PCM-02-05.2013 The Four Chaplins
(CNN)
Contributor Bob Greene--
By the end of the Super Bowl on Sunday night, one or more
professional football players will be hailed for their valor, for
their guts, for their devotion to their teammates.
They will be
called heroes.
And more than
100 million people will be watching.
But because,
predictably, those laudatory words will be thrown around so casually
on Sunday, perhaps we can take a few minutes here to address an act
of genuine valor that happened exactly 70 years ago today.
It wasn't
televised. There were no sponsors.
On February 3,
1943, an Army transport ship called the Dorchester, carrying American
soldiers through the icy North Atlantic on their way to serve in
World War II, was about 100 miles off the coast of Greenland in rough
sea. More than 900 people were on board.
Many of them
were little more than boys -- young soldiers and sailors who had
never been so far from home. The journey had been arduous already,
with the men crammed into claustrophobic, all-but-airless sleeping
quarters below deck, constantly ill from the violent lurching of the
ship.
In the blackness
of night, a German submarine fired torpedoes at the Dorchester.
One of the
torpedoes hit the middle of the ship. There was pandemonium on board.
The Dorchester swiftly began to sink.
The soldiers and
sailors, many of them wakened from sleep by the attack, searched
desperately in the dark for life jackets and lifeboats and a route to
safety.
With them on the
ship were four military chaplains, from four disparate religions.
They were Father
John Washington, born in Newark, New Jersey, who was Catholic; the
Rev. Clark Poling, born in Columbus, Ohio, who was ordained in the
Reformed Church in America; Rabbi Alexander Goode, born in Brooklyn,
New York, who was Jewish; and the Rev. George Fox, born in Lewistown,
Pennsylvania, who was Methodist.
In the chaos
onboard, according to multiple accounts by survivors of the attack,
the four men tried to calm the soldiers and sailors and lead them to
evacuation points. The chaplains were doing what chaplains do:
providing comfort and guidance and hope.
"I could
hear men crying, pleading, praying," a soldier named William B.
Bednar would later recall. "I could also hear the chaplains
preaching courage. Their voices were the only thing that kept me
going."
With the
Dorchester rapidly taking on water, there were not enough life
jackets readily available for every man on the ship.
So, when the
life jackets ran out, the four chaplains removed their own, and
handed them to soldiers who didn't have them.
More than 600
men died that night in the frigid seas, but some 230 were rescued.
And some of the survivors, in official accounts given to the Army,
and in interviews after the war, reported what they saw as the ship
went down:
Those four
chaplains, men of different faiths but believing in the same God,
their arms linked, standing on the deck together in prayer.
They had
willingly given up their futures, their lives, to try to help the men
who had been placed by the Army in their care.
The U.S. Army
War College has in its records a narrative of what happened that
night. One of the men who survived the sinking of the Dorchester, a
Navy officer named John J. Mahoney, is quoted as recalling that
before heading for the lifeboats, he hurried in the direction of his
quarters.
Rabbi Goode,
seeing him, asked where he was going. Mahoney said he had forgotten
his gloves, and wanted to retrieve them before being dropped into the
cold sea.
Rabbi Goode said
that Mahoney should not waste fleeting time, and offered Mahoney his
own gloves.
When Mahoney
said he couldn't deprive Rabbi Goode of his gloves, the rabbi said it
was all right, he had two pairs.
Only later,
according to military historians, did Mahoney realize that of course,
Rabbi Goode was not carrying an extra pair of gloves. He had already
decided that he was going down with the ship.
According to the
Army War College account, another survivor of the Dorchester, John
Ladd, said of the four chaplains' selfless act:
"It was the
finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven."
The story of the
four chaplains was quite well known in America for a while; in 1948 a
first-class 3-cent postage stamp was issued bearing their likenesses.
There are still stained glass windows in some chapels across the U.S.
that pay tribute to the four men, including at the Pentagon. But the
national memory is short, and they are no longer much discussed.
February 3 was, years ago, designated by Congress to be set aside
annually as Four Chaplains Day, but it is not widely commemorated.
This Super Bowl
Sunday, with its football heroes whose televised exploits are
bracketed by commercials for beer and corn chips, will be no
exception. The nation's attention, this February 3, will be focused
on the game.
But perhaps, at
some point in the day, we can pause for a moment to reflect upon what
valor and courage and sacrifice really mean. How rare they truly are.
And to recall
the four men who remain, in the words with which their grateful and
humbled country honored them on the front of that long-ago postage
stamp, "these immortal chaplains."
Editor's
note: CNN
Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose 25 books include
"Late Edition: A Love Story"; "Duty: A Father, His
Son, and the Man Who Won the War"; and "Once Upon a Town:
The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen."
I love my
job, last week I got a chance to meet a granddaughter of one of the
Chaplins. She brought two "first day of issue" stamped
envelopes in to be framed. I had the privilidge of working on these
pieces and thanking her for the opportunity to learn of the true
heroics of her granddad and his fellow chaplins.
Let's learn
from their examples of true courage as we each face our own
individual challenges.
Love for
all, Bill Sullivan, the Physically Challenged ministry.
http://youtu.be/8ewJp8HhYzA
