June 23 -- Feast of Blessed Maria Rafaela Cimatti

This is a ramble (rather than a story) about two generals, a priest, and a nun. 

Four stars and an A -- the real George Patton

General George S. Patton, the brilliant if brutal American tank commander during World War II, was religiously unusual.  He rang the bell on the profanity scale and yet read his Bible and prayed "every God-damned day."  He was a devout Episcopalian, but believed in reincarnation.  When in Sicily, he enjoyed attending Mass regularly.  And he once famously asked a chaplain in his army to write a weather prayer so that the Army Air Corps could couter-attack German forces in the Battle of the Bulge.

Gen/Fr. James H O'Neill

The Roman Catholic priest who wrote the prayer, Col. James Hugh O'Neill, eventually rose to the rank of Brigadier General.  [Thus, I suppose this is a ramble about three generals and a nun.]  Father O'Neill's account of writing the prayer and Training Letter No. 5, which instructed the men of Third Army about the importance of prayer during wartime, can be read here. 

Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, or Smiling Albert as the Allies called him, was the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) commander during the invasions of Poland, France, and the USSR, as well as during the Battle of Britain.  He was also the overall commander of German forces in the Mediterranean, including North Africa and Italy.  I guess that made him Rommel's boss for a little while.  It certainly made him Patton's adversary a couple of times.

Smiling Albert Kesselring

General Kesselring had confidence in Germany's Italian allies, but that confidence was not shared by most of the other Nazi leaders.  As the Allies invaded the Italian mainland, the German High Command ordered Italian army units to disarm and disband -- Hitler commented that "Kesselring is too honest for those born traitors down there."  Eventually, as the Allies pushed north, Kesselring got brutal with the Italian partisans attacking his troops.  By June 1944, six months before Patton's weather prayer would be offered, Kesselring had authorized massive retaliation against partisans, unleashing the Hermann Goering Panzer Division and others.

After his surrender at the end of the war, Kesselring was charged with war crimes.  He was convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad (which was one degree more respectable than death by hanging).  Allied political and military leaders spoke in his favor, urging the sentence to be commuted, but what really tipped the balance was that Italy, in whose custody he had been placed, abolished the death penalty.  So Kesselring got life in prison, which wound up being closer to six years; he was released when it appeared he had throat cancer, but he lived another eight years following his release.

Sister Maria Rafaela Cimatti, Beata, Mama

All of which brings me to the nun.  Sister Maria Rafaela Cimatti was born in 1861, making her the oldest of these four by far.  Like so many other sisters, she stayed at home to take care of her family and finally joined a convent when they didn't need her anymore.  She accepted work in a hospital and had been serving more than fifty years when World War II came to Italy.  Naturally, there was more work in the hospital than ever, and though she was in her eighties, she did not shirk from it.  Patients and colleagues at the hospital in Alatri called her Mama.

As the Allies moved north through Italy, Kesselring's Luftwaffe pounded them without mercy.  Of course it was also pounding Italian civilians caught in the crossfire, especially those who could not flee (like patients in hospitals). Upon hearing a rumor that Alatri was to be bombed by the Germans, Mama Maria Rafaela went to General Kesselring and personally pleaded with him to spare the area.  He changed the battle plans following her plea.

I don't know if the weather cleared around Bastogne because of the prayer that Colonel O'Neill wrote for General Patton, a prayer distributed on 250,000 cards to all the troops in Third Army.  I don't know if General Kesselring spared Alatri because Sister Maria Rafaela asked him to.  I am struck by the observation that Sister Maria Rafaela was a nun tending to the wounded in an Axis country while Father O'Neill was commissioned in an Allied Army killing Axis "those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel," according to its colorful commander.  If this had been a story, rather than a ramble, the point would have been clear.  Instead, I'm left with muddled thoughts about religion during wartime and the roles that those who have taken holy orders might play.