Four Immortal Chaplains

Shortly before 1 A.M. on February 2, 1943, the American transport ship Dorchester was steaming through the icy North Atlantic from Newfoundland toward an American base in Greenland, carrying 902 servicemen, merchant seamen, and civilian workers, when a German torpedo struck the starboard side, amid ship, far below the waterline. The blast killed scores of men, and many more were seriously wounded. Others, stunned by the explosion, groped in the darkness.

Through the pandemonium, according to eyewitnesses, four Army chaplains brought hope in despair and light in the darkness to the men who struggled to find their way out. Those army chaplains were Lt. George L. Fox, Methodist; Lt. Alexander D. Goode, Jewish; Lt. John P. Washington, Roman Catholic; and Lt. Clark V. Poling, Dutch Reformed. Above the din, the four chaplains could be heard urging the frightened to be brave, praying for the dying, and guiding the disoriented toward the lifeboats.

Men jumped from the ship into lifeboats, overcrowding them to the point of capsizing. Other rafts, tossed into the Atlantic, drifted away before soldiers could get in them. As most of the men reached topside, the chaplains opened a storage locker and began distributing life jackets. When there were no more lifejackets available, the chaplains astonished onlookers, taking off theirs and giving them to four frightened young men.

“It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven,” said John Ladd, one of the survivors.

Then in the darkness, the four chaplains linked arms, grasped the railing of the ship together as it began to slip into the ocean, and began singing and shouting biblical encouragement in English, Hebrew, and Latin to the men in the sea. William Bednar, floating among his dead comrades, later said, “Their voices were the only thing that kept me going.”

Of the men aboard the Dorchester, 672 died, including the chaplains. Their sacrificial action constitutes one of the purest spiritual and ethical acts a person can make. In their devotion to their troops, these men of God captured the best of what a military chaplain strives to be. Their heroic conduct set a vision of greatness that stunned America as did the magnitude of the tragedy.

Taken from The American Patriot’s Bible