Patton's staff car after the December 9, 1945 collision outside Mannheim, Germany.
By the time of his death, Patton had spent most of 1945 running unauthorised rescue
operations that the official histories still barely cover.
The background:
After VE Day, the Yalta Agreement required all liberated POWs to be repatriated "as
rapidly as possible." Stalin signed it. His government then did the opposite. American
POWs liberated from German Stalags were being moved east, deeper into Soviet territory.
American verification teams authorised under Yalta were getting blocked at checkpoints.
General John Deane, head of the American military mission in Moscow, was warning
Washington that the Soviets had learned a formula - say yes, then do nothing.
Patton stopped waiting on diplomatic channels.
He pulled Russian-speaking officers from the Third Army and sent them east into
Soviet-controlled territory without authorisation. The operation was led by Major
Ernest Grunberg. Grunberg didn't bother with reports or paperwork. He found Americans,
got them on their feet, and pointed them west toward Third Army lines. No Soviet
permission. No Eisenhower approval. Just movement.
Eisenhower knew. Officially he disapproved. Operationally he allowed it to continue
because men who'd been written off were getting home.
The Soviets sent furious communications demanding the operations cease. The Americans
kept going.
By autumn 1945 Patton was making increasingly inflammatory public statements about
Soviet conduct. October he was relieved of Third Army command. December he was dead
in a "minor" traffic collision (pictured) that historians have disputed ever since.
The full count of how many Americans Grunberg's mission recovered, and how many
Americans never came home from Soviet custody at all, was never officially established.
Russian archives that might contain those answers remain partially sealed eight
decades on.
Sources:
- Wikipedia: George S. Patton (Death section): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton
- Farago, Ladislas. *The Last Days of Patton* (1981)
- Deane, John R. *The Strange Alliance* (1947, contemporary account)
In the summer of 1871, Newton Kansas was at the height of the cattle trade boom. The Chisholm Trail ended there, making it one of the most lawless and violent towns on the American frontier. Thousands of cowboys, gamblers and outlaws passed through monthly with very little law enforcement to control them.
On the night of August 19th 1871, a gunfight erupted inside Tuttle's Dance Hall and Saloon that left five men dead in under two minutes. It became known as the Newton General Massacre — the deadliest single night in Kansas frontier history.
The events centred around a feud between Mike McCluskie — a Santa Fe Railroad policeman — and Hugh Anderson — a Texas cowboy whose friend McCluskie had previously killed. Anderson arrived in Newton looking for revenge and found McCluskie drinking at Tuttle's that night.
Anderson shot McCluskie. A young man named Jim Riley — barely eighteen and reportedly already dying from tuberculosis — pulled two revolvers and began shooting everyone associated with Anderson. Riley killed four men while bleeding from his own wounds on the floor.
McCluskie died shortly after.
What happened next is what makes this story genuinely remarkable.
Hugh Anderson rode out of Newton that same night and disappeared into Texas. Never arrested. Never charged. Never even formally wanted.
Jim Riley walked out of Tuttle's Dance Hall and continued living openly in Newton for weeks afterward. In the same town. In the same saloons. He was never charged with anything.
The entire incident was absorbed into the general lawlessness of the era and forgotten.
Compare this to the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881 — fewer deaths but years of legal proceedings and national newspaper coverage. It became one of the most documented events in frontier history.
The Newton Massacre killed more people in a single night than the OK Corral — yet it barely appears in history books.
Why do you think certain frontier events become legendary while others like this get completely buried?