Commanded by General Patton, this prayer was given to every man in the Third Army in World War II in December 1944.
(Editor’s note: The following information was taken from a story in the Friends of the National WWII Memorial https://www.wwiimemorialfriends.org/blog/pattons-prayer)
George Patton was in a foul mood. His Third Army was stalled in Lorraine, worn out after a fall of depressing attrition. Every day, it seemed, the weather got worse. “There is about four inches of liquid mud over everything,” he wrote his wife Beatrice, “and it rains all the time, not hard but steadily.”
Patton decided to ask for divine intervention.
On December 8, 1944, Patton picked up the telephone in his office in the Caserne Molifor, an old French Army barracks in the city of Nancy that was being used as Third Army headquarters.
Patton called 52-year-old Chief Chaplain of the Third Army, James H. O’Neill.
“Do you have a good prayer for weather?” asked Patton. “We must do something about those rains if we are to win the war.”
O’Neill couldn’t find a suitable prayer, so he created his own. After reading it, Patton was pleased and said, “Have 250,000 copies printed and see to it that every man in the Third Army gets one.”
O’Neill returned to his quarters and issued a directive, in Patton’s name, which would be distributed to the Third Army’s 486 chaplains, representing thirty-two denominations, and senior officers in more than twenty divisions:
“Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle…Pray for victory. Pray for our Army and Pray for Peace.”
The last of Patton’s 250,000 prayer cards were distributed to his men on December 14. Just two days later, Hitler launched his last desperate gamble to change the outcome of the war – a surprise strike by more than 200,000 troops in the Battle of the Bulge. (The battle was from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945.)
But it was not until 23 December, more than a week into the deadliest battle for the U.S. of WWII, that the tide turned decisively in favor of the Allies. That morning, Patton’s prayer was dramatically answered and the weather finally changed.
It was said that “the dawn skies were a glory to behold. The dense cloud cover had gone.” In the words of one GI, “it was the war’s most beautiful sunrise.” The Allied air forces were once again able to take to the skies and halt Hitler’s forces and destroy their supply lines. The Germans never recovered from that ensuing devastation, and, by the end of January 1945, the battle would end in what Winston Churchill described as an “ever-famous American victory.”
Patton thanked the Chief Chaplin for the prayer by giving him a Bronze Star: the only man in WWII who received a medal for writing a prayer.
What a great story and a solemn reminder of the sacrifices made by our grandparents so that we could enjoy American holidays in peace..