A Quarter-Million Supplications

There was enough sparring between the generals just about then. Although the Allies knew nothing about it, Hitler had determined that the only way to win the war was to attack to take on the forces crushing him and his armies. Hence, he assembled his generals and told them his grand plan--to take back the port at Antwerp but an huge attack along an eighty-mile front. And, oh yes, if they as much as whispered a word of his plan before it would unfold, the penalty for their leak would be death.  No one thought him kidding.

Meanwhile, on the "ghost front," there just simply wasn't much action, as the western European world turned into winter.  After the beachhead at Normandy and the fights that went on, Germany backing out of occupied France, the whole front went into a stall. Winter was coming, and much of the Allied fighting force was recovering from really tough warfare in France. There was a lull, which is why the front, people claimed, was "a ghost front."

There'd never been much love between Field Marshall Montgomery and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike was gracious man; Monty a peacock who believed that he, obviously, should have been the single field general commanding all the Allied troops. A ton of Yank soldiers felt it was Monty who'd destroyed so many lives in Holland, in and around Arnhem, when a bridge too far wasn't the only miscalculation. Montgomery was too blame cocky to admit or even believe he was to blame. Yank soldiers despised him.

Patton kept his nose out of the mess. Popular with his men, Patton was thinking of his own troops, particularly his armored units, because constant rain had softened the ground, made it almost unmanageable for his tanks. 

And the rain just kept falling. It was mid-December, 1944, and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were still coming into Europe for what most considered to be a drawn-out war that would be over--the Allies believed--just a few months, maybe even weeks. What neither Monty nor Ike had considered was about to happen anyway--the Battle of Bulge, the biggest battle of the war was about to commence.

Maybe for the first time, General George Patton got religion. Damned rain had to stop, had to quit, had to be done. If his troops were to manage any efficacy against the Huns, they had to have good solid ground, dry ground, beneath their tracks.

So he got religion. He got ahold of the closest chaplain he could find, a man named James O'Neill. "You got a good prayer for weather?" he said. Didn't ask, said.

Chaplain said he'd look and call back. Nope. Nowhere. A prayer to end the rain? he must have said to himself. "He wants a prayer to stop the rain." He knew better than to call back empty-handed, so Chaplain O'Neill wrote one, this one: 

Almighty and most 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 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. 

For the record, Patton thought that Chaplain O'Neill's prayer would do just fine, people say because the moment he heard it, he told the chaplain to have 250,000 copies printed. "Be sure every man in the Third Army gets one," he commanded. And then he told O'Neill that they must get everyone praying. "We must ask God to stop these rains. These rains are the margin that holds defeat or victory."

The story goes this way: When the chaplain saw Patton again, the General said, "Well, Padre, our prayers worked. I knew they would." And then, it is said, he quite appreciatively smacked the padre's helmet with his riding crop.

You ever wonder what incredible range God Almighty must field when he listens to our prayers, all of them? A gadzillion stories every hour of every day. . .and more.

Amazing grace.