Head bowed, Patton prays while Sgt. Robert Mims waits outside with his open-air jeep. When the general is ready, they will set out for yet another day on the road. When Patton finally leaves the chapel and the castle-like headquarters at the Fondation Pescatore, he and Mims will prowl the roads of the Ardennes Forest. Without planes to offer overhead reconnaissance, Patton must see the battle lines for himself.

But these travels also serve another purpose. Patton seeks out his troops wherever he can, encouraging them as they march in long columns of tanks and men up the snowy farm roads. More than 133,000 tanks and trucks travel around the clock toward Bastogne. The infantry wear long greatcoats, many still spattered with the mud of Metz. The tank commanders ride with their chests and shoulders poked out of the top hatch, faces swaddled in thick wool scarves. Heavy snow blankets the roads, forests, and farmlands and also covers their vehicles, muting the rumble of engines and giving the Third Army’s advance a ghostly feel. But it can also be deadly: unable to distinguish which snow-covered tanks are American Shermans and which are German Panzers, some U.S. P-47 Thunderbolt pilots have made the cruel mistake of bombing their own.

Patton’s jeep has also been strafed, though by German fighter planes. He is a relentless presence in his open-air vehicle, red-faced and blue-lipped as Sergeant Mims fearlessly weaves the vehicle through the long column of tanks and trucks. “I spent five or six hours almost every day in an open car,” he will later write in his journal about his zeal to be in the thick of the action. “I never had a cold, and my face, though sometimes slightly blistered, did not hurt me much—nor did I wear heavy clothes. I did, however, have a blanket around my legs, which was exceedingly valuable in keeping me from freezing.”

Just yesterday, a column of the Fourth Armored Division that was advancing on Bastogne were shocked to see Patton get out of his jeep and help them push a vehicle out of a snowdrift. The men of the Third Army are bolstered by Patton’s constant presence. They speak of him warmly, with nicknames such as the Old Man and Georgie. His willingness to put himself in harm’s way and endure the freezing conditions has many American soldiers now believing the general would never ask them to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

Back in America, the Battle of the Bulge has shocked the public. The siege of Bastogne is becoming a symbol of bravery and holding out against impossible odds. All across the country, people are taking time during this Christmas season to do just what Patton is doing right now: get on their knees to pray. They ask God to deliver the “Battered Bastards of Bastogne,” as the newspapers are calling the men of the 101st.

Yet Patton’s prayer is unique. He is asking not only for deliverance, but for power. Few men are ever given the chance to change the course of history so completely. If the men inside Bastogne are to be rescued, it will be because of the daring of George S. Patton—as he himself well knows.

But to succeed he will need a little help from above.

*   *   *

The last words of Patton’s prayer are for the ages.

“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 the 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 just got to make up Your mind whose side You are 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 to do the impossible. I do not even insist upon a miracle, for all I request is four days of clear weather.

“Give me four days so that my planes can fly, 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, 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. I am sick of this unnecessary butchering 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.”

10

ADLERHORST

ZIEGENBERG, GERMANY

DECEMBER 24, 1944

1:00 P.M.

The man with one hundred and twenty-seven days to live can barely see.

The sun shines brightly on Adolf Hitler’s pale, exhausted face as he stares up at more than one thousand Allied bombers that have come to destroy the Fatherland on Christmas Eve. The Führer stands one hundred and sixty-five miles east of where Patton knelt to pray. Hitler is ensconced in a drab bunker complex known as the Adlerhorst, and the drone of the bombers has pulled him out of the dining room of Haus 1. As his lunch grows cold, Hitler surveys the danger above him.

“Mein Führer,” gasps Christa Schroeder, the striking thirty-six-year-old brunette who has long served as his personal secretary. “We have lost the war, haven’t we?”

Hitler assures her that this is not the case. So even as the B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberator bombers continue their deadly journey into the German heartland, Hitler saunters back inside to eat, passing a well-decorated Christmas tree that will soon be lit by candlelight.

The Führer’s physical condition continues to deteriorate. His unstable gait is that of a senile old man. Lunch is his usual fare of vegetables and fruit—asparagus and peppers are personal favorites—served with salad and rice. A dozen female food tasters have already sampled the fare to ensure that Hitler is not being poisoned. Now, he once again sits down to eat alongside his mistress, the voluptuous Eva Braun. Hitler inhales his food, even though he is barely strong enough to hold the fork in his right hand, which has grown so weak that he no longer signs most official documents, leaving his staff to forge his signature.

Hitler’s left hand is even worse. He cannot stop its palsied shakes, and so it now rests in his lap. The Führer eats maniacally, even leaning his head over the plate to shovel the vegetables in faster. He runs his right index finger along his short black mustache and absentmindedly chews his nails between bites. The Führer’s table manners, in the words of one witness, “are little short of shocking.”

Yet Hitler is a man who has caused the death of millions, and he is now in a very unpredictable mood. This would not be a good day to correct his etiquette.

The Führer has been holed up in the Adlerhorst since before Operation Watch on the Rhine began, and now directs the battle from this secret fortress. The elaborate collection of seven houses is actually a cleverly concealed military command post. Nestled in the crags of the Taunus Mountains, the Adlerhorst was built in the shadow of the medieval castle Kransberg, which shields the Eagle’s eyrie from prying eyes. Each building appears to be an innocent German cottage, with wood exteriors and interior furnishings of deer antlers and paintings depicting hunting scenes.

But the walls are actually reinforced concrete, three feet thick. Antiaircraft guns are hidden in the surrounding forest, where Hitler takes his daily morning stroll with Blondi, his German shepherd. It is to Adlerhorst that Hitler brought his top generals on December 11 to lay out his counterattack strategy, and it is from the concealment of the underground situation room in Haus 2 that an elated Hitler celebrated the operation’s opening success on December 16. He was so overjoyed that he couldn’t sleep—a condition no doubt exacerbated by the injections of glucose, iron, and vitamin B he receives from Dr. Morell, his corpulent personal physician.1