GERMANY: Auld Lang Syne

Lieut. General George Smith Patton Jr. said: “All good things must come to an end. . . .” Erect and sad, he handed his beloved Third Army flag to his successor in command, Lieut. General Lucian K. Truscott Jr., a General who had fought with his mouth closed. The band played Auld Lang Syne. Some 400 soldiers and WACs, also erect and sad, watched him march stiffly away.

Thus last week, in Bad Tölz, did George Patton close a great if occasionally troubled combat record and a distinctly poor record as Military Governor of Bavaria. For comparing Germany’s Nazi problem with U.S. Republicans v. Democrats, and otherwise flouting the orders and policies of General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower (TIME, Oct. 8), General Patton had been summarily dismissed and relegated to a particularly galling desk job (command of the almost non-existent Fifteenth Army, now writing a history of the German campaign).

Some correspondents, taking sentimental note of his snowy hair and his known apathy to everything but fighting and cussing, said that it was not his fault—he should never have been made an occupation governor.

They were probably right.