillac as they left Bad Nauheim, with
enough space between them on the big car’s rear seat for another passenger, and plenty of room in front of them. Behind and following the Cadillac in the cold was an open air half-ton jeep driven by a soldier always identified erroneously in later histories as Sergeant Joe Spruce. He was carrying rifles, a bird dog, and possibly other supplies. Patton was leaving Germany the next day. This trip—roughly a hundred miles south, past Frankfurt, to the woods beyond Mannheim—was to hunt pheasant. He loved hunting and had hunted many times while in Germany, so it was to be an enjoyable way to spend his final hours on the continent.

A voracious student of military history, Patton was by far the best tactician—and arguably strategist—of any of the Allied military leaders, including Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a long-time friend and contemporary whom he fought under in the recent war. But Patton, unflinchingly honest in public and infuriatingly impulsive, had repeatedly challenged his superiors’ tactical and strategic decisions, as well as the post-war U.S. occupation policy, and thus courted trouble from his bosses and the press. Hell, as he often said in his profane way, the press was his enemy—except when he could use them. The press, largely threatened by his brash and strutting warrior persona—a persona he deliberately assumed for its effect, as he believed, of raising the morale of his men—often criticized him, especially towards the end of the war. Largely unrecognized by most of the news writers was the fact that he used his trademark swift, relentless, and crushing attacks—what they generally deemed brutal and uncaring—to save lives by enabling victory to be more quickly attained. Hesitation, he preached, was a soldier’s worst enemy. A commander had to act swiftly and decisively in order to take advantage of fleeting, critical opportunities in battle. But his enemies, many of whom had never served and probably thanked
God for it, thought him devoid of compassion—as if that were a requisite for fighting—and a warmonger. He did love war but, as most warriors do, he loved it as a crucible, a test of his prowess and courage and, in his own peculiar religious way, a fulfillment of his destiny.
³
But he was fully mindful of war’s horrors and pointed them out often.