FOUR CHAPLAINS

Most of the nine hundred troops aboard the Dorchester slept as she plowed through icy waters off Greenland early in the morning, February 3, 1943 when suddenly a German torpedo smashed into her flank.  Coming out of their bunks, the troops pounded up the ladders and milled in confusion on deck.  The coolest men on board were four Army Chaplains: Clark Poling, Alexander Goode, John Washington, and George Fox.  They calmly led the men to boxes of life jackets, passing them out with boat-drill precision.  When the boxes were empty, the four chaplains slipped off their own precious life preservers, put them on four young GIs, and told them to jump.

The Dorchester went down in just twenty-five minutes.  Some six hundred men were lost, but the chaplains helped save over two hundred lives.  The last anyone saw of them they were standing on the slanting deck their arms linked in prayer to the one God they all served.

First Lieutenant Clark Poling (Reformed Church of America) was the youngest of the four, and a seventh generation minister of the Gospel.  Just before he sailed on the Dorchester he told his father, "I don't want you to pray for my safe return….  Many will not return and to ask God for special favors wouldn't be fair.  Just pray I shall do my duty… never be a coward… have strength and courage and understanding of men... that I shall be patient… and be adequate."

Alexander Goode (Jewish) had been too young for World War I.  He became a Rabbi, married, and had four children.  Even with a synagogue, he felt he needed to know better how to heal men's souls and bodies.  He earned a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University to that end.  His wife got a telegram from him just weeks before the Dorchester went down.  "Having a wonderful experience," it read.  She knew he had found companionship with the men aboard ship.

John P. Washington (Catholic) had not lived an easy life, being the child of poor immigrant folks.  But he loved music, loved to fight, and loved to laugh, all of which he did even after his ordination as a priest.  The story has it that when the Dorchester went down he was still laughing, singing, and praying to comfort those who could not reach a lifeboat.

And then there was the oldest of the four, George Fox (Methodist.) In 1917 he had lied about his age to enlist in the Marines as a medical corps assistant in World War I.  He rescued a wounded soldier from a battlefield filled with poison gas, even though he had no mask himself.  He later studied for the ministry and when World War II came he told his wife, "I've got to go.  I know from experience what our boys are about to face.  They need me."

Those four men met on the Dorchester's sinking deck in a rendezvous with death.  But it was also a meeting with God.  They had been called from their churches, parish, and synagogue and brought together on that icy February morning to bring comfort to those they could reach. 

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania there stands a Chapel whose Sunday services are open to people of all races and religious faiths.  The building also stands as a memorial to the Four Chaplains.  Chiseled in the Chapels stone is this dedication:

Chapel of Four Chaplains

An Interfaith Shrine 

  Here is Sanctuary for Brotherhood

Let it never be violated