This past week, I conducted a “4 Chaplain Ceremony” at an assisted living facility in Brunswick. The ceremony honors 4 chaplains who lost their lives, along with 672 troops, on board the troopship Dorchester that was torpedoed and sank in the North Atlantic on Feb. 3, 1943. The 4 chaplains were of different faiths: a priest, a rabbi, a reformed minister, and a Methodist minister.  The chaplains sought to calm the men and organize an orderly evacuation off the ship and help guide wounded men to safety. As life jackets were passed out to men, the supply ran out before each man had one. The chaplains removed their own life jackets and gave them to others. They helped as many men as they could into lifeboats and then linked arms and, saying prayers and singing hymns, went down with the ship. This ceremony is conducted by many service organizations on, or near, Feb. 3. The ceremony includes a little about each of the chaplains. As I read this history, it really affected me more this time than it has in the past. Perhaps it is because of the times we live in.

One of the chaplains, Clark Poling, was the Dutch reformed minister. When World War II broke out, he was anxious to go, but not as a chaplain. “I’m not going to hide behind the church in some safe office out of the firing line,” he told his father. The elder Poling replied, “Don’t you know that the chaplains have the highest mortality rate of all? As chaplain you’ll have the best chance in the world to be killed. You just can’t carry a gun to kill anyone yourself.” Just before sailing, he asked his father to pray for him, “not for my safe return. That wouldn’t be fair. Just pray that I shall do my duty, have the strength, courage and understanding of men.  Just pray that I shall be adequate.” As the ceremony reads: “he taught his men to not harbor personal hatred for the Germans and the Japanese. Hate the system that made your brother evil, he said.  It is the system we must destroy.” 

Chaplain George Fox, the Methodist minister, was in World War I as an Army medic and received the Silver Star for rescuing a wounded soldier from the battlefield filled with poison gas without having a gas mask himself. He sustained a broken spine as a result. After the war, he became a successful accountant, got married, had a family, and ultimately went back to school to become a Methodist minister.  When WW II broke out, he told his wife “I’ve got to go. I know from experience what our boys are about to face. They need me.” Just before he boarded the Dorchester, he wrote his daughter. “I want you to know how proud I am that your marks in school are so high, but always remember that kindness, and charity and courtesy are more important.”

I had to share this with you all.