Dining Compartment, Car #1
Personal Train of the Commanding General, U.S. Constabulary
Track 3, Hauptbahnhof
Frankfurt am Main American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1305 17 January 1946
Captains Cronley and Dunwiddie rose when Major General White walked into the dining compartment trailed by two aides.
“Sit,” he said.
He walked to his wife, bent and kissed her, and then sat down.
The train began, with a gentle jerking motion, to get under way.
“Tim!” General White called.
“Yes, sir?” a captain wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp replied.
“Find the booze, and make me a stiff one.”
“Bourbon or scotch, sir?”
“Scotch,” he said. “Georgie always drank scotch.”
“I.D.,” Mrs. White said, “it’s one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“And make Mrs. White one,” the general said. “She’s going to need it. Hell, bring the bottle, ice, everything. We’ll all have a drink to Georgie.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mrs. White said.
“General Smith was kind enough to fill me in on the last days of General George Smith Patton Junior,” White said. “He knew I would be interested.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Would you like Captain Cronley and myself to withdraw, sir?” Tiny asked.
White considered that a moment.
“No, Chauncey, you stay. You can write your dad and tell him what General Smith told me. Then I won’t have to. So far as Captain Cronley is concerned, I would be surprised if he doesn’t already know. Do you?”
“Yes, sir. I believe I’ve heard.”
“Besides, I have business with Captain Cronley I’d like to get out of the way before we go into the dining car for our festive welcome-back-to-Germany luncheon.”
“Sir?”
The aide appeared with whisky, ice, and glasses, and started pouring drinks.
“First of all, it was an accident. Georgie was not assassinated by the Russians. Or anyone else. To put all rumors about assassination to rest. It was a simple crash. Georgie’s driver slammed on the brakes, Georgie slipped off the seat, and it got his spine.
“The car was hardly damaged. It’s a 1939/40 Cadillac. General Smith asked me if I wanted it, and as I couldn’t think of a polite way to say no, I said, ‘Yes, thank you.’
“They knew from the moment they got him in the hospital—and Georgie knew, too—that he wasn’t
going to make it. But they decided no harm would be done if they tried ‘desperate measures.’ These were essentially stretching him out, with claws in his skin and muscles to relieve pressure on his injured spine, and administering sufficient morphine to deal with the pain the stretching caused.