Prayer of the French paratrooper: a kind of commentary on this part of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Saint of the Day, Saturday, September 29, 1973

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

 

The Prayer of the Paratrooper is a text written by André Zirnheld in 1938. During World War II, he joined the Free French Forces paratroopers and became a member of the Special Air Service. He was the first French paratrooper officer killed in action. When he died in 1942 during a commando operation in Africa, his comrades discovered this text among his personal belongings, and it became known as the paratrooper’s prayer. The text was adopted by the French army’s paratroopers, as well as by Portuguese paratroopers. It has also been set to music and is regularly sung at paratrooper gatherings.

I have here a request to comment on the prayer found in the pocket of a French soldier. It is a paratrooper’s prayer, and it is very moving:

“My God, my God, give me torment,

Give me suffering,

Give me the ardor of battle.

My God, my God, give me torment,

Give me suffering,

And then glory in battle, and then glory in battle.

My God, my God, give me torment,

Give me suffering,

Give me the ardor of battle.

My God, my God, give me torment,

Give me suffering,

And then glory in battle, and then glory in battle

What others do not want,

What is refused to you,

Give me all that, yes, all that.

I want neither rest nor even health

All that, my God, is enough to ask of you.

But give me, but give me,

But give me faith

Give me strength and courage,

But give me faith, give me strength and courage,

But give me faith

So that I may be sure of myself!

Give me torment,

Give me suffering,

Give me the zeal to fight.

My God, my God, give me turmoil,

Give me suffering,

And then glory in battle, and then glory in battle.“

I think it is rare that such a beautiful prayer has ever been uttered. It is a kind of commentary on this part of the Lord’s Prayer:” Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

You are familiar with the mission of the paratrooper. It involves jumping out of an airplane over enemy positions, or behind enemy positions, in hostile territory, and facing all kinds of risks. Paratroopers can be strafed during their descent, they can be taken by surprise when they hit the ground, they can be pursued as they flee, they can be spotted by the police, they can be arrested, and they can be killed. In modern warfare, there is no mission more risky than that of the paratrooper.

In these conditions, the paratrooper is what the cavalry soldier once was, occupying the front line, bearing the brunt of the enemy’s initial impact, and therefore running the greatest risks.

The paratrooper’s mission also has this in common with the cavalry: it requires individual courage. Unlike in the infantry and other branches of the military, it is not a matter of advancing almost anonymously among others who are advancing, somewhat diluted in the crowd, somewhat supported by the crowd, somewhat hoping that the shot will hit the comrade on the right or left, but not him.

The cavalryman advanced, but because of the nature of the combat, he could advance in rank and it was as if he were alone. The same is true for the paratrooper. His courage is an individual, singular courage, a personal courage, so that in some respects at least—I am not saying in all respects—just as cavalry was once the noble branch of the military, today the noble branch should be parachuting.

I know of no mode of combat more appropriate for a nobleman’s son than parachuting. This is precisely why Dom Bertrand d’Orléans e Bragança took up parachuting, for it seems to me that nothing is more beautiful than a prince descending with all the weight of tradition. This is fitting for someone born of the same branch as Dom Sebastião of Portugal, who sacrificed himself at Alcácer-Quibir, etc., etc.

This prayer of the parachutist is that of a soldier who fought Nazism. But also of others who fought at Dien Bien Phu (1954), in Indochina, against the communists in Vietnam. So he fought in a war that was an anti-Nazi crusade, he fought for the love of God. He may have had secular patriotic ideas, he may have considered the good of France, he may have considered what is abhorrent about Nazism from a natural point of view. But his views were elevated, we see that it was a patriotism accepted by him for the love of God, and that he was a paratrooper for the love of God.

What, then, does it mean to be a paratrooper for the love of God? It means that the reasons that drove him to fight against totalitarianism on behalf of France were moral reasons, and like all moral reasons, they are only coherent when they have a religious foundation. And we Catholics know that no religious reason is consistent unless it is Catholic. We therefore come to the conclusion that the paratrooper was fighting in a Catholic spirit. In other words, his fight was that of a martyr, a crusader. He was fighting, and by dying, he could go to Heaven as a martyr.

Now he makes a moving request. He says this:

My God, how much others ask of you; everyone asks you for health, everyone asks you for money, everyone asks you for glory, asks you for success, asks you for entertainment, and you, in your goodness, give them, give them, give them… And from the immense treasure of Your goodness, one could almost say—there is a bit of French irony in the wording of the prayer, because in fact God’s goodness is inexhaustible—one could almost say that You have nothing left to give. What remains in Your treasures are the gifts that others have not asked for.

What are these gifts?

It is risk, it is insecurity, it is struggle, it is illness, it is death, it is everything that no one asks of You, for rare are those who ask You for these things, they are extremely rare. Yet Your mercy demands that men ask for the gifts that everyone flees. Men ask You for pleasures, men ask You for joys, men do not ask You for Your Cross, and Your Cross is the greatest of Your gifts; the gift You gave to Your Mother, the gift You gave to Your Apostles. The gift you gave to all those who distinguished themselves by their love for you is your Cross. I, para, come to ask You for Your Cross. That is to say, suffering in all its forms: not having a career, remaining anonymous, not having good health, being sick, not having money, being poor, not having glory, being an obscure man, not having a long life, dying suddenly in a short life. I ask You, my God, for all these things.

This is the prayer of the parachutist when he jumps, and he then accepts this death into which he throws himself for the love of God.

Do you see the splendor that lies behind this? Other men do not ask God that His will be done, but ask God that their will be done. This man asks God that His will be done and that if God wants to dispose him to some painful end, or to a life full of suffering, that God’s will be done, he asks.

These are the truly noble souls, these are the true heroes! It is not, therefore, the hero who goes forward with the will to return covered in glory, but it is the hero who goes forward with the will to serve God. This is the perfect description of the perfect soul, placed on the paths of life and death.

We do not have—at least when conditions in Brazil are normal and calm, when peace seems assured in the world—we do not have the opportunity to risk our lives for our country. However, we have something more difficult to give and—I insist—it is rather to accept a legal and doctrinal struggle against the whole of contemporary society, in which we accept being set aside. We accept not having a career, not having sympathies, we accept being looked down upon even by our loved ones, we accept walking down the street and leaving a trail of antipathy behind us, we accept being so different from others that they avoid mixing with us.

Count Louis Marie de Narbonne Lara (1755-1813)

During the reign of Louis XV, long before the French Revolution, there was a nobleman in France named Count de Narbonne Lara. Lara was a Spanish branch of his family. This man was extremely strong, vigorous, athletic, extraordinarily muscular, and very intelligent. He had perfected his manners to such an extent that he was very elegant, very refined, very distinguished, and had a way with words that amazed everyone. He was therefore a very gifted man, both physically and spiritually.

The French Revolution broke out and this man fought against the Revolution, then went into exile. Napoleon then came to power in France and he returned. And he made the gesture, in my opinion reprehensible, of enlisting in Napoleon’s army, at that time he was already a man of fifty, when physical vigor frankly begins to decline.

He was such a skilled man that Napoleon took him on as his aide-de-camp, and from then on he took part in all of Napoleon’s major campaigns, including the Russian campaign, during which, as you know, Napoleon advanced through the winter to Moscow, burned the city, and then had to retreat in freezing cold, with his troops suffering simply indescribable hardships. Throughout this time, this count, then over fifty years old, endured physical hardships that caused young soldiers in their twenties and twenty-fives to sit on their weapons and cry from cold, hunger, and fear, and these were Napoleon’s famous soldiers…

Throughout this period, the Count of Narbonne remained as energetic and combative as the youngest of them. What’s more, he always had a cheerful word, a kind word, a phrase that encouraged everyone, a happy, satisfied presence, even though he had every right to complain, for he had shown Napoleon so clearly that the Russian campaign was madness that Napoleon had punished him. But after seeing that Napoleon was in decline, he felt that it was no longer a question of complaining, but rather of holding on, and so he returned to Paris, after immense marches on foot, hunger, everything you can imagine!

His biographer wrote that he had accomplished a special mission in France: Napoleon’s soldiers had all received very rudimentary training and were almost uneducated, his generals were improvised generals on the battlefield, they were courageous men, but without intelligence or culture. And, says this historian, the French spirit is entirely made up of an alliance between intelligence and courage, so that France will cease to exist on the day when men of courage are no longer intelligent, or when men of intelligence no longer have courage. So, at a time when these gifts were dissociated, when courageous men lacked intelligence and intelligent men no longer had courage, he brought these gifts together so that France could continue to exist, and it was through the splendor of his person that France continued to exist.

That is no small thing; it is a magnificent biography, and you can see that he was a man who knew how to fight. The biographer recounts everything he experienced, but then quotes an excerpt from the Count of Narbonne, who said: “The sufferings of civilian life, endured by an honest man, are much harder than those I endured during the retreat from Russia or on all of Napoleon’s battlefields.” This is my old thesis that our resistance is much more meritorious than that of the soldiers of Lepanto. It is a hero of Napoleon’s armies who affirms this…

Someone might say, “Napoleon was a Freemason.” The fact remains that when it came to getting through the winter, with or without Freemasonry, winter makes you shiver, hunger makes you suffer, and the risk of being shot is much worse for a man who is a Freemason and knows where he is going next than for a man with a clear conscience like this paratrooper. Granted, he lamented that he had suffered much more in civilian life than in military life.

So you can offer Our Lady the sacrifices of a pure civilian life, without pretension, without ambition, and entirely devoted to Her Cause. I repeat: pure, without pretension, and entirely devoted to the cause of Our Lady. That is what you must offer.

I think this prayer could be reproduced in the “Circular Boletim” for everyone, with a footnote indicating that the terms of this prayer can be perfectly transposed to the duties and responsibilities of civilian life, which is that of the members and/or cooperators of the TFP.

(*) Translation by AI. Unedited.