Posted by
Randy on Tuesday, December 09, 2008 5:38:28 PM
General George Patton’s Third Army led the Allied break-out of Normandy in late July 1944. By the end of September, it stood poised to enter Germany after liberating much of France during the drive across Europe. However, what the Nazi Army could not do at that point, the weather did. Europe’s unusually wet fall bogged down Patton and the rest of the Allied forces for the next two months, as they waited for the roads to dry.
The situation became so frustrating for Patton that on another rainy day in early December, he asked his Army chaplain, James O’Neill, for a weather prayer. By O’Neill’s account, the general said the weather would need to change if they were going to win the war. The chaplain composed this prayer:
“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have to contend. Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously harken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.”
Patton liked it and ordered O’Neill to print 250,000 copies on
prayer cards to distribute to the entire Third Army. On the reverse side of the cards was a Christmas greeting from the General. (See link above). Patton then questioned the chaplain as to how much praying the army was doing. O’Neill believed not much: when there’s fighting, everybody prays; but when it’s quiet, everyone just sits around and waits for things to happen. The general responded, “Chaplain, I am a strong believer in prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning, or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out; that’s working. But between the plan and the operation there is always the unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call it getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything. That’s where prayer comes in.” Patton added, “A good soldier is not made merely by making him think and work. There is something in every soldier that goes deeper than thinking or working—it’s his ‘guts.’ It is something that he has built in there: it is a world of truth and power that is higher than himself.”
Patton referred to the account of
Gideon in the Bible who, despite being greatly outnumbered, fought bravely and prevailed because the Lord was with him. (See link above chapters 6-8). The general observed that his men should be praying, wherever they were—or eventually they would “crack up.” Patton instructed O’Neill to put out a training letter for all the chaplains in the Third Army on the importance of prayer. It was circulated to the Third Army’s 486 chaplains and to every organizational commander down to the regimental level—3,200 letters. Recounting how God aided an army in the story of Gideon, O’Neill exhorted his fellow chaplains, “We must urge, instruct, and indoctrinate every fighting man to pray as well as fight. In Gideon’s day, and in our own, spiritually alert minorities carry the burdens and bring the victories.” O’Neill’s training letters and prayer cards went into the Third Army’s ranks starting 12 December 1944. Events on the battlefield turned dramatically on 16 December.
Nearly one hundred miles to the north of Patton’s Third Army sector, Adolph Hitler pulled some of his best units from battling the Russians to participate in a bold strike which he hoped would both dishearten the Allies and buy him time to strengthen Germany’s defenses. Under thick cloud cover with snow falling, Hitler’s 200,000 troops advanced through Belgium’s Ardennes Forest. The Allies could not employ their air cover because of the weather. The massive German thrust enveloped thousands of Allied soldiers—including 11,000 of the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne. The German commander ordered the surrounded unit to immediately surrender—to which the American commander, General Anthony McAuliffe, famously replied, “Nuts.” The German army tried to break the hold on Bastogne while also pushing west, creating a 50- by 30-mile-wide bulge in the Allied lines.
Prior to the Ardennes offensive, Patton had had his staff working on a contingency plan because he sensed the Germans might counterattack in the Bastogne region. Patton amazed all in the Allied planning meeting called by by telling General Dwight D. Eisenhower by saying that his Army could attack in seventy-two hours he could attack in the Bastogne region with three divisions. His forces were army was now eighty-five miles to the south, with a portion already engaging the enemy—and the muddy roads were now icy and snow packed. Eisenhower gave the unrelenting Patton the green light to implement his plan.
On the same day the German commander demanded the 101st Airborne’s surrender (December 22), Patton’s forces hit the southern edge of the Bulge—still over thirty miles from the besieged city. Allied air cover remained grounded until the following dayDecember 23. That morning, after around the time many of the Third Army’s soldiers had received the prayer cards, the weeks-long cloud cover finally broke to a clear, sunny, and crisp ten-degree Fahrenheit day. The clear weather meant the hard-pressed defenders of Bastogne could finally be re-supplied with ammunition and food by parachute airdrop while Allied fighter aircraft could strike German ground forces. With nearly three hundred daily casualties, the 101st could hold out only a few more days.
Finally on 26 December, a beautiful sight appeared in the distance: a Sherman tank bearing the American star. The advanced elements of Patton’s Third Army were on their way, carving a tenuous, narrow corridor to the now-established Allied forces101st Airborne that would widen the next day.
The Third Army continued attacking the enemy throughout the sector. With the help of Allied units to the north, by the end of January they had completely pushed back the Bulge, continuing into Germany. Around this time General Patton saw Chaplain O’Neill and cracked him on the side of his steel helmet with his riding crop, saying to him, “Well, Padre, our prayers worked. I knew they would.” The chaplain knew it was Patton’s way of saying, “Well done.”
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Randy DeSoto, while in the Army, served as an armor platoon leader and staff operatons officer. He has included all the source material—and much more about how other leaders, in other wars, appealed to God—in his recently published book
We Hold These Truths. This excerpt first appeared in the Officers' Christian Fellowship Quarterly newsletter
Connected in the winter 2007-08 edition. The author can be reached with comments at
wehold@juno.com