by Graham Dano '20
History
Leader of Titan Catholic and Multifaith Ambassador
This is a part of the Encounters series on sacrifice . Feel free to check out other perspectives on this theme by clicking through our tags, located at the top of our homepage.
The Second World War upended lives across the globe, from the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific to communities much closer to home. I had relatives who served in the US military during the war, including my recently deceased Great-Uncle Bill who died at the age of 97 earlier this year. Here at Illinois Wesleyan, many answered the call to serve, following John Wesley’s maxim to “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.” I was drawn to one particular story of wartime sacrifice by the Reverend George Fox, an IWU grad and distinguished veteran of posthumous honors in World War II.
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.” - John Wesley
The war didn’t go very well for America in the early months of 1942 after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor drew us into the conflict, as Americans were captured and killed in the Philippines, Guam, Wake, the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and Midway. In the North Atlantic, the Deutsche Kriegsmarine (German War Navy), a branch of the Nazi military, operated with near impunity during the early years of the war. Its mission was to sink any and all Allied merchant vessels attempting to cross over to Great Britain and the Soviet Union from the United States to resupply them through the Lend-Lease Program. The way they did this was through the use of small mobile submarines, called Unterseeboots (U-Boats), and these sank nearly 1,489,795 tons of Allied merchant shipping from July-October of 1940.
It was against this perilous set of circumstances that the SS Dorchester, an American merchant vessel, made her voyage to Greenland en route to Great Britain in an attempt to evade the U-Boats. On January 23, 1943, Dorchester left New York Harbor, bound for the Army Command Base at Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland. She was loaded with both freight and passengers, among whom were four military chaplains: The Reverend George Fox (an Illinois Wesleyan graduate and Methodist), Rabbi Alexander Goode, Father George Washington, and the Reverend Clark Poling (Dutch Reformed). Reverend Fox was a 1932 graduate of IWU and grew up in Pennsylvania, where he earned his Masters of Divinity at Temple University.
During the early morning hours of February 3, 1943, at 12:55, Dorchester was torpedoed by German submarine U-223. The torpedo knocked out the Dorchester's electrical system, leaving the ship dark. Panic set in among the men on board, many of them trapped below decks. The chaplains sought to calm the men and organize an orderly evacuation of the ship and helped guide wounded men to safety. As life jackets were passed out to the 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. Their noble sacrifice calmed the frightened passengers and prevented a mass panic as Dorchester sank.
”The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”
One of the survivors recalled that, ”The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.” Unfortunately, due to the freezing waters of the Atlantic, many of those with jackets didn’t have a snowball’s chance either and froze to death as well. It was the single largest American merchant ship lost in the entirety of World War II.
Browsing the Tate Archives at Ames Library, Illinois Wesleyan had some beautiful words to say at the time: “With heroic self-sacrifice, these promising young men gave up their lives. Forty-three Wesleyan graduates and former students have made the supreme sacrifice and laid down their young lives. These died that enslaved peoples might be free and that principles of priceless worth to us, the living, and to all generations that shall come after us, might not perish from the earth.”
The Four Chaplains were immortalized by a U.S. Postage Stamp in 1948, based on a mural by Dudley Summers, the dedication of the Four Chaplains Temple at Fox’s seminary in Temple University, and also by a plaque in Illinois Wesleyan’s Memorial Center that will soon be re-displayed elsewhere on campus. All four adhered to John Wesley’s mission when he founded the Methodist Church and to the many peaceful ways of traditions as diverse as Islam and Paganism throughout the world. I was drawn to this story of sacrifice and honor in wartime, and by its interfaith ramifications, and found it so interesting that whether in wartime or in peace, Titans past and present have always been a part of this work.
Questions to consider
What is the role of faith leaders in a time of crisis?
How have individuals in your tradition made sacrifices for the good of others?
To learn more about Rev. George Fox and the story of the Four Chaplains, visit the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation page or browse the Tate Archives & Special Collections at Ames Library.
Quotes and backroom information are from Dan Kurzman's book on the subject, No Greater Glory: The Four Immortal Chaplains and the Sinking of the Dorchester in World War II (Random House, 2004)
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