General George Patton was a devoted Christian but also so outspoken and virtually blasphmous that his career was constantly marred by his outbursts. He believe that GIs ere motivated byfighting talk and not without quite obscene language and references. When he commanded after Normandy, he certainly motivated his troops without any parallel among US Generals. His religious belief is expresed in a famous prayer he circulated to the Third US Army at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. The speech partly copied below, however, a second 'prayer' was the precursor of a much more telling prayer which was circulated to troops (reportedly written on December 23, 1944), which was released by the Luxembourg Tourist Office after the war.

G.S. Patton, Jr.
Lieutenant General
Commanding, Third United States Army“

Chaplain O’Neill’s prayer and Christmas greeting are not to be confused with two other prayers purportedly written by Patton. The first, written on December 23, reads in part:

Sir, this is Patton talking. The past fourteen days have been straight hell.

Rain, snow, more rain, more snow-and I am beginning to wonder what’s going on in your headquarters. Whose side are You on anyway?

For three years my chaplains have been explaining that this is a religious war. This, they tell me, is the Crusades all over again, except that we’re riding tanks instead of chargers. They insist we are here to annihilate the Gerrnan Army and the godless Hitler so that religious freedom may return to Europe. Up to now I have gone along with them, for You have given us Your unreserved cooperation. . . . But now, you’ve changed horses in midstream. You seem to have given von Rundstedt every break in the book and frankly, he’s been beating the hell out of us. My army is neither trained nor equipped for winter warfare. And as You know this weather is more suitable for Eskimos than for southern cavalrymen.

But now, Sir, I can’t help but feel that I have offended you in some way. That suddenly you have lost all sympathy for our cause. That You are throwing in with von Rundstedt and his paper-hanging God . . . our situation is desperate . . . my soldiers from the Meuse to Echtemach are suffering tortures of the damned. . . . Damn it, Sir, I can’t fight a shadow. Without Your cooperation from a weather standpoint I am deprived of accurate disposition of the German armies and how in hell can I be intelligent in my attack? All of this probably sounds unreasonable to You, but I have lost all patience with Your chaplains who insist that this is a typical Ardennes winter, and that I must have faith. Faith and patience be damned! You have got to make up Your mind whose side You’re on. You must come to my assistance, so that I may dispatch the entire German Army as a birthday present to Your prince of Peace.

Sir, I have never been an unreasonable man, I am not going to ask you for the impossible . . . all I request is four days of clear weather so that my fighter-bombers can bomb and strafe, so that my reconnaissance may pick out targets for my magnificent artillery. Give me four days of sunshine to dry this blasted mud. . . . I need these four days to send von Rundstedt and his godless army to their Valhalla. I am sick of the unnecessary butchery of American youth, and in exchange for four days of fighting weather, I will deliver You enough Krauts to keep Your bookkeepers months behind in their work. Amen.

On December 27 there was another Patton address to God: “Sir. this is Patton again, and I beg to report complete progress. Sir, it seems to me that You have been much better informed about the situation than I was, because it was that awful weather which I cursed so much which made it possible for the German army to commit suicide. That, Sir, was a brilliant military move, and l bow humbly to a supreme military genius.”

The speeches were also later published in A Genius for War: a Life of General George Patton by Carlo D'Este (1995)