The Men Who Chose to Remain

Sleep in war is always a difficult proposition. On February 3, 1943, in the North Atlantic, the difficulty was compounded by the crowded conditions aboard the USAT Dorchester. The old converted coastal passenger liner carried roughly 900 American servicemen and others toward Greenland, their destination 150 miles away.

Below deck, servicemen lay in bunks in their clothes. Others didn’t even try to sleep as the clock struck midnight, passing the time playing cards or shooting dice. Seasickness had followed some across the rough winter seas. Four Army chaplains moved among the men, talking with them, calming nerves, passing out crackers to settle uneasy stomachs, and being present with them in whatever condition they were in.

Anxiety, suppressed through chatter and jokes, was heightened because a Coast Guard escort of the Dorchester had detected the presence of a German submarine. An active search for the sub was underway. Somewhere beneath the black surface of the North Atlantic, a silent killer was hunting them.

Chaplains George Fox, Alexander Goode, John Washington, and Clark Poling had come together only months after training and assignments brought them to Camp Myles Standish in Massachusetts. The men came from different generations, different parts of the country, and different faiths and traditions. Yet all found room to reside within the American promise, and within that residence a duty to defend that promise.

Fox was a Methodist. Goode’s Jewish faith accompanied him as he crossed the Atlantic toward a Europe in which Jews were being systematically persecuted and murdered. Washington was a Catholic priest. Poling belonged to the Reformed tradition and followed his own calling into ministry.

Four traditions. Four Americans. One ship.

Then, at 12:55 a.m., all hell broke loose. The silence of the early morning was shattered by a torpedo that struck the starboard side of the ship below the waterline, exploding into the engine and boiler spaces. In one devastating blast, it tore a gash in the side of the vessel. Steam pipes split. Bunks collapsed upon one another, trapping men beneath them. Soldiers were thrown from their beds as the deck lurched beneath them. The electrical system failed, and the crowded passageways went black with steam and ammonia gas escaping into the darkness.

Within a minute, the Dorchester had listed sharply to starboard. Men groped in the darkness for clothes and life vests while seeking exits that were often blocked by wreckage. Many were overcome by fumes before reaching the ship’s deck. Cries for help, calls for direction, voices providing guidance, and words offering comfort sounded through the ship as the cold North Atlantic waters rushed in.

Many of those who escaped the wreckage below made it to the deck, only to feel the cold air and chaos of abandoning ship assault them. Chaplains Fox, Goode, Washington, and Poling calmed frightened men, tended the wounded, and directed others toward safety. The Chaplains opened a storage locker and distributed life vests.

The lifeboats were filling and moving away from the ship. Fox, Goode, Washington, and Poling remained aboard. When the life jackets were exhausted, each chaplain removed his own and gave it to another man.

The chaplains remained on deck. They comforted. They led men in prayer.

Survivors, pulling away from the Dorchester in the last lifeboats to depart, recalled looking back and witnessing the four chaplains standing together, arms linked on the slanting deck, raising their voices in prayer.

That was the last anyone saw of the Dorchester chaplains. Four bodies silhouetted in fire against the dark, unforgiving Atlantic waters, facing certain death but refusing to yield in their duty – their duty to God, and to their fellow man.

America was not founded on a common bloodline, tribal loyalty, or ancient religious grievance. It was formed upon a proposition – that “all men are created equal.” This self-evident truth locates the value of a person somewhere government cannot reach.

Our rights do not originate in the state. They are not gifts temporarily extended by those holding political power. They belong to us because we first belong to our Creator. Government exists not to manufacture those rights, but to recognize and secure them.

And this understanding creates something remarkable.

It creates room for the Methodist and the Jew, the Catholic and the Reformed minister. Room for disagreement without demanding separation. Room to speak and room to worship. Room to reconsider. Room to fail and room to learn from failure. Room to search for truth without fear of persecution.

Room for Fox, and Goode, and Washington, and Poling to reside.

Only 230 of those aboard would be rescued alive. The four chaplains were not among them. They chose not to abandon their men, the souls sworn to their protection. They chose to die in their faith just as they had lived in it – solid, unwavering, and without fear.

The scene on the Dorchester that night reflects the great and exceptional nature of America. In the Old World of Europe, religious wars had torn apart the continent for centuries. But in America was birthed the idea that all who are united by a common belief in the dignity of the individual can coexist peacefully.

Today, we often take religious liberty for granted. But the four chaplains aboard the Dorchester remind us that this sacred right must be defended, that it needs defenders willing to lay their lives on the line for it. Only then can we be sure that we can pass down this right to future generations.