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Vintage glossy 4 x 5 photo of Gen. George S. Patton standing at attention beside Col. Rufus S. Bratton, both gazing upward at a helmet hung from a post—a memorial to the Third Army's war dead—taken at Third Army headquarters planning office on December 29, 1944, three days after the relief of Bastogne, signed and inscribed in fountain pen, "To Col. Rufus Bratton, from G. S. Patton, Jr.” The wall behind them displays the Third Army situation board. Reverse bears a credit stamp, "Photo by Signal Corps U.S. Army, 166th Signal Photo Co.," with typed classification: "Confidential, Until Reclassified by censor." In fine condition, with moderate-to-poor signature contrast.
Bratton was the Far Eastern Section Chief of the War Department's Military Intelligence Division on December 7, 1941, who famously received the decoded '14-part message and tried to warn Pearl Harbor before the attack—an episode later fictionalized in Tora! Tora! Tora!.
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