No Greater Sacrifice: DORCHESTER'S FOUR CHAPLAINS

Captain Lieutenant Max-Martin Teichert of the German submarine U-456 closed in on the large ship at the center of convoy SG-19 and gave the order to fire. A spread of torpedoes from Teichert's U-boat struck the American troopship Dorchester at 3:35 on the morning of 9 February 1943, dealing a mortal blow to that ship and setting the stage for what President Harry Truman later called a "heroic event without parallel in American annals." He was speaking of the actions of four Army chaplains - two Protestants, a Catholic, and a Jew - men of peace caught in the maelstrom of war.

The four chaplains on board Dorchester were Clark V. Poling of the Reformed Church of America; George Fox, a Methodist; John P. Washington, a Roman Catholic priest; and Alexander D. Goode, a rabbi. All were first lieutenants, new to the military service, though they differed in background as well as in religious faith.

George Fox, for example, had spent eleven of his 43-years in the ministry, was married, and had two children. His Protestant colleague, the 33-year-old Lt. Poling, had followed the vocation of his father, Daniel V. Poling, a prominent religious leader and editor of the Christian Herald. The Catholic chaplain, Father Washington, was a 34-year-old graduate of Immaculate Conception Seminary, Darlington, New Jersey. Rabbi Goode, the youngest of the four, had studied theology at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, and received a graduate degree from John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

All four realized that danger lay ahead, and one of them sensed the nearness of death more keenly than the others. On the eve of his departure from Boston, Lt. Goode had confided to two friends - another rabbi and a Catholic priest - his premonition that he would never reach Greenland, where Dorchester was bound.

Like most of the men on board, the transport had been called into wartime service. Built in 1926 to carry passengers between Boston and Baltimore, Dorchester had been something of a luxury ship - large, comfortable, and reasonably fast. Peacetime first-class passengers could book cabins with overhead electric fans, hot-and cold running water, and the choice of either bath or shower. To reduce annoyance from engine vibration, the ship's operators had used weather stripping to line the portholes of the most expensive cabins. When Dorchester underwent conversion from coastal liner to Army transport, comfort was no longer a consideration, as cabins were divided into cubicles and steel-and-canvas bunks appeared wherever there was space to accommodate them.

Nor was she the only coastal steamer to enter military service. Indeed, a sister ship, Chatham, became the first American troopship sunk during WWII. On 27 August 1942, a German torpedo had claimed her, but 570 of the 597 persons on board were saved. Chatham had gone down on the NewfoundlandGreenland run, a route that made use of transports and escorts too slow for the big transatlantic convoys.

To prevent Dorchester from suffering the same fate, planners grouped her with two merchantmen in a convoy escorted by three Coast Guard cutters - Tampa, Escanaba, and Comanche. To the four chaplains and the 900 other soldiers and crewmen on board the transport, this may have seemed formidable protection, but such was not the case. Although all three cutters carried guns, depth charges, and mousetraps - devices for hurling bottle-shaped projectiles that became armed upon entering the water and exploded on contact with a U-boat hull - only Tampa was fast enough to track down and attack an enemy submarine. Moreover, none of the three, not even Tampa had radar for detecting a surfaced U-boat.

At this stage of the war, escorts were so scarce that an ill-equipped vessel seemed better than none at all. Ships simply could not be spared, even for the comparatively short time required to install this vital electronic gear. As a results escorts like those Coast Guard cutters had to wait for a scheduled general overhaul before radar could be added.

The six ships of convoy SG-19 steamed in the usual formation for this number of vessels. The cutter Tampa led the way, with the 5252-ton Dorchester some 3000-yds astern. One of the merchantmen maintained station on either side of the transport, some 600-yds distant. Guarding the convoy's flanks were the Comanche, some 3-mi to port of Dorchester, and Escanaba, a similar distance to starboard.

After making rendezvous at St. John's, Newfoundland, the convoy set sail for Greenland on 29 January 1943, and immediately was caught in the grip of winter. Ice formed on the superstructure ofEscanaba and Comanche, making both cutters top heavy and forcing them to reduce speed. From time to time, they had to stop dead in the water so crew members could use live steam to clear away the frozen spray from guns, depth charges, and, mousetraps. Currents of cold water moving below the surface distorted noises from the deep and prevented Sonar gear from picking up vibrations from submarine propellers.

By 2 February, the weather had eased somewhat, and ice no longer formed on board the escorts. Greater uniformity of water temperature improved sonar performance, and all weapons were ready when word came that a radio direction finder on shore had pinpointed a transmission from a U-boat near the convoy. From Tampa's bridge, Capt. Joseph Greenspun, USCG, the escort commander, alerted the convoy, and on board Dorchester a loudspeaker repeated the warning. Tampa, meanwhile, put on 14.5-kts, her best speed, and began searching ahead of the convoy; neither of the other cutters could join in the hunt because of their 10.5-kt top speed. Not until darkness had fallen did Tampa resume her normal station. Then, with all three escorts in their assigned places, the convoy bored through the cold Atlantic, frequently changing course, though not zig-zagging.

Steaming at 10-kts, the ships had reached a point about 150-mi from Cape Farewell, Greenland, when torpedoes launched from U-156 exploded against Dorchester's starboard quarter. Since the escorting cutters lacked radar, Capt. Teichert had been able to surface and rely on the early morning darkness concealment as he stalked his victim.

The stricken troopship immediately began listing as tons of icy water poured into her hull, flooding the lower compartments. No more than 3-min after the torpedoes struck, the ship's master gave the command to abandon ship. He realized the likely hood of panic as his green crew tried to direct hundreds of soldiers, little more than a week at sea and barely acquainted with emergency procedures, into ship's boats and life rafts. He also know that even a warmly dressed man, wearing a lifejacket, could not survive for long when the water temperature was a numbing 34-deg and the air temperature just 36-deg. Wind-driven seas, moreover, would drench and further chill even those lucky enough to find places in the boats, increasing the danger of death from exposure to the cold. Fully aware of the peril that lay ahead, he nevertheless gave the order for the cold waters offered some hope; on board the doomed transport there was none.

The escort, meanwhile, steamed on through the night, unaware of the tragedy that was developing. The torpedoes had knocked out all power on board Dorchester. No radio call could be sent, and in the confusion none of the crewmen thought of launching a flare to signal that the ship was in distress.

The failure to use flares was evidence of a collapse of discipline among the transport's crew. One account of the torpedoing has declared that: "Both discipline and seamanship were wanting." Another has stated that: "Dorchester's people behaved very badly that terrible night, violating just about every timehonored precept in the history of the sea... and nobody seems to know exactly why, especially the boards of inquiry that looked into the disaster." Contributing to the failure was a combination of inexperience and shook, as explosions shattered the nighttime quiet and the ship began settling.

As the transport rolled and the deck canted, only those seven boats on the lower side could be released from their davits, for on the opposite side the exposed hull was in the way. Half the boats, therefore, could not be launched, but crewmembers turned crisis into chaos, getting only two of the others safely into the water. They left some dangling useless on fouled lines and failed to replace drain plugs in others, which filled with water and promptly sank. According to survivors, a few crewmen shoved soldiers aside to gain the safety of boats or rafts. Panic spread as the troops realized they were being forsaken by those upon whom their lives depended.

The men of the Navy gun crew, commanded by Lt. (jg) William Arpaia, looked at the confusion on deck, took note of the increasing list, and realized that Dorchester would go under without their firing so much as a single round in her defense. Two of Arpaia's sailors, Winfield McCoy and WJ. McMinn, found a life raft still secured to the superstructure, cut it loose, and eased it over the side. Before they could board, however, several men scrambled onto it, and the two sailors, wet and trembling from their immersion in the cold ocean, had to claw their way back on board where they located a second raft that carried the gun crew to safety.

Some soldiers never reached the deck. When the lights failed, these men became lost in the labyrinth of and passageways, milling about in search of a way out of the tomb-like interior. The men on deck, deafened by the sound of wind and sea, could not bear the cries for help coming from below.

Jolted from their bunks by the exploding torpedoes, other soldiers emerged on deck without lifejackets, aware only that something was wrong. They did not realize the ship was sinking because steam pressure had failed before Dorchester's whistle could sound the six blasts that signaled abandon ship.

Amid this terror stood the four chaplains, Lts. Fox, Poling, Washington, and Goode. They tried at first to calm the troops, but when the ship's crew yielded to panic, the chaplains began organizing the soldiers and herding them onto the rafts in an orderly fashion. When the last of these craft had been set afloat, and the rail was barely above water, the four men helped build rafts, lashing together timbers, chunks of cork, and anything else that would float.

Frightened by the cold, the darkness, and the hostile waves, a number of soldiers clung to ventilators, lifeboat davits, and the rail itself, refusing to leave the sinking ship. The chaplains had to convince them that the sea offered the only hope of survival, though a slim chance at best. To remain on board meant certain death. Sometimes a sobbing man would heed their arguments and try to save himself; for others the grip of fear proved unbreakable.

One survivor acknowledged that he owed his life to Chaplain Goode, whose premonition of death seemed to be coming true. The lieutenant saw the soldier standing barehanded by the rail, took off his own gloves and gave them to the man. Without the chaplain's gloves, his hands would surely have frozen during 8-hrs spent in an open boat, and shock undoubtedly would have killed him.

The chaplains found a locker full of lifejackets and distributed them among the men who had none. When the last jacket had been handed out, the chaplains removed their own and gave them away. As the Dorchester slipped beneath the waves, the four men stood hands linked, their heads bowed in prayer.

When the escort commander, Capt. Greenspun, learned of the sinking, he divided his force, sending Comanche and Escanaba to look for survivors, while he used Tampa to shepherd the two merchantmen toward Greenland. By the time the two cutters arrived, the transport had sunk, and exposure had so weakened many of the survivors that they could not climb cargo nets hung over the sides of the rescue ships. Coast Guard volunteers leaped into the sea to fix lines to drifting boats or to save half-conscious men kept afloat by life-jackets. The two cutters saved 293 persons, but the four chaplains were not among them.

On the morning of 4 February, Comanche and Escanaba steamed toward Greenland with the men they had rescued, several American ships converged at the site of the sinking. Hundreds of lifeless bodies, belted in their lifejackets, bobbed on the surface. Of those who had sailed in Dorchester, only one in three remained alive.

The War Department honored the heroism of Chaplains Fox, Poling, Washington, and Goode, who had given their lives that others might survive, with the posthumous award of the Distinguished Service Medal, as well as the Purple Heart. Their deaths inspired several memorials, among them the Four Chaplains Chapel at Philadelphia. Shortly after the war, the United States Post Office issued a stamp bearing a picture of Dorchester and the four chaplains who perished with her. An exercise pool for the disabled at a Now York City veterans' hospital and numerous plaques, such as those at Wakefield, Massachusetts, and Falls Church, Virginia, also commemorate that brief moment when the light of sacrifice dispelled the darkness of war.

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