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Then he told me some new information about Thompson’s whereabouts following the accident. “I don’t know if you know it or not but the army CID [Criminal Investigation Division] got him out of Germany that night. They flew him to England.” He thought they had taken him to Sheffield, but was not sure. “He was incommunicado for a couple of days. What happened was that after the accident, General Gay got out of the car and said, ‘Get the MPs. Get an ambulance.’ He [Thompson] didn’t know what was going on. They kind of kept him away. Then the CID picked him up and took him right to England. He was scared to death. He said, ‘You know, I figured I’m going to get a firing squad
for this.’ Bob was always a little bit of a hyper guy and I could picture him scared to death. But it turned out they were taking him there for his safety. Patton was so well loved by his troops they figured they couldn’t protect him in Germany.”

If what Delsordo says is true, it explains why Thompson “disappeared”—at least initially. Howard K. Smith interviewed Thompson for a story datelined “Frankfurt, Dec. 13,” four days after the accident. So he was back in Germany at least by then. But that seems hardly enough time to believe he was out of danger from any revenge takers—if that, in fact, was the reason for his disappearance. Patton was not dead yet. He was, by then, recovering. So the danger of retaliation early seems minimal. In addition, the idea that CID, or even just regular uniformed MPs, would have been concerned for Thompson’s safety seems like a stretch. Why would they be? Thompson was just a lowly GI truck driver. He was not a celebrity or somebody of high import. And if they were concerned about his safety, why not Woodring’s, too? Initial public reports about the crash said both drivers were responsible.
⁶
Why did they take him all the way to England when other safe havens were nearby? Frankfurt was much closer and was an American fortress, as was Nuremburg, near Berlin, which was heavily guarded and contained the notorious Nazi war criminals. Why not take him there? Furthermore, no reports have ever put CID at the accident scene—unless someone like the mysterious Lieutenant Vanlandingham was CID. But Vanlandingham’s records give no indication of his being CID. They were the military’s professional investigators, elite detective-like specialists who were only summoned if a major crime was suspected. But all reports, especially by those who argue against any plot, like Joseph F. Shanahan, insist the collision was just a “routine” traffic accident. That is why, they argue, there are no reports.

So the questions mount. Delsordo’s new information only enlarges the mystery. If CID
was
there, then a crime
was
suspected. What information brought them to the scene? And how did they get there so fast? Did they have it prior to the accident? Surely Thompson would have been interrogated in England. Where are the reports? Nothing has surfaced. Another Patton researcher, Peter J.K. Hendrikx of the Netherlands, whose article, “An Ironical Thing,” explored the accident, sent me a picture showing Thompson in a somewhat disheveled uniform standing before what looks like a blackboard. He is grinningly pointing with a pencil at something indistinguishable.
^bk
Hendrikx had gotten the photo, he said, from
Stars & Stripes
. But our efforts to track down their source had been fruitless.
⁷
Did it show Thompson in England? If not, where was he? What was he doing in the picture? Why had it been taken?

Possibly the most mysterious story of all, however, is the strange tale of Joe Spruce—or more accurately, Joe
Scruce
—for that, it turns out, was his real last name—a fact that has escaped all Patton biographers and researchers.

Scruce was the sergeant driving the jeep behind the Patton car carrying the dog and hunting rifles for the generals. Just before the accident, according to most accounts, he had passed the Cadillac and pulled ahead of it on the fatal road in order to show the way to the hunting area. That meant he passed the Thompson truck ahead and presumably had seen or heard the crash close behind him. Babalas appears to have been even farther away than
Scruce, having passed the two Patton vehicles while traveling in the opposite direction, and
he
heard it.

Yet Scruce is never seen or publicly heard from again.

Apart from the basic instinct to help others in trouble, this sergeant, charged with leading two generals, one of whom is the most important on the continent, does not return to help?

He just drives on and disappears?

It made no sense.

To this day, Scruce is identified by everyone purporting to have researched the accident as
Spruce
. That includes the Patton family members who have written about Scruce and the major Patton biographers who go deep enough into the story to mention Scruce’s part. But anyone seriously reading General Gay’s memoir, the earliest known and single largest written recollection about the crash, should have had a question about that name. Gay in the memoir identifies the sergeant as Scruce—not once, but three times—which made me think it was not a typo and wonder if perhaps Scruce—not Spruce—might be the last name of the person to seek if I hoped to learn more.

I shared this with Christine Samples, one of my cousin Tim’s investigators, and after a lengthy search she located probably his only living offspring, a dark-haired, fifty-six-year-old daughter who was surprised to be contacted. She did not know her father had been involved in the Patton accident. But she knew he had been a career soldier and had died in what she considered a mysterious way in 1952. And the more she learned about it, because of certain other things she knew about him, she said she became worried that her father may indeed have been involved in a plot to kill Patton, if only peripherally. That new worry added to a personal crisis she had on and off all her life over who her father was and why she was deprived of him so early in her life. She had been
just an infant when he had died. Although I have never felt there is reason to be fearful of Patton plotters—too many years have passed—she requested her name not be used. I’ll call her “Angela.”

The following is the story she helps tell:

Born in Italy in 1901, Joseph Leo Scruce came to the U.S. as an immigrant in 1919.
⁸
His Italian name was pronounced “Screw-see.” He came to America with his brother, but his father and mother, and possibly other siblings, remained in Italy. Described as five foot seven, 147 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes on a 1951 military ID Angela has, he spoke English with an accent until he died in 1952. According to personnel documents from the National Records Center, he had enlisted in the Marine Corps from which he was discharged in 1928. In 1933, he joined the army and listed his occupation as “cook.” By 1936, he was a private first class at Fort Davis in the Canal Zone, Panama, and listed his primary occupation as “soldier.” He was in the infantry. He left the service briefly in 1938 and rejoined in early 1941. What happened to him in the gap is not in the records or known to Angela.

From 1943 through 1945, he served with the 29
^th
Infantry Division—the “Blue and Grey”—which had been in the vanguard of U.S. troops landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. According to a
Stars & Stripes
booklet entitled “29 Let’s Go,”
⁹
which is about the unit, the division “hammered through hedgerows at St. Lo,” helped capture Brest on the French coast south of Normandy, and then fought valiantly north through France and into Germany and met the Soviets near the Elbe River, where Germany was divided into East and West. He was awarded a Bronze Service Star “for meritorious service” from “6 June 1944 to 8 May 1945.” Division commander, Major General C. H. Gerhardt, wrote in Scruce’s hardback copy of the
“Let’s Go” booklet: “To Sgt. Scruce, who as division mess sergeant did so much to help.”

That dedication was part of what worried Angela. Why would a general write such praise to a cook? She wondered if he had done more than just prepare and oversee meals. The 29
^th
Division was back in the U.S. by January 1946. But Scruce, a master sergeant, had been assigned to Patton’s last command at Bad Nauheim after Patton had been fired by Eisenhower in the September, 1945 controversy. In addition to being qualified an “expert” in a number of weapons, including the M-1 rifle, he was trained as a driver of various vehicles, including the “jeep,” or quarter-ton truck, which he had been driving the day of the accident. Brian M. Sobel, author of
The Fighting Pattons
, identifies “Spruce” as “Patton’s aide,”
¹⁰
apparently based on what Woodring told him. If he was that close to the general, it is even more interesting. He was not assigned there, according to the records, until Patton was. His records say nothing about Patton’s accident or death. But on December 31, 1945, right after it, Scruce is accepted into the “regular” army, a distinction of sorts. Not only does one have to meet certain criteria to be so honored, but most were saying good riddance to service—and the service was only keeping its best. He was a master sergeant at his death and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Angela was only eleven months old when her father died—a time about which she says she has no memories of her own. Her mother, Glenice, who died in 2002, had married Scruce, who was almost twice her age, in 1950. She was barely out of her teens. But it was a good marriage which lasted two years, until his death. By Angela’s account, gleaned largely from her mother over the years and an aunt who is also now dead but had introduced the two, the couple was deeply in love. Both were appreciative of what
their age differences offered the other—a budding young bride and stable home for him; a caring, worldly husband and the same stability for her. He wrote her numerous love letters, some of which Angela let me read. No question he loved her and considered himself lucky to have found her.

But her father never talked about the war or past, she said, which was fine with her mother. A professional soldier when she met him at a service dance, his military life seemed too mysterious anyway. He lived in a remote retreat in the woods at Camp Picket, Virginia, a huge forested training base near Washington, D.C. where he catered weekend getaways for high-ranking officers with whom he seemed to be close.
^bl
Bazata did the same kind of thing shortly after he returned to America from Europe after decades away in the early 1970s running what was, in effect, a clandestine’s retreat. With help from CIA friends and others, Bazata managed a remote farm in Maryland where he raised birds and staged hunts for friends and brass, many of whom had connections with the spy business at the CIA, whose headquarters in Langley, Virginia was nearby.

There was more than a modicum of security where her father worked, says Angela. Most bases allow visitors to enter as long as they are registered at the gate.
¹¹
But that was not the case at Picket in those days. Her mother told her that her father, presumably before they were married, would have to put her in the trunk of his Buick to sneak her onto the base so they could be together overnight. And in addition to being a cook and driver, he was also a revered marksman—just like Bazata. “My mom said his reputation on the base was as a shooter, a hunter—that’s what soldiers
she talked to told her.” “He was a great shot.” He hunted all the food he served at the cabin, she said. He could shoot “five pheasants before you can blink an eye.” He also shot wild turkey and other edible game for his guests. He had his own garden, guns, a jeep, and hunting dogs, which he loved and trained. Her mother once objected to the dogs sleeping in their bed. “He hunted for all the colonels and generals who came out to party on the weekend.”

Her father, it seemed, was involved in more than just cooking, said Angela. “It was such a cushy job.” How could just a cook get that? He would go off for periods of time and had mysterious routes to get to the cabin. And she could not understand his silence about World War II. “He never talked about the war, said my mother. Never. Why? Everything I know about him is he was such a down-to-earth, caring man. He’d bring food to our relatives when they were having a hard time.” He was gregarious, she said. “He just wasn’t the silent type. For him not to talk, I just don’t understand. He was Italian. I know men don’t talk about the war but it wasn’t like him. He was warm and open.”

I wondered if she was not letting the new and controversial information about Patton I had brought overwhelm her. She was only recalling what her mother had told her and I emphasized I had nothing concrete. But she persisted. “I’m a spiritual person,” not religious in the traditional sense, “I just have a premonition.” She meant that probably believing he was doing his duty, he may have been involved in a plot. She was convinced her father would have returned to the Patton accident scene, not only to aid the injured, but because of the dog that, according to Farago, had been switched to the limousine from her father’s care in the open air jeep. “He’d already put the dog in with the generals. He was in the lead. He would have looked in his rearview mirror. I know he would have come back. He would have been desperate to help.”
And if by some chance, he had not been aware of the accident, he would have found out later and then appeared, at least to have been interviewed.