VETERANS PRESS: The story of the Four Chaplains
Reverend George L. Fox (Methodist), Rabbi Alexander D. Goode (Jewish), Father John P. Washington (Roman Catholic), and Reverend Clark V. Poling (Dutch Reformed) — four chaplains aboard the U.S. Army Transport Dorchester when it was torpedoed by a German submarine in the North Atlantic on February 3, 1943. As the ship sank, these chaplains helped others to safety, distributing their own life jackets to soldiers in need, before ultimately perishing together as they prayed and sang hymns.
Courtesy of AMERICAN LEGION POST 154
The Atlantic was a black mouth that night — open, cold and waiting. The transport ship pitched through winter seas, its decks slick with ice and its holds crowded with young men who smelled of wool, oil and the nervous hope that comes from pretending not to be afraid. Some had tucked letters into their boots. Others carried small photographs — sweethearts smiling from summer lawns, mothers standing beside front doors, fathers with their hands folded tight. War had gathered them from farms and cities and laid them shoulder to shoulder; strangers bound by the same crossing.
Below decks, the chaplains moved quietly among them. There was a rabbi with gentle eyes, Alexander D. Goode, who remembered every name he learned. John P. Washington, a Catholic priest whose hands were never still, always finding a shoulder to squeeze or a rosary to press into trembling fingers. Two Protestant ministers — one soft-spoken and thoughtful, George L. Fox a Methodist minister, and the last was Clark V. Poling of the Reformed Church, quick to laugh, quick to listen — who knew that sometimes courage began with being heard.
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