George S. Patton dies, December 21, 1945
He is paralyzed from the neck down. Bones in his spine were dislocated when his car collided with an army truck full of drunken joyriding soldiers. Patton’s number-three cervical vertebra was shattered, badly bruising his spinal cord. Suddenly Patton wakes up. His dark blue eyes flicker back and forth, searching for his wife, Beatrice. There she is. Patton gazes intently at his wife. “It’s so dark,” he says. “So late.” He closes his eyes and falls back. The general whom Nazi Germany feared more than any other is dead, seven weeks after his sixtieth birthday.