He had only the reliable 4th Armored and the 26th and 80th Infantry divisions. Charles R. In some faces skepticism [showed]. But through the room a current of excitement leaped. Patton was confident he could do it. Others at the table raised worries. Patton spurned their concerns. He was taking the war directly to the enemy. He would have preferred to lure the Germans forty or fifty miles farther, then chop them off. You will start on the twenty-second, and I want your initial blow to be a strong one! In two hours the redispositions were settled. Eisenhower walked to the door with Patton.
Bradley, who had vaulted over his unpredictable partner, and Eisenhower, who held Patton back, continued to have mixed feelings about entrusting crucial operations to him. Yet both continued to demonstrate confidence in the overcautious Maj. Courtney Hodges, who had bollixed up the First Army situation on the northern flank of the Bulge.
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In effect, his shattered divisions were now going into receivership under the domineering Montgomery. In the past, I have demonstrated my high opinion of him when it was not easy to do so. In certain situations both Bradley and I would select Patton to command above any general we have, but in other situations we would prefer Hodges.
Yet he assumed that it would take Patton at least four days to wheel his divisions about, and the terrible weather—rain, sleet and snow—would be an additional handicap. He felt that Bastogne was as good as lost if he could not get there by Christmas. The Germans had already taken St. Vith, on the northern shoulder. The st Airborne Division, surrounded and besieged, was holding the town precariously. Although the division and its supporting armored elements would be bottled up only for eight days, its airborne nature left it without heavy guns, and the tanks of Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division were a lightweight counterpart to the panzer divisions surrounding Bastogne.
Well, I mean the success of moving an unwieldy mass like that; to change your lines of supply, and everything, to turn that cumbersome, heavy-going outfit in the snow, in the fog and the rain, and turn them around so quickly as he did to get them going to the north, was really a remarkable task to accomplish.
Patton had already thought hard about the operation, for he saw no other avenue for the relief of Bastogne. More than breaking a siege, the risky turnaround was essential to reducing the burgeoning Bulge. Yet the town was difficult, wintry miles from the bulk of the Third Army. In two days and nights about a hundred thousand troops, with thousands of supply trucks, tanks, self-propelled guns, and other vehicles, had to slog over roads that barely existed beneath the mud, ice, and snow.
Since blackout restrictions meant nothing in the poor visibility and lack of enemy air traffic, drivers kept their lights on. In the miserable terrain, communications teams had to lay and network nearly twenty thousand miles of wire. When he was discovered dining in style and enjoying vintage wines in a hotel in Luxembourg City, it had no bearing on where he had already been or would be going.
Patton is reported to have put in a counter attack. So I should be content which of course I am not…. We moved over a hundred miles [since] starting on the 19th. To augment his forces, Patton extracted eight thousand men from rear-area service troops, including clerks and cooks and bandsmen. Yet the Germans bent without buckling. In the snow on the 22nd, a battalion of the 4th Armored lost thirty-three tanks to German guns.
This snow is God-awful. If the weather was God-awful, the responsible party had to be invoked, and the devout yet off-the-wall Patton intended to go to the source. The Christmas gift that Patton desperately wanted—clearing weather, to better move his armor and to allow air support of his operations—was not the kind supplied by Santa Claus.
Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously hearken to us 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. The rains of early December had now congealed into snow, and the Saar offensive for which the supplication had been intended had been canceled. We march in our might to complete victory. The text surfaced after the war and was published by the national tourist office of Luxembourg.
Between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure…. God has his part, or margin, in everything. It was white when you looked down, white when you looked up. In Luxembourg City the next morning, thirty-three miles to the southeast, Patton set out alone for the ancient Roman Catholic chapel in the Fondation Pescatore, the massive, steepled, castlelike structure where he made his headquarters.
The chapel was now a home for the elderly. Under the crucifix above the altar, Patton, although an Episcopalian, removed his helmet with its three stars, sank to his knees, and prayed earnestly his widely quoted prayer for the Christmastime success of his troops. Sir, this is Patton talking. The last fourteen days have been straight hell.
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Whose side are you on, anyway? 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. That suddenly you have lost all sympathy for our cause. That you are throwing in with von Rundstedt and his paper-hanging god [Hitler]. You know without me telling you that our situation is desperate.
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You must come to my assistance, so that I may dispatch the entire German Army as a birthday present to your prince of peace. Give me four clear days so that my planes can fly, so that my fighter-bombers can bomb and strafe, so that my reconnaissance may pick our targets for my magnificent artillery. Give me four days of sunshine to dry out this blasted mud, so that my tanks roll, so that ammunition and rations may be taken to my hungry, ill-equipped infantry. I need these four days to send von Rundstedt and his godless army to their Valhalla.
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I am sick of this 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 their work. He was appealing for the churched and unchurched alike. As fighter-bombers hammered German vehicles, Patton radioed John Millikin impatiently—and unreasonably.
Tough German resistance, Millikin reported, had disabled eleven more American tanks. Buoyantly, Patton credited his chaplain for the change in the weather.
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Happily, if prematurely, Patton radioed to McAuliffe on the morning of the 24th, referring to Brig. Hold on. Resupply was underway, by glider and color-coded parachute drops. With Colonel Codman, Patton went to a candlelight Communion at the frigid Episcopal church in Luxembourg City, which, below the Bulge, had remained quiet.