The morning is exceptionally cold. Woodring waits ninety minutes before Patton steps outside with Gay; their breaths are visible in the frigid morning air. Both men are dressed in thick military coats and gloves. Heavy boots add two inches to Patton’s six-foot-two-inch height, making the general even more imposing than usual. With nothing else to do these past two months, he has spent the time traveling throughout Europe, riding and hunting whenever he could. Patton turned sixty just four weeks ago, and celebrated with a lavish party thrown by his staff at Bad Nauheim’s Grand Hotel.

Never at a loss for words, even at this early hour, Patton walks to the sedan and jokes with Woodring, who holds the door open while the two men take their seats in the back. A jeep driven by another of Patton’s aides, Sgt. Joe Scruce, pulls into line behind them. The rifles for today’s hunt are loaded in Scruce’s car, along with a hunting dog.

Patton gives Woodring directions to the hunting ground but first orders the driver to go to the ruins of a first-century Roman fort near Saalburg. Shortly before 9:00 a.m. the caravan pulls out, leaving behind the forest-lined road.

Few local Germans possess a vehicle, so there is very little traffic on the autobahn this morning. This allows Woodring to indulge his penchant for speed. At Bad Homburg, he exits onto a side road that Patton has suggested, then carefully navigates his way up a hill to the site of the ruins.

Woodring is not surprised when Patton insists on getting out of the warm car and exploring the site up close. The general’s boots are not waterproof and are soon soaked as he climbs through the snow and frozen mud. Upon returning to the Cadillac after a half hour, he moves up to the front passenger seat so the car’s heater can warm his sodden feet.

Woodring enjoys defying authority whenever he can. So when the Cadillac comes upon a military checkpoint on the country road known as Route 38, he initially attempts to race through without stopping. The four stars on the car’s license plates should tell the military policemen all they need to know. But suddenly an MP stops Patton’s vehicle. “The guy must be crazy,” Woodring mumbles as he gets out of the Cadillac.

But Patton is only a few steps behind him. Rather than punish the sentry, who has drawn the unfortunate job of manning this lonely post on a frozen Sunday morning, Patton pats him warmly on the back. “You are a good soldier, son. I’ll see to it that your CO is told what a fine MP you make.”

On his way back to the warmth of the front seat, Patton makes a decision that will change everything. He spies the hunting dog in the other car. “The poor thing is going to freeze to death in your goddam truck,” he yells to Sergeant Scruce, referring to the hunting dog.

“Woody,” Patton orders his driver, “go and bring that dog inside the car. He looks cold.”

With the hunting dog safely in the front seat, Patton returns to his perch in the back.

The journey, now in its third hour, continues. Patton is in no hurry to go hunting, and relaxes as Woodring is forced to stop for a freight train. The Cadillac is at the back of a long line of U.S. military vehicles.

The landscape is now far different from the wooded stretch where Patton’s journey began. Bad Nauheim was untouched during the war. But now Patton sees vivid reminders of the war’s destruction. Countless disabled trucks, jeeps, and tanks line the road. Just before Woodring stopped for the train, Patton got a glimpse of a Polish displaced persons camp housing thousands of people who now lack a country. He has visited many of these facilities and witnessed firsthand the filthy living conditions the residents must endure. As they wait for the long train to pass, Patton sits on the edge of his seat, as if poised to leap out of the vehicle. He peers out the window at the destruction, and simply tells Gay, “How awful war is.”

At 11:45, the crossing bar goes up as the train disappears.

Woodring slowly accelerates.

Six hundred yards in the distance, on the side of the road, two U.S. Army “deuce and a half” (2.5 ton) vehicles are parked on the shoulder. As Patton’s limousine approaches, the trucks pull onto the highway.

*   *   *

Behind the wheel of the first truck, Tech Sgt. Robert L. Thompson is a little drunk. He is a nervous man whose thick glasses give him an intellectual appearance. He wears his olive-drab uniform cap at a jaunty angle. His pants are bloused into his boots, and he wears a thick army-issue coat and gloves.

Thompson stayed up all night drinking beer with a couple of military buddies. He will later tell investigators that they spontaneously commandeered a Signal Corps deuce and a half for a few hours of joyriding through the German countryside.

But in fact there is evidence that Sergeant Thompson has stolen the truck. With the war over, and the black market providing a lucrative way to make a few extra bucks, there is a very good chance that this vehicle will never be returned to the Signal Corps. Stealing an army vehicle, of course, is a strict violation of regulations. Another violation is in Thompson’s two pals riding in the cab with him, both of them apparently hungover. Army rules strictly state that only two soldiers may ride in the front seat of army trucks.

But Tech Sgt. Robert L. Thompson will go completely unpunished for the violations. Soon he will vanish without a trace, as will the official accident report detailing the destruction he will cause.

*   *   *

Sergeant Scruce’s jeep overtakes Patton’s limousine. Scruce is the only one in the hunting party who knows the way to the special fields outside Mannheim where Patton likes to hunt; Woodring will follow Scruce the rest of the way.

Woodring is driving just twenty miles per hour. George Patton is looking out the right-side window of the limo, while Hap Gay stares out the left. No one has time to react when Robert Thompson abruptly swerves hard to the left, driving his vehicle directly into the path of Patton’s Cadillac. His motives for making the abrupt turn are unclear—there is no driveway or road in the direction he is pointing the heavy army truck. “To this day,” Woodring will remember years later, “I don’t know where the truck was going.” The sudden turn comes without warning, and both Gay and Woodring will later note that Thompson did not signal before taking the action.2

PFC Horace Woodring, for all his years behind the wheel, cannot avoid the collision. He slams hard on the brakes, bracing for impact, and grips the steering wheel tightly with two hands. “He just turned into my car,” Woodring will later tell the military police, who will soon evaluate the evidence and conclude that the collision was simply an accident. “I saw him in time to hit my brakes, but not in time to do anything else. I was not more than twenty feet from him when he began to turn.”

In the truck, Sgt. Robert Thompson makes no attempt to brake. Instead, he steps on the gas.

As the truck’s front bumper crashes into the Cadillac, Woodring hears the thump of flying bodies in the compartment behind him. General Gay, remembering that the best way to avoid injury when falling from a horse is to completely relax his body, does just that. He falls to the floor behind Woodring, uninjured.

In the right backseat, George Patton is thrown forward, his head slamming violently into the steel partition between Woodring’s driver’s compartment and the backseat. His nose breaks. He feels a sharp pain in the back of his neck, but no sensation in his lower body. Instantly, George Patton knows he is paralyzed.

Ever the leader, Patton immediately checks on his men. “Is anyone hurt?”

After being assured that Gay and Woodring are fine, Patton says in a weak voice, “I believe I am paralyzed.”