George Metcalf
Wrote prayer for Allies
George Metcalf, 88, a chaplain who helped write a prayer to stop the rain so that Allied warplanes could bomb German forces during the Battle of the Bulge, died Thursday in St. Paul, Minn.
In December 1944, Gen. George Patton ordered Mr. Metcalf, then supervisor of chaplains in Patton's Third Army, to come up with a prayer asking God to part the clouds protecting the German army in the Ardennes Forest in Luxembourg and Belgium.
Mr. Metcalf sought the advice of the Third Army's head chaplain, James O'Neill. They took elements from Anglican and Catholic weather prayers and combined them into a prayer that satisfied General Patton.
The weather broke just before Christmas, Allied air forces pounded the Nazi troops, and by mid-January the Allies had crushed one of Germany's last major counterattacks of World War II.
Leonard S. Solk, 76, a columnist and editorial writer for The New York Times and Business Week, died Friday of liver cancer in New York. Mr. Silk wrote his last Economic Scene column for the Times just over two years ago.