Jean Gordon

Jean Gordon, a niece by marriage of General Patton, was a Boston socialite and a Red Cross worker during World War II. She probably had an affair with Patton before the war. It possibly continued during the war, but Patton's biographers suggest he was boasting. She committed suicide shortly after Patton died, and after her boyfriend left her and returned to his wife.

Jean Gordon's mother, Louise Raynor Ayer, daughter of Boston industrialist Frederick Ayer, was a half-sister of Patton's wife Beatrice. Her father Gordon, a well-known Boston lawyer, died of leukemia when she was eight years old. The same age as Patton's younger daughter Ruth Ellen and her best friend, Jean spent many of her vacations with the Pattons and was a bridesmaid in the weddings of both Patton girls. She was prominent in pre-war Boston high society.

Early in the war, Jean Gordon completed the American Red Cross Nurse's Aide training course and volunteered in several Boston hospitals. In October 1942, she was appointed vice-chairman of the Boston Red Cross Volunteer Nurse's Aide Corps, the chairman of which was Mrs Frank G. Allen, the wife of former governor of Massachusetts. In 1944, Gordon enlisted as a Red Cross staff assistant and was sent to England in May. She contacted Patton early in July and they met up in London. Patton found her stunning in her uniform. He later told his close friend General Everett Hughes, one of Eisenhower's logistics officers, that he wanted her presence in London to be kept secret. Hughes could not help wondering what the relationship was. On July 9, Patton told him, in a mood which Hughes gathered was "more boastful than repentant", that Jean Gordon has "...been mine for twelve years" thus putting the start of their affair around 1932 when she was 17 years old and a frequent guest of Ruth Ellen.

According to the memoirs of Ruth Ellen Patton Totten, her father had an affair with Gordon, described as "a quiet but witty girl, highly intelligent and beautiful," as well as "a vivacious and lovely brunette," in 1936 when she was 21 years old and visited the Pattons in Hawaii en route to the Far East; moreover, Ruth Ellen thought that she had already started "making a play for Georgie" in 1934. Gordon was assigned to the ARC Clubmobile group L attached to the headquarters of the Third Army as a "donut girl", a volunteer who served front-line troops with donuts, coffee, cigarettes and writing paper, as well as entertaining them with music, dance and chat. She would become Patton’s constant companion and his hostess when he entertained guests at his headquarters. The two of them would converse animatedly with each other in fluent French, to the confusion of those around them. Patton made a practice of inviting the Red Cross girls to dine with his staff, especially when dignitaries and VIP's visited his headquarters, and the girls had Patton to dinner several times. Once the war was over, they became even more a part of Patton's entourage.

Postwar

In May, after the official end of the war in Europe, Everett Hughes visited Third Army headquarters in Regensburg, Germany, where he soon realized that Patton had had a "scene with Jean Gordon"; perhaps, he thought, about what would become of her now. However, according to Hughes, they had made up that evening, thanks in part to a huge bottle of champagne provided by another Red Cross girl, and reportedly renewed their liaison in London later that month during Patton's leave in England. When in early June 1945 Patton was returning to the United States for a monthlong bond-raising tour, Hughes, who saw him off, wrote in his diary that Jean was distraught and that he took her with a friend back to his apartment so she could "have a good cry." Gordon returned to the United States in December 1945 on the M.S.Gripsholm.

Historians and Patton's boasting

Patton repeatedly boasted of his sexual success with this young woman but his biographers are skeptical. Only the discredited author David Irving thinks there was sex. Stanley Hirshson says the relationship was casual. Dennis Showalter believes that Patton, under severe physical and psychological stress, made up claims of sexual conquest to prove his virility. Carlos D'Este agrees, saying, "His behavior suggests that in both 1936 [in Hawaii] and 1944–45, the presence of the young and attractive Jean was a means of assuaging the anxieties of a middle-aged man troubled over his virility and a fear of aging."

Jean Gordon's supervisor, Betty South, the captain of the Red Cross Clubmobile crew attached to the Third Army headquarters, claimed that although Gordon adored General Patton, it was strictly in a father–daughter relationship, while the man she truly loved was a young married captain who left her despondent when he went home to his wife. However, her version is colored by the fact that she was protective of both Patton's and Gordon's reputation.

Ruth Ellen Patton has initially also staunchly denied the rumors of an affair,yet her, until recently unpublished, memoirs, as well as her nephew Robert's work on the Pattons she collaborated on, reveal that the family considered Gordon and Patton to have been in a romantic relationship.

Beatrice Patton clearly believed that Jean Gordon was intimately involved with her husband and wrote to him repeatedly to express her concerns, prompting his cavalier dismissals and a denial that he had even seen her. The evening before he left for his bond-raising tour, during a farewell dinner at the Ritz, Patton confessed to Everett Hughes that he was "scared to death of going back home to America;" likewise, he told Hughes upon his return: "Beatrice gave me hell. I'm glad to be in Europe!" Shortly after Patton died of injuries sustained in a car crash that had left him paralyzed, his wife arranged to meet Gordon at a Boston hotel where she confronted her over the supposed affair. In the early morning of January 8, 1946, only days after the confrontation with Beatrice and a little more than two weeks after Patton's death, Jean Gordon committed suicide, surrounded by General Patton's pictures, in the Upper East Side Manhattan apartment of a friend.