The Challenge of the Four Chaplains

[299 words] In a recent article, Phillip Morrison retold the story of four chaplains in the U.S. military who died in heroic fashion on the same day. George Fox, Alexander Goode, Clark Poling, and John Washington had just graduated from Army Chaplains School at Harvard and were headed to Europe for their first WWll assignments. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 3, 1943, their boat, the USA Dorchester, was torpedoed by a German sub off the coast of Newfoundland. As these chaplains helped the 904 troops on board seek to escape the sinking boat, they realized they were out of life vests. All four removed their vests and gave them to soldiers. The last recorded view of these four heroes was of them arm in arm singing hymns, as they went down with the ship. Such unselfish sacrifice led Congress, by unanimous vote in 1988, to declare Feb. 3 to be…