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What Omar Bradley Said When Patton Died

December 21st, 1945. Washington, D.C. General Omar Bradley sits in his office at the Veterans Administration building, the organization he now leads after years of commanding armies in combat. An aide enters with an urgent telegram. Bradley reads it quickly. His expression, normally calm and measured, reveals a moment of stillness. He sets the telegram down on his desk. General George S. Patton Jr. is dead. He died that morning in a military hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, 12 days after a car accident that broke his neck and left him paralyzed. Patton was 60 years old. Bradley had known this was coming. He'd heard about the accident, the paralysis, the grim prognosis. But knowing something intellectually is different from receiving confirmation that it has happened. According to accounts from staff officers present, Bradley sat quietly for several moments. Then he picked up his telephone and began making calls. This is the story of what Omar Bradley said when Patton died, how Bradley memorialized the general who had once been his commander and then became his subordinate, and what Bradley's words revealed about a relationship that was never simple, never easy, but always consequential. Omar Bradley and George Patton were never meant to be allies. They were opposites in almost every way that mattered. Patton was fire and thunder. Bradley was earth and water. Patton came from wealth, from California estates and Virginia bloodlines. His family's lineage traced back to Confederate colonels and Revolutionary War heroes. He was born believing he was destined for military greatness, that his name would stand alongside Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon.