Fairview Cemetery — the grave of Charles Kuhl, the soldier Patton slapped

1943–1971 · THE FAMOUS GRAVE

The fame: Mishawaka's one famous grave holds a private. Charles H. Kuhl of Mishawaka was the sick soldier whom General George S. Patton struck and reviled in an evacuation hospital in Sicily in August 1943 — the first and more famous of the two slapping incidents that nearly ended Patton's career. The story was broken to the American public by the columnist Drew Pearson on national radio on 21 November 1943; Patton apologized at General Eisenhower's direction. Kuhl recovered, returned to his unit — on one account, printed in this history's People record as one account's claim and not as settled, he landed in Normandy on D-Day — and came home to live out his life in the city he had left. His settled postwar view is on the record and is the more remarkable document: Patton, he said, had not known how sick he was. “I never did like war or being overseas.”

The ground: Kuhl died of a heart attack on 31 January 1971, at Mishawaka, aged fifty-five, and is buried in Fairview Cemetery, Mishawaka. The incident that made him famous happened in a hospital tent in Sicily, and its scene was carried into the 1970 film Patton, where Kuhl was played by Tim Considine — but the grave, the one piece of the story that stands on ground a visitor can walk to, is here. The People record of this history owns the life whole — the Knoxville residence claim on him, printed there as a residence claim against this city's birth record — and the war record owns the incident's machinery. This chapter owns only the address: Fairview Cemetery is where the most famous slap of the Second World War finally came to rest.

Sources:

1. The People record of this history — the Kuhl entry whole: the incidents of August 1943, Drew Pearson's broadcast of 21 November 1943, the death at Mishawaka on 31 January 1971 aged fifty-five, and the burial in Fairview Cemetery, Mishawaka; its sources include Ray E. Boomhower's Indiana historical writing.
2. The wars record of this history — the Second World War at the city's size, the home front and the rolls.