Talking About Military History: Did General George S. Patton retire from the military?

Did General George S. Patton retire from the military?

No. George S. Patton, Jr. was still on active duty as commander of the U.S. Fifteenth Army in Germany at the time of his death on December 21, 1945, in a military hospital in Heidelberg.

Patton had been only recently reassigned from the Third Army, which at the time was part of the U.S. occupation forces in western Germany. He was relieved from his most famous command on October 7, 1945; one week later, he assumed command of the Fifteenth Army, which by then was only a small establishment of military researchers and clerks charged with recording recent military history based on after-action reports and interviews with Allied and Axis military personnel and civilians.

At first, Patton tried to put a positive spin on his new assignment; at one point he claimed he was thrilled because he had been enthralled with military history since he was seven years old. In reality, though, Patton was restless and soon lost interest in the day-to-day running of his “command” and traveled extensively throughout Europe. He even went to Sweden to reunite with fellow former athletic participants of the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, in which Patton had represented the U.S.

Patton had requested and been granted Christmas leave to visit his wife Beatrice in the United States, starting on December 10, 1945. He planned to not return to Germany and the Fifteenth Army, and he was also considering resigning his commission, as he would still have to abide by the Army’s regulations if he simply retired from the service.

He never got the chance to make a final decision or return permanently to the United States. On December 8, 1945, two days before his scheduled Christmas leave, his chief of staff, Gen. Hobart “Hap” Gay invited him to go pheasant hunting. En route to the hunting lodge in Speyer, Patton’s staff car ran into an Army truck in a low-speed collision. Gay was unhurt, the driver and the generals’ aides were only slightly hurt, but Patton suffered a broken neck and a head injury when he fell forward and hit the staff car’s glass partition in the rear compartment.

Patton lingered in a military hospital for 12 days but died of his injuries on December 21, 1945. According to his wishes, he was buried alongside some of his dead soldiers from the Third Army at the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg.