The Truth About General Patton's Weather Prayer

It is that time of the year well I guess many WWII veterans from the European theatre think about the famous battle of the Bulge and the surrounding German Offensive and later long hard fought Allied counter offensive.

Many have seen the wonderful movie Patton. As always when I am watching these movies I am aware how much history I presume to be true that I pick up. I have over the years wondered how much am I seeing actually happened and how much is artistic license. For instance in the movie Battle of the Bulge one thinks that at the end of the movies in the famous tank scene (that strangely looks nothing like Europe) the Germans ran out of gas and it was all easy going after that. Think of the scene of the Germans walking back to Germany. Well that was hardly how it happened. The Germans fought for inch of land they captured and the offensive by allied forces that took place in a horrid winter was bloody and took some time.

Anyway one of the great scenes of the movie Patton is when Patton demands from a Chaplin ( in real life Catholic Chaplain, Colonel James H. O’Neill ) that he do a prayer for good weather so they could advance.

There is a lot more to this story. American Catholic has a good post on this at Patton’s Weather Prayer. The post has an link to an a very good article ( originally a Govt Document) by Father O'Neil tells the whole fascinating story