George S. Patton Jr.
West Point, NY, April 4, 1907
G. S. Patton Jr. Re: West Point Controversy Involving Wm. Taft
ALS

GEORGE S. PATTON JR., Autograph Letter Signed, to Beatrice Banning Ayer, ca. April 4, 1907 (added in pencil in margin), [West Point, New York]. 3 pp., 5.125" x 6.5". Light toning; very good.

George S. Patton Jr. and Beatrice Banning Ayer (1886-1953) met as teenagers on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California in 1902, when their families were vacationing. Ayer was the daughter of prominent Boston industrialist Frederick Ayer.

While Patton was attending the Virginia Military Institute, California Senator Thomas R. Bard nominated him for appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. In his first year at West Point, he performed well in the military routine but struggled academically. He was cadet sergeant major during his junior year and cadet adjutant during his senior year. He joined the football team, but injuries to his arm (including one evident in this picture) kept him off the field. Instead, he focused on fencing and track and field, specializing in the modern pentathlon, which took him to the 1912 Summer Olympics in Sweden. During his years at West Point, Patton?s friendship with Ayer deepened.

This letter discusses a recent incident at the Sunday parade of cadets. When Commandant of Cadets Robert Lee Howze saw that nearly two dozen female visitors were wearing cadet overcoats to protect them from the cold wind, he ordered the police sergeant to retrieve the overcoats. Among those in the audience was Mrs. Elizabeth Fairfax Ayres, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Charles G. Ayres and mother of Cadet Fairfax Ayres. Her daughter was one of those compelled to give up an overcoat, and she had already written letters to newspapers accusing the Academy of persecuting her son. Ultimately, Secretary of War William Howard Taft issued an order forbidding Mrs. Ayres from visiting the military academy at West Point, and she threatened to sue the officers at West Point and Secretary Taft for damages. In the fallout, Cadet Dana H. Crissy changed from a corporal to an ?area bird,? or a cadet who suffered a punishment by walking for hours around the grounds.

Patton graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in June 1909, finishing 46 out of 103 cadets, and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Cavalry branch of the U.S. Army. After Patton asked Frederick Ayer?s permission to marry his daughter, they announced their engagement in March 1910. They were married in Boston on May 26, 1910. Two days later, they sailed for a honeymoon trip to England.

Complete Transcript
Dear Beatrice;
The chicken was not a murder at all in fact it was a very sporty thing to do and I don?t believe I could ever have screwed up enough courage to have tried it. Have you seen any New York papers lately or is the black tragedy of a week ago still unknown to you. For just a week ago today at Sunday parade the Com. suddenly discovered that there were a lot of ladies at parade wearing cadet overcoats this sight so filled his military heart with rage that he sent a soldier to collect all the coats and leave the ladies to freeze while the cadets stood in silent rage and watched it done. As soon as parade was over a lot of them got more coats and rushed out but only got skinned for their trouble as everyone had gone. Mr Crissy in fact got more for he did find some friends and expressed his disaproval in such strong language that next day he changed from a corp. to an area bird.
That night a party of cadets called on the Com. And caused him to write letters of apology to all the people he had frozen. But as luck would have it Mrs. Ayres was there and as she hates the Com. As a snake hates water she wrote a very vivid and vicious account to all the papers and made things seem a lot worse than they were and they were pretty bad.
You will probably not be very sorry to know that she has been such a bother around here that she prevented dear Fair from getting elected hop manager.
Yesterday we had a great funeral for some old chap whose name no one could learn but if a lot of ?cussing? can send a person the long road I fear he will not need his blankets tonight for it rained all the time and there were simply tons of mud every where and we got our guns all rusty and our clothes all dirty and it was pretty bad. Yesterday also to add to the beauty of the day I was reading a book in the library and did not notice the time until the sunset gun told me I had gotten an absence at supper for which I will also get five demerits. Math is over but I had to work so hard to keep it from getting over me that my mind will not think of horse names but I will try thanks for writing me. George Patton

George S. Patton Jr. (1885-1945) was born in California and educated at the Virginia Military Institute (like his father and grandfather) and the United States Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1909. An avid horseback rider, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the cavalry. In 1910, he married Beatrice Banning Ayer (1886-1953), the daughter of a wealthy Boston businessman. He competed in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, in the modern pentathlon, where he finished fifth behind four Swedes. He then traveled to France, where he learned fencing techniques. Returning to the United States, he redesigned cavalry saber combat doctrine and designed a new sword. In 1915 and 1916, Patton participated in the Pancho Villa Expedition in Mexico as Commander John J. Pershing?s aide. In the spring of 1917, he accompanied Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, to Europe. Patton took an interest in tanks and was soon training crews to operate them. By 1918, he was in command of a tank brigade. After World War I, he served in various army posts and began to develop the methods of mechanized warfare. At the beginning of World War II, Patton worked to develop and train armored divisions in the army. In the summer of 1942, he commanded the Western Task Force in the Allied invasion of French North Africa. He commanded the Seventh U.S. Army in the successful invasion of Sicily in July 1943. After the Normandy invasion of June 1944, Patton?s Third Army sailed to France and formed on the extreme right of Allied land forces. Through speed and aggressive offensive action, the Third Army continuously pressed retreating German forces until it ran out of fuel near Metz in northeastern France at the end of August. When the German army counterattacked in the battle of the Bulge in mid-December 1944, Patton?s ability to reposition six full divisions to relieve besieged Allied forces in Bastogne was one of the most remarkable achievements of the war. As the Germans retreated, Patton?s Third Army advanced, killing, wounding, or capturing 240,000 German soldiers in seven weeks before crossing the Rhine on March 22. After the end of the war in Europe, Patton hoped for a command in the Pacific but after a visit to the United States returned to Europe for occupation duty in Bavaria. In December 1945, the car in which he was riding collided with an American army truck at low speed, but Patton hit his head on a glass partition, breaking his neck and paralyzing him. He died twelve days later at a hospital in Germany. He was buried among some of his men of the Third Army in an American cemetery in Luxembourg.

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5.125" x 6.5"