Early on the morning of February 3, 1943, the U.S. troop transport “Dorchester” was wallowing through icy seas off Greenland. Most of the 900 troops on board were asleep in their bunks. Suddenly a torpedo smashed into the Dorchester’s flank. The troops milled in confusion on the decks. In those dark moments of panic, the coolest men aboard were four U.S. Army chaplains: First Lieutenants Clark V. Poling, Alexander D. Goode, John P. Washington, and George L. Fox. The four chaplains led the men into boxes of life jackets and passed them out to the soldiers with boat-frill precision. When the boxes were empty, the four chaplains quietly slipped off their own precious life preservers, put them on four young GIs and told them to jump.
The Dorchester went down 25 minutes later in a rumble of steam. Some 600 men were lost, but the heroic chaplains had helped save over 200. The last anyone saw of them, they were standing on the slanting deck, their arms linked in prayer to the one God they all served.