1944 - American four-star General George S. Patton Jr., commander of US 3rd Army, arriving in London. Patton deliberately cultivated a flashy, distinctive image in the belief that this would motivate his troops. He was usually seen wearing a highly polished helmet, riding pants, and high cavalry boots. He carried flashy ivory-handled, nickel-plated revolvers as his most famous sidearms (a Colt Single Action Army .45 "Peacemaker" and later also a S&W Model 27 .357). His vehicles carried oversized rank insignia and loud sirens. His speech was riddled with profanities. The toughness of his image and character appeared well-suited to the conditions of battle. Patton received many eulogies from the reporters who had followed him, including a tribute from a UPI writer who wrote, "Gen. George S. Patton believed he was the greatest soldier who ever lived. He made himself believe he would never falter through doubt. This absolute faith in himself as a strategist and master of daring infected his entire army, until the men of the second American corps in Africa, and later the third army in France, believed they could not be defeated under his leadership." George Smith Patton, Jr. (also George Smith Patton III) (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a distinguished though controversial United States Army officer. Commissioned in the army in 1909, Patton participated in the unsuccessful attempt to capture Pancho Villa in 1916-17. In World War I, he was the first officer assigned to the new United States Tank Corps and saw action in France. After the war he was a strong advocate of armored warfare. It was in World War II that he made his mark, commanding both corps and armies as a general in North Africa, Sicily, and the European Theater of Operations. Near the end of the Sicilian campaign, Patton jeopardized his career by slapping a soldier recuperating from "battle fatigue" at a hospital; Patton considered him a coward. The well-publicized incident caused General Eisenhower to relieve him of command. Thus, instead of playing a major part in the invasion of Normandy, he was relegated to being a decoy. However, he was later given command of the U.S. Third Army and ably led it in breaking out of the hedgerows of Normandy and across France. When a surprise major German offensive resulted in American units being surrounded in Bastogne, Patton rapidly disengaged his army from fighting in another sector and moved it over 100 miles in 48 hours to relieve the siege. Patton often got into trouble with his outspokenness and strong opinions. In addition to the slapping incident, towards the end of the war, he voiced his detestation and mistrust of the Soviets and his desire to fight them. He has also been criticized for sending an ill-fated rescue mission for his son-in-law, held in a prison camp deep behind enemy lines. George Smith Patton was born in San Gabriel Township, California (in what is now the city of San Marino), to George Smith Patton, Sr. (1856 – 1927) and Ruth Wilson (1861 – 1928). Although he was technically the third George Smith Patton, he was given the name Junior. The Pattons were an affluent family of Scottish descent. On December 9, 1945, Patton was severely injured in a road accident. He and his chief of staff, Major General Hobart R. "Hap" Gay, were on a day trip to hunt pheasants in the country outside Mannheim. Their 1938 Cadillac Model 75 was driven by Private First Class Horace Woodring (1926 - 2003), with Patton sitting in the back seat on the right side, with General Gay on his left, as per custom. At 11:45 near Neckarstadt, a 2? ton GMC truck driven by Technical Sergeant Robert L. Thompson hit the car containing the general head-on. According to the book Unexplained Mysteries of World War II, as the crash was at a railway crossing and the vehicles were just starting up, this means the crash was at no more than 20 miles per hour. At first the crash seemed minor, the vehicles were hardly damaged, no one in the truck was hurt, and Gay and Woodring were uninjured. However, Patton was leaning back with trouble breathing. The general had been thrown forward and his head struck a metal part of the partition between the front and back seats. Paralyzed from the neck down, he was rushed to the military hospital in Heidelberg. Patton died of an embolism on December 21, 1945. Patton was buried at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial in Hamm, Luxembourg along with other members of the Third Army. On March 19, 1947, his body was moved from the original grave site in the cemetery to its current prominent location at the head of his former troops. A cenotaph was placed at the Wilson-Patton family plot at the San Gabriel Cemetery in San Gabriel, California, adjacent to the Church of Our Saviour (Episcopal), where Patton was baptized and confirmed. In the narthex of the sanctuary of the church is a stained glass window honor which features,

Parked up outside Rochdale bus garage (back in the days when Rochdale HAD a bus garage!) this Fleetline sorrowfully shows off the scars of a pyrotechnic encounter. It is likely that this was caused by schoolchildren with matches or a fag lighter on the back seat - I don't know for sure here, buit it was a common occurence at the time. The green Lada is of note in so far as Rochdale was the home of Carcraft, which in the eighties was a Lada dealer - the UK's largest Lada dealership in fact. Carcraft also had a car parts shop on Entwistle Road, wherefrom I used to purchase the neccesities to keep my elderly Marina estate as close to the right side of the law as I could, given my parlous finances and its appetitie for petrol and oil. This is the same Carcraft that now has aircraft hanger sized used car emporia adjacent to several motorways in Englnd. I think they found they made more money from selling the cars they PXd for the Ladas, than from the Ladas themselves!