10 Historic Accounts of Battlefield Angels

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

Although some may doubt, or even scoff, at the stories others tell concerning divine intervention in human affairs, such stories persist. Especially in times of crisis, when the outcome of events are significant, many contend, God sends his emissaries, often in the role of heavenly warriors, to reinforce the soldiers on one side or the other of a conflict. According to such writers, God intervened during a battle for the Roman Empire, to deliver a city in Gaul from would-be invaders, and to dissuade Attila the Hun from attacking Rome. God, they claim, also acted on the behalf of the future French king, Charles VII and twice came to the aid of popes. During World War I, God took a direct interest, some insist, in battles in which one force was greatly outnumbered by its opponent, but also acted on behalf of children and missionaries in an isolated African school threatened by rebels. A couple of the battlefields on which angels have tread, some say, are not part of a war between nations, but the areas that have come under the attack of forces in the global war on terror. These are 10 historic accounts of battlefield angels.

10 Milvian Bridge, Italy

When Diocletian abdicated as the emperor of the Roman Empire in 305, Galerius succeeded him. Galarius placed Flarius Valerius Constantinus (later, Emperor Constantine) in charge of the Roman territories of Britain and Gaul (that part of Europe that presently includes France, Luxembourg, Belgium, much of Switzerland, Northern Italy, and parts of the Netherlands). However, Galerius' brother-in-law, Maxentius, warred against Galerius, seizing Italy and Rome. In 312, a year after Galerius died, Constantine, invading Italy, marched on Rome. Until now, Constantine had worshiped the sun god Sol Invictus. However, before fighting Maxentius, Constantine and his men saw a fiery crossin the sky, next to the Greek words In hoc signo vinces(“In this sign conquer”). That night, he dreamed Christ commanded him to fight under the sign of the cross, and he had his soldiers display the sign on their shields. The next day, victorious over Maxentius, he converted to Christianity, forbidding the persecution of Christians and giving Romans the right to worship whichever god they chose. 

9 Embrun, Gaul

St. Marcellinus

Having invaded Gaul, the Goths marched on Embrun in 433. Its archbishop, St. Albin, appealed to St. Marcellinus, a late priest who'd been martyred during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian. St. Albin asked him to protect the city. Despite his prayer, the Goths laid “siege to the city.” In time, the attackers reached the Embrun's “immediate fortifications.” As the battle raged, St. Marcellinus appeared “in a vision,” leading an army of angels. The heavenly host “threw the assailants from the walls and turned the Goths' weapons against them,” saving the city. Many of the enemy were slain. The rest, unnerved, fled for their lives.

8 Mincio River, Northern Italy

In 452, Pope Leo I rode out to meet Attila the Hun near the Mincio River. Attila had gathered his men, who'd been “scattered in Gaul during the Battle of Chalons, and was marching on Rome. According to Prosper, “a Christian chronicler,” the pontiff so “impressed” the barbarian warrior that Attila returned across the Danube, rather than attacking Rome. A second, anonymous account maintains Attila's retreat resulted from the presence of the apostles Peter and Paul, standing beside Leo, armed with swords. The apostolic angels threatened to slay Attila unless he followed the pope's command. The presence of the apostolic angels, not Leo, this source claims, led Attila to promise “peace” and depart “beyond the Danube.”

7 Orleans, France

In 1425, at age 13, Joan of Arc, an illiterate medieval French peasant, began hearing the voices of St. Michael the archangel and two saints, Margaret and Catherine of Alexandria. They informed her God had chosen her to lead the army of crown prince Charles of Valois against the English invaders and their French allies, the Burgundians, to reunify France under Charles' rule. Proving herself divinely appointed by sharing a message from God during “a private audience” with Charles, Joan convinced him to give her charge of his army, and she won the Battle of Orleans, which was under siege. The prince was crowned as King Charles VII. Afterward, captured by the enemy, Joan was tried as a witch and burned at the stake in 1431. She was 19 years old. In 1920, she was canonized.

6 Lepanto, Greece

As the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire waged a jihad, or holy war, to bring Europe under its submission, Pope Pius V gathered an armada, the Holy League, to battle the Turks' fleet of battleships; wrest back control of the Mediterranean; and isolate the African territories of Selim II, Sultan of the Turks, from his European and Asian lands. Both the pope and Don John of Austria, the commander of the ships of the Holy League, prepared themselves and their men spiritually, with prayers, fasting, the prohibition of women aboard ships, and the imposition of the death sentence for blasphemy. At a critical moment in the momentous maritime engagement, which occurred in the present-day Gulf of Corinth off Greece's coast, the wind shifted, favoring the Holy League's fleet. A hundred and thirteen 113 Turkish galleys were sunk, and 117 were captured, as opposed to the 12 galleys of the Holy League that were sunk and the single one that was captured. Some present during “The Battle That Saved the Christian West” insist they'd had supernatural assistance, a claim memorialized in Veronese's painting, The Battle of Lepanto, which, depicting the Virgin Mary, Saint Peter, Saint Mark, and a host of heavenly angels assembled in the clouds above the battle, represents “the victory of Lepanto as Divine Intervention.

5 Mons, Belgium

During the World War I Battle of Mons, Belgium, Germans forced the British to retreat. However, in the process, British riflemen, “firing 15 rounds per minute,” mowed down many in the advancing “20-acre formation” and later turned them back at the River Marne. According to many British soldiers, they were able to withstand the Germans because angelic archers had appeared in the clouds, raining down arrows on enemy troops.

4 Bethune, France

According to Gwynn Day's 1957 book, The Wonder of the World, angels riding white horses approached German troops near Bethune, France, as the soldiers marched toward Paris. German soldiers maintained that, although the heavenly cavalry were attacked by a massive barrage of artillery and intense machine gun fire, they continued to advance “at a slow trot,” unharmed. The presence of the calm, persistent riders, led by a splendid figure, holding a “great sword” like those wielded by Crusaders, unnerved the Germans, and they retreated in panic.

3 Jeunesse Rebellion in the Belgian Congo

Corrie ten Boom

In his 1973 book, The Secret Life of Angels, Ron Rhodes includes Christian author Corrie ten Boom's account of a divine intervention during the 1918 Jeunesse Rebellion in the Belgian Congo. As rebels advanced on a missionary school that was home to 200 children, whom they intended to kill, they suddenly retreated in panic. The next day, and the next, the same incident occurred. The rebels' behavior was a mystery. The school, which was surrounded only by a fence and guarded by a few soldiers, should have been an easy target. A captured rebel explained the insurgents' odd conduct. He and his fellow fighters had been frightened away by the sight of “hundreds of soldiers” wearing “white uniforms.” Recalling that African soldiers did not wear uniforms, Boom believed rebels had seen a host of angelic warriors sent by God to protect the schoolchildren and their teachers.

2 Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1995

Some accounts of angelic intervention concern the appearances of messengers of God on battlefields of America's war on terrorism. Such is the case with the mysterious trumpeter who appeared beyond a police barricade in front of the Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, following its destruction, in 1995, as the result of a terrorist attack conducted by Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier. A photographer attempted to photograph the musician, only to find, no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't get the camera's shutter to work. Other photographers on the scene had no more success than he. One of them suggested the trumpeter might be an angel. Mark Judelson, the executive director of the Arts Council of Rockland, New York, agreed. The trumpeter, he believed, “was the angel Gabriel.” 

1 Flight 93 Crash Site, Shanksville, Pennsylvania

Lillie Leonardi

Former FBI agent Lillie Leonardi reached Flight 93's Pennsylvania crash site three hours after its passengers prevented the terrorists who'd hijacked the airplane from crashing it into the White House. Leonardi, who acted as the “liaison between law enforcement and the families of the passengers and crew members killed in the United Airlines” airplane crash, recounts her experience in her book In the Shadow of a Badge: A Spiritual Memoir. Although traumatized by the experience (she “retired from the FBI due to post-traumatic stress disorder linked to her role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks”), Leonardi said the event changed her life. At the scene, she observed “shimmery lights,” through a “mist,” and realized she was seeing angels. She wrote her book “to tell the story of the angels . . . so that other people understand that God was there.”