There are times when we might want to despair over living in a world of selfishness. 

This week isn’t one of them. 

That’s because the first week of February every year brings a reminder that confirms the basic goodness and selflessness of humans. It comes in a powerful piece of history not known by many, forgotten by some.

Eighty years ago this week the SS Dorchester, an aging luxury liner converted to a U.S. Army transport ship, was sailing through Torpedo Alley between Newfoundland and Greenland. It carried 904 soldiers and others headed for the war zones of Europe.

At 12:55 a.m. Feb. 3, 1943 German submarine U-223 locked the Dorchester in its sights and unleashed four torpedoes. One found its mark, exploding in the ship’s boiler room. 

Many troops in the lower areas of the ship died instantly. Others clambered through the dark and confusion to reach the upper decks. 

The ship listed, taking on water quickly. Some of the Dorchester’s 14 lifeboats were damaged by the blast and the crew managed to launch only two others, plus some life rafts.

Survivors later described scenes of desperation amid mass panic. Some told of four first lieutenants treating the wounded and comforting the terror-stricken while helping to get them off the ship. 

Those four lieutenants were military chaplains assigned to provide spiritual care to the troops fighting Hitler in Europe. 

During the chaos. the chaplains opened a storage locker and handed out lifejackets. They urged soldiers to jump off the sinking ship and into the icy waters where they would have a chance of being picked up accompanying ships. 

“They were passing out life preservers from boxes on deck,” survivor Oswald Evans said later in a sworn affidavit. “When these were gone, I saw them take the life preservers from their own persons and hand them out, too.”

Another survivor, Grady Clark, described what he saw after jumping into the ocean:

“As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men . . . They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”

Others told of the chaplains standing on deck, arms linked and singing and praying as the Dorchester slipped beneath the surface. The singing and praying heard by the men in the water was in Hebrew and Latin, as well as English, because the chaplains represented different faiths.

Chaplain Alexander D, Goode was a reform rabbi and son of Rabbi Hyman Goodekowitz. 

Father John P. Washington was a Catholic priest recently assigned to the 76th infantry division in Maryland.

Rev. George L. Fox was a Methodist minister highly decorated as a medical assistant in the First World war. 

The fourth chaplain was Dutch Reformed minister Clark V. Poling, son of Rev. Daniel A, Poling, Baptist minister and an advisor to U.S. President Harry S. Truman. 

The four chaplains were among the 672 who perished in the ocean that night. Only 232 survived, some possibly in the life jackets given to them by the chaplains.

After the Dorchester sinking Rev. Daniel Poling established the Chapel of Four Chaplains in the basement of his Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia. It was dedicated to selfless service and interfaith cooperation.

The chapel moved to different locations over the years and now is found at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. 

In testimony before Congress, one survivor, Benjamin Epstein, reflected on what he had seen that night:

“To take off your life preserver, it meant you gave up your life. You would have no chance of surviving. They (the chaplains) knew they were finished. But they gave it away. Consider that. Over the years I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times. Could I do it?  No, I don’t think I could do it. Just consider what an act of heroism they performed.”

In a world that today seems to have gone crazy, I like to believe that the spirit of the four chaplains remains, giving us the courage and selflessness to help each other. 

                                                            #

A lesson for America

The first week of February is a time of reflection for me. A time to remember a shocking – yet inspiring - tragedy that occurred on the North Atlantic a lifetime ago.

The U.S. army troop ship Dorchester was steaming south of Greenland, carrying 900 soldiers en route to the war in Europe.  It was just past midnight Feb. 3, 1943 when the ship was rocked by a German torpedo ripping into its starboard side.

Soldiers scrambled for life jackets and life boats as the ship began to sink. Four military chaplains, who gave their life jackets to others, stood on the Dorchester’s deck, arms locked together and singing hymns as the ship listed and went down. Seven hundred and four of the 900 soldiers died in the icy waters.

My reflections this year include a fantasy in which the Dorchester resurfaces for a day, the chaplains on deck looking out over the United States of 2020.  What they see would amaze, and likely sicken them.

There has been progress since they left for war in 1943. Average family incomes have increased substantially. The average standard of living became the highest in the world.

Advances in medicine save lives and improve the lives of those burdened with conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.

Unfortunately, the main beneficiaries of better lives are the rich and the privileged. Today, an estimated 50 million Americans live in poverty, almost 12 million of them children, or one in every six children. And 500,000 Americans are homeless, children among them.

Poor children are doomed to continuing lives in poverty because educational disparity is so huge in the U.S. The best educational opportunities are available to the rich and privileged, not those from low-income families.

Canadian children from low-income families are twice as likely as similar American children to achieve higher incomes because Canada’s educational opportunities are more equal.

The most distressing change visible to the resurrected chaplains would be the class structure. They would see their country has developed a class system as bad, or worse, than the English aristocratic structure they eliminated in the American Revolution.

The American aristocrats of today are its billionaires, who use their money, power and influence to pile up more and more privileges to pass along to their inheritors.

Authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn note in their new book Tightrope, outlining the crisis in working class America, that billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet possess as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the U.S. population.

The four chaplains I am sure would conclude that America, an empire onto itself, is in decline.

It has become a country of two cultures – the rich who have everything they need and an atrophying working class whose stagnation is breaking down the country’s social fabric with growing anger, racism, political polarization and stress.

A 2019 Gallup poll found that Americans are among the world’s most stressed people. They are tied with Iranians in terms of stress, and more stressed than Venezuelans, whose country is a nightmare of poverty, hunger and bad government.

Americans have good reason to be stressed. They have health care and education crises that are not being solved because needed political action is frozen by political polarization.

The drug epidemic has ruined tens of thousands of families. And gun violence: The figures are astounding – roughly 40,000 gun violence deaths in 2019, including 418 mass shootings.

Some would pin America’s ills on the Trump administration, but the problems have developed over many decades.

At the core of America’s serious problems is its John Wayne philosophy. Individuals who are tough, independent and need no help are ‘good guys.’ The poor and the weak are ‘bad guys’ who can’t make it because of their own faults. America punishes ‘bad guys.’

To stop its freefall from greatness the United States must accept that the world has changed. It is a world requiring less hard-nosed individualism and more collectivism, which means working to help each other, even if it involves self-sacrifice.

That is the lesson of the four chaplains of the Dorchester.

It is a lesson followed by Canada and other strong democracies that provide a leg-up for those trying to get ahead, and safety nets for those who fall.

#

Never Forgetting February

   November is the traditional month of remembrance, but for some of us February is just as important.

   In February 1943, 70 years ago, the American troop ship Dorchester was torpedoed in the North Atlantic. Roughly 700 of the more than 900 aboard perished, including four chaplains, one Jewish, one Catholic and two Protestant.

   There was panic on the decks of the Dorchester as soldiers desperately scrambled for life preservers. The four chaplains tried to calm the soldiers and in the end gave their own life jackets to men without them.

   The action of the four chaplains has been called one of greatest acts of heroism of World War Two.

   One of the Protestant chaplains was Captain Clark Poling of the Dutch Reformed Church. He was the seventh generation of Poling ministers and his father was the Rev. Daniel Poling, editor of the Christian Herald.

   Decades ago the U.S. issued a stamp commemorating the heroism of the chaplains. A chapel in Philadelphia was dedicated to them.

   Time, however, slowly buries remembrances. The story of the Four Chaplains is unknown now to most people.

   This week the Los Angeles Times helped to keep the story of the Four Chaplains alive. It’s recollection of the Dorchester sinking can be found at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-four-chaplains-20130211,0,3355001.story