[SAMWolf]

Thank you Reverand for the kind greeting.

The Commando's Prayer

Give me, my God, what you still have;
give me what no one asks for.
I do not ask for wealth, nor success,
nor even health.

People ask you so often, God, for all that,
that you cannot have any left.

Give me, my God, what you still have.
Give me what people refuse to accept from you.
I want insecurity and disquietude;
I want turmoil and brawl.

And if you should give them to me,
my God, once and for all,
let me be sure to have them always,
for I will not always
have the courage to ask for them.

Corporal Zirnheld, Special Air Service 1942

[archy]

Give me, my God, what you still have;
give me what no one asks for....

That one's borrowed from the French Foreign Legion, some former members of which worked with the British Special Air Service in the Western Desert campaign following the founding of the SAS by Major David Sterling in 1942. Later in the war SAS crews in gun jeeps accompanied Frenchmen working to make things unhealthy for Germans still in France, so the activities and long-term friendships balanced out nicely.

Following WWII the Legion Etrangere found itself enmeshed in the fights in the French colonial possessions of Indo-China and later, Algeria, and the old prayer was revived. I first learned it around 1965.

Legio Patria Nostra,

-archy-/-