‘Four Chaplains’ is World War II story for the ages

One of the most emotional stories from World War II involved the dramatic rescue work by the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Escanaba to save 122 people from the Dorchester, a U.S. Army transport ship, that was torpedoed on Feb. 3, 1943.

The Dorchester suffered a direct hit from Germany’s U-233 and sank in the icy waters of the Labrador Sea between Newfoundland and Greenland. The two vessels – the Escanaba and the Dorchester – were part of the same convoy that was bound from Newfoundland to Greenland.

 

These ships and their crews remain inextricably linked in military history, according to author James H. Clifford, a retired Army command sergeant major who has written extensively about “The Four Chaplains of the Dorchester.”

Clifford said that two of the “main characters” were Protestant ministers, another was a Roman Catholic priest and the fourth was a Jewish rabbi.

Their heroic actions when the Dorchester was going down were legendary professions of their faith, Clifford wrote.

 

Survivors said the four chaplains “remained calm during the panic following the attack, first distributing life preservers and assisting others to abandon ship, then giving up their own life preservers and coming together to lock arms and pray in unison as the ship disappeared beneath the surface.”

Each chaplain “was drawn by the tragedy at Pearl Harbor in 1941 to the armed forces,” Clifford said. “Each wanted more than anything else to serve God by ministering to men on the battlefield, in this case the airfields and installations of Greenland.”

“Each, when the moment came, did not hesitate to put others before self, courageously offering a tenuous chance of survival with the full knowledge of the consequences,” Clifford wrote.

The eldest of the four chaplains who went down with the ship was George Lansing Fox, 42, of Lewistown, Pa. As a teenager, he served as a medic in World War I. Afterward, Fox entered Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1923 and became an itinerant Methodist minister. He trained at Camp Davis Army Air Field at Holly Ridge in Onslow County, N.C.

John Patrick Washington, 34, of Newark, N.J., was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1935.

Clark Vandersall Poling, 32, of Columbus, Ohio, became a minister in the Reformed Church in America, the seventh generation from his family to enter the ministry.  

Alexander David Goode, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y., followed in his father’s footsteps to become a Jewish rabbi in 1937. He served briefly at Seymour Johnson Field in Goldsboro, N.C., which was headquarters of the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command in 1942. (Rabbi Goode is shown below.)

 

All of the chaplains aboard the Dorchester held the rank of Army lieutenant. From left: Clark Poling, George Fox and John Washington.

Once a cruise ship, the Dorchester was stripped down to become “as austere and dank as any of the tubs ferrying troops to and from the war zone across the North Atlantic Ocean,” Clifford said.

On Jan. 29, 1943, the Dorchester departed St. John’s, Newfoundland, for its fifth North Atlantic voyage. Its 904 passengers included soldiers and civilians bound for airbases in Greenland.

The convoy was aware of U-boat activity in the area. Merchant Marine Capt. Hans Danielsen, who skippered the Dorchester, announced: “Now here this: Every soldier is ordered to sleep in his clothes (including boots and gloves) and life jacket. We have a (U-boat) following us.”

“Three of the chaplains made the rounds of the ship in an attempt to raise men’s spirits. Meanwhile, Father Washington said mass in the mess area that was attended by men of many faiths,” Clifford wrote.

In the aftermath of the disaster, Congress designated Feb. 3 as “Four Chaplains Day.” It deserves recognition and observation.