Posted on 12/26/2010 6:31:05 AM PST by Saije
In early December 1944, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., commander of the United States' 3rd Army, stood with his troops at Germany's doorstep. He'd pushed his men across France toward Germany with furious speed during summer and early fall, but in the last months, as he drove through France's Lorraine region toward the Saar River, progress stalled. Fuel and supplies were running short, and perhaps even more deviling, the weather wouldn't cooperate. Driving rains had mired his troops and grounded the fighter planes and bombers needed for air support.
On Dec. 8, Patton turned to a higher power to clear the skies. He asked Chaplain James H. O'Neill if he knew of a "good prayer for the weather," according to military historian and Patton expert Kevin M. Hymel. "We must do something about these rains," Patton said, "if we are to win the war."
After some thought and research, O'Neill came up with the following:
"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."
...Throughout history, soldiers have called upon their gods for protection and victory over their enemies. But Patton's now legendary prayer was extraordinary in its presumption and audacity, said Hymel. "There were four other American commanders in the European Theater during that time, and none of them were asking God to fix the weather."
The prayer also makes one question what led Patton to his conviction that he could control the weather?
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Man of God? Holy Spirit? By my lights, Patton was more of a self-enamored Deist, along the lines of Jefferson or McClellan, giving lip service to God and Country but primarily a driven achiever and acquirer.
Yep, just like a whole lot of us sinners.
Except that (with God’s help) Patton got a whole lot more done than the rest of us.
God bless and keep Gen. Patton.
Aside from diverting supplies to Monty there was a real supply problem for the armies as a whole. Monty did not grasp the importance of Antwerp until after his Market Garden failure. Most allied supplies were still being brought in from Normandy by the Red Ball Express, a constantly moving column of 2 1/2 ton trucks. By the time the armies reached the German border their size and distance from Normandy made if very difficult for the efficiently run Express to keep up. Monty finally opened the Scheldt to shipping at the end of November 1944, greatly shortening the supply lines and using a much bigger port. Of course, one of the objective of the German Bulge offensive was to take Antwerp back.
One would think that the previous offensives by the Germans (both WWs) would have tipped off the western allies that just maybe another one was coming. Patton had to pick up the broken pieces, had to fend off Monty’s efforts to strip him of supplies, and for that matter, Monty’s insistence on having part of the US army put under his command, then grandstanding in a press conference about the transfer.
As I’ve said a number of times, Monty should have been assassinated not long after D-Day, and the assassination pinned on the Germans. The war of liberation would have gone much smoother.
The British approach during the war was to let the USSR take the brunt for as long as possible, and to let the Germans wear themselves out fighting on that front. Churchill’s other annoying crap, such as his “soft underbelly of Europe” BS, all grew out of that strategy. The Italian campaign was some of the hardest fighting of the war, strictly because of the highly defensible terrain. Thanks, Winston.
Operation Market Garden was a fiasco, and probably couldn’t have been otherwise with Monty running it — and it was intended to succeed, but was launched in the first place to let the Germans keep busy fighting the Red Army advance. Stalin was continuously furious in those wartime conferences because he wanted a second front, and wasn’t getting it. North Africa wasn’t it, Italy wasn’t it, and D-Day came a full year after the Battle of Kursk.
Very true.
“The British approach during the war was to let the USSR take the brunt for as long as possible,”
And that proved wise. The Dieppe Raid of August 1942 took over 50% casualties. Grabbing a beachhead on continental Europe wasn’t going to be easy.
For one thing we needed thousands of Higgins Boats and they weren’t ready until 1944. And as fruitless as the hard fighting in Italy might appear, it taught the American army a great deal about fighting the Germans while tying German divisions down away from the French coast. The Normandy Invasion took place one day after the liberation of Rome.
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