Four Chaplains

Early one February morning in 1943, the U.S. troop transport Dorchester was wallowing through icy seas off Greenland. Most of the 900 troops on board were asleep in their bunks. Suddenly a torpedo smashed into the Dorchester's thin flank. Frantically pounding up the ladders, the troops milled in confusion on the unfamiliar decks.

In those dark moments of panic, the coolest men aboard were four U.S. Army chaplains--1st Lieuts. Clark V. Poling (Reformed Church in America), Alexander D. Goode (Jewish), John P. Washington (Catholic), George L. Fox (Methodist). The four chaplains led the men to boxes of life jackets, passed them out to the soldiers with boat-drill precision. When the boxes were empty, the four chaplains quietly slipped off their own precious life preservers, put them on four young G.I.s and told them to jump.

The Dorchester went down 25 minutes later in a rumble of steam; some 600 men were lost, but the heroic chaplains had helped save over 200. The last anyone saw of them, they were standing on the slanting deck, their arms linked, in prayer.

Last week President Truman went up to Philadelphia to speak at the opening of a $300,000, all-faiths chapel dedicated to their memory. The President was escorted by Dr. Daniel A. Poling, chaplain of the chapel and father of one of the heroic four.* His voice echoing through the limestone archways, Harry Truman spoke with unconcealed emotion:

"Those four chaplains obeyed the Divine Commandment that men should love one another . . . This is an old faith in our country. It is shared by all our churches and all our denominations . . . The unity of our country comes from this fact . . ."

*No Catholic representative was present, explained Msgr. Thomas McCarthy of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and there could be no official Catholic altar because canon law forbids joint worship.

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