General George S. Patton and the Battle of the Bulge
By Stanley Weintraub

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Yet the Germans bent without buckling. In the snow on the 22nd, a battalion of the 4th Armored lost thirty-three tanks to German guns. Patton had urged the III Corps commander, Maj. Gen. John Millikin, to “drive like hell.” They were still twelve tough miles from Bastogne. Despite the cost, Patton goaded Millikin to get close enough to hear the bullets “whistle” and push on through the night, although the weather was as much the enemy as the Boche.

Decades later, Eisenhower recalled how Patton would telephone with frustrating progress reports, saying: “General, I apologize for my slowness. This snow is God-awful. I’m sorry.”

“George,” Ike would ask, “are you still fighting?” When Patton conceded he was, Ike answered, “All right, that’s all I’ve asked of you.”

If the weather was God-awful, the responsible party had to be invoked, and the devout yet off-the-wall Patton intended to go to the source. The Christmas gift that Patton desperately wanted—clearing weather, to better move his armor and to allow air support of his operations—was not the kind supplied by Santa Claus. He told his Third Army senior chaplain, Colonel James O’Neill, that he was going to reclaim a prayer that he had O’Neill compose earlier when rain was delaying the abortive attack into the Saar. “Do you have a good prayer for weather?” Patton had asked. “I’m tired of these soldiers having to fight mud and flood as well as Germans. See if we can’t get God to work on our side.”

“May I say, General,” O’Neill recalled years later that he ventured to say then, “that it isn’t a customary thing among men of my profession to pray for clear weather to kill fellow men.”

“Are you teaching me theology or are you chaplain of the Third Army?” Patton responded. “I want a prayer.” Well-read, including all of the Bible, Patton knew that there were many prebattle appeals to the Almighty in Scripture.

Since Father O’Neill realized that Patton did everything over the top, he duly wrote something for the general, beginning piously: “Almighty and merciful Father, we humbly beseech thee, of thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously hearken to us 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.”

The rains of early December had now congealed into snow, and the Saar offensive for which the supplication had been intended had been canceled. When O’Neill reminded him of that, Patton said: “Oh, the Lord won’t mind. He knows we’re too busy now to print another prayer.” Patton had the text set in type in Luxembourg City and distributed on a quarter million wallet-size cards, with a holiday greeting on the other side that wished “each officer and soldier,” incongruously in the circumstances, “a Merry Christmas.” Patton added: “I have confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We march in our might to complete victory. May God’s blessing rest upon each of you on this Christmas Day.”

Feeling fully engaged in God’s work, Patton apparently worked his idiosyncratic improvements on O’Neill’s prayer for further use. The text surfaced after the war and was published by the national tourist office of Luxembourg. “Chaplain,” he explained to O’Neill, “I am a strong believer in prayer….Between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure….God has his part, or margin, in everything.” Patton saw God’s intervention in the unknown “breaks.”

Tags: Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, World War II

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