Lieutenant General Geoffrey “Geoff” Keyes was “one of the pleasantest companions and most loyal friends” General George Patton had ever known. He was born at Fort Bayard, New Mexico, in 1888 to Captain Alexander Keyes and Virginia Maxwell—her father, Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell, was a ranchero and fur trader, like George’s grandfather, Benjamin Davis Wilson.

After graduating from West Point in 1913, he married Leila Harrison, with whom he had five children: Virginia, Jacqueline, Leslie, Leila, and Geoffrey B. Keyes (who graduated from West Point in 1945, which he had attended with George Patton IV). He participated in the Mexican Punitive Expedition and taught French at the United States Military Academy (while coaching the football team) during World War I.

Jumping ahead to 1940, Keyes became the Chief of Staff of the 2d Armored Division, then commanded by George Patton. Two years later, he was Deputy Commander of the Western Task Force during Operation Torch, then, after Operation Husky, he continued in the Italian campaign under Lieutenant General Mark Clark, taking command of II Corps in September 1943. As commander of the Seventh Army after the war, General Keyes was in charge of General Patton’s “enormous” funeral.

On the morning of the accident, he had had breakfast with Major General Hobart “Hap” Gay and Patton, shaking his hand goodbye as he, George, left on a pheasant hunt and prepared to return to the United States the next day. When Keyes saw his closest friend twelve hours later laying paralyzed in a hospital bed–one of only a handful of people allowed to visit–he couldn’t help but feel that after everything George “had been through and then to meet with such an accident. Had he spent another 10 seconds inspecting the Roman ruins or had he started 10 seconds earlier, he would have missed the truck completely!”

“He and General Patton had been classmates at West Point and had remained close friends throughout the years. In fact, I gathered, from all I could learn, that he was General Patton’s closest friend. Yet, the personalities of the two were diametrically opposite. Keyes was a retiring, kindly man who did his job in a methodical, careful way. I am sure he spent hours each day, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s so to speak. Yet, he loved General Patton as a brother. Several evenings while dining alone with him, he would recount with the greatest pleasure episodes from General Patton’s life. He taught me a great deal about General Patton, the man, rather than General Patton, the soldier.”

Colonel Spurling, the neurosurgeon who flew to Heidelberg with Mrs. Patton to treat her husband.

Beatrice spent her nights at Keyes’s home during those trying times of December 1945 and asked his assistance a few months later to help organize a trip along the route of the Third Army. General Keyes’s diary is riddled with references to Mrs. Patton’s visits to Germany, where he commanded the Third Army from 1946 to 1947, and Austria, where he became the United States High Commissioner on the Allied Council for Austria. (His last appointment was Director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group from 1951 to 1954; he passed away in 1967.)

The recent release of Lieutenant Geoffrey Keyes’s war diary—Patton’s Tactician by James W. Holsinger—reminded me of a purchase I made several years ago while writing Lady of the Army. Always on the lookout for pictures of Beatrice Ayer Patton, I was surprised to see a picture of her in a lot for sale at auction. While many of the slides taken by General Keyes are undated, I assume the photo of Beatrice and her son was taken during their travels along the route of the Third Army in 1946; the trip was a graduation present that both his parents would have accompanied him on.

If you know anything about these pictures, I’d love to learn more.

Sources: Lady of the Army: The Life of Mrs. George S. Patton by Stefanie van Steelandt, Library of Congress – The Patton Papers, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, The Patton Papers by Martin Blumenson, and Patton’s Tactician by James W. Holsinger Jr.