00:00:17 Speaker 1: Pushkin. 00:00:23 Speaker 2: Hello everyone, Malcolm Glabel here. The primary instinct of every living thing on our planet is self preservation in moments of danger. Our own survival is wired into us so deeply it's nearly impossible for our brains to override it. To do that, to consciously give your life, you have to be set in your convictions. You'd have to believe against every instinct and synapse in your brain that what you're doing is right. We're going to end the season of Medal of Honor with the story of four men who did just that. There were four chaplains from different religious backgrounds who became unlikely friends. In their short time together, their collective faith galvanized and inspired the men around them. They differed in many of their beliefs, but aligned on one that to serve God, they would have to serve others over themselves. This is their story. 00:01:22 Speaker 1: It was just before one am on February third, nineteen forty three, ten foot waves were turning the icy waters of the North Atlantic. A ship named the Dorchester was carrying American soldiers across the ocean to fight in World War II. They were headed to Greenland, a strategic base for the Allies. They were only about one hundred and fifty miles from their destination. But now the ship was sinking. It was mayhem on the deck. Soldiers raced to the lifeboats. They scrambled for life preservers. Men pushed towards the railing as the giant ship listed to one side. The Dorchester was breaking apart around them. Some gi screamed and wept as they slid down ropes and dropped into the free waves. But four men stood calmly among the chaos. Each wore the uniform of an officer, but they weren't soldiers. There were four Army chaplains, each of a different faith. The soldiers knew them well, they loved them, and now they watched as the chaplains started to pray. The four chaplains were going down with the ship. I'm j R. Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. It's awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the Field to the White House. This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. In this episode, we're going to meet the four Chaplains of the USS Dorchester. Two Protestant ministers, one Catholic priest, and one Jewish rabbi. They were men of peace who decided to serve in World War Two as a commitment to themselves, to the country, and to their God. They did everything in their power to help the more than nine hundred men traveling on the Dorchester. The four Chaplains didn't receive the Medal of Honor for their actions. Instead, they were awarded a special and unique decoration, the Congressional Medal of Valor. But I think they deserve a place in this podcast because they are just as heroic as to other people we've met this season. The four Chaplains had different beliefs, they worshiped in different ways, but each of them proved that selflessness is at the very heart of courage. On January twenty third, nineteen forty three, the USS Dorchester arrived in New York Harbor. It was a former passenger ship, sleek and elegant. It had once taken wealthy travelers from New York to Miami. In those days, it even had a casino. It sure wasn't luxurious anymore. This was wartime and every seaworthy boat had been refitted for military service. Those roulette wheels were long gone. Now GI's were going to pack in like sardines and get taken to fight. Most of the nine hundred and two people aboard were headed to southwestern Greenland. It had airfields that were key for battling the Nazis in Europe. The journey was going to be dangerous because those North Atlantic waters were swarming with Germany U some Maarines that moved in wolf packs. Allied ships traveled in convoys for safety, but they didn't always go fast enough, and the Dorchester wasn't known for its speed. A young soldier named Benjamin Epstein looked at it with a queasy filling. 00:05:30 Speaker 3: I know, I've heard it said that the ship was called the suicide ship. It was an extremely slow boat. 00:05:38 Speaker 1: Four officers stood by the gangplank welcoming soldiers on board. They all had pins on their lapels, three war crosses, and one wore Hebrew tablets under a Star of David. They were army chaplains there to support troops both on and off the battlefield. More than nine thousand ministers, priests and rabbi served during the war, giving spiritual support, rescuing the wounded and burying the dead. They were unarmed, but they were essential. The four chaplains of the Dorchester couldn't have been less alike. For one thing, they were all of different faiths. This was at a time when people from different religions didn't mix that much. James Mcatney was another young soldier on the Dorchester. 00:06:28 Speaker 4: I was raised as a Catholic in an Irish neighborhood, and I don't think I'd be very far away from the truth if I were to say that the pastor of our church wouldn't have been caught dead talking to a Protestant minister. 00:06:42 Speaker 1: Here were these four chaplains who came together from different backgrounds, but all shared a deep desire to serve. To James, they seemed to fit together like pieces of a puzzle. 00:06:54 Speaker 4: To see these men in shame uniform but of different faiths getting together and actually talking and smiling and laughing and joking each other was unheard of. 00:07:05 Speaker 1: The oldest of the group was George Fox and Methodist minister. George had a babyface and a mild manner, but he was a survivor. He'd been abused by his dad and had escaped by joining the army in World War One at the age of seventeen. He lied about his age to get in. He'd been a medic and was decorated with the Silver Star for his bravery, but the war left him with lingering injuries. Even so, when World War II began, he was determined to rejoin the army. By then he was a minister, so he would serve as a chaplain. He left a wife and daughter back in Vermont, and his teenage son had joined the Marines. Ed Dion, another soldier on the Dorchester, remembered him well. 00:07:52 Speaker 5: He was small in stature, but then by the same token he was big and things he did. The very fact that Reverend Vox had medaled from World War One, well, that gave you a little idea as to how he earned them was through taking care of somebody else. 00:08:09 Speaker 1: George was on the ship with one of his best f friends, Rabbi Alex Good. Alex was thirty one, a decade younger than George, and he served in the military too, in the National Guard. Alex had a wife and toddler waiting for him in Pennsylvania, but that hadn't stopped him from volunteering for the army. He was ready to fight for democracy and he wanted to go straight to the battlefields. His wife, Teresa knew he was set on serving no matter the cost. 00:08:38 Speaker 6: When I said goodbye to him, I had a feeling in my heart that he would not come back. It was a very difficult goodbye, and I looked at him through the windows of the train. I was crying, and he was crying, and I knew I'd never see him again. I just felt it in my heart. He was a selfless individual. He couldn't do enough for anyone, and a very kind man, but a strong man, had strong principles and he lived by them. 00:09:09 Speaker 1: George and Alex had met during chapter training at Harvard Divinity School, and as they waited to be sent overseas, they met two other chaplains. One was John Washington, a Roman Catholic priest. The other was Clark Polling, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Clark was a pastor in Schenectady, New York, with a wife, a toddler, and a baby on the way. His dad was a famous evangelical preacher, and his brother Dan was a minister too. I guess it was the family business. Dan said that his brother Clark was always looking deeper. 00:09:45 Speaker 7: He was born an inquirer, a questioner. The things that he heard, he inquired about and searched to know their meaning and their purposes. He thought that he would be a lawyer, and he finally came to accept the fact that he was intended by Almighty going to be a minister clergyman. 00:10:08 Speaker 1: John Washington, on the other hand, knew he wanted to be a priest from the time he was in middle school. He grew up in a big and lively Irish Catholic family in Newark, New Jersey. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he wanted to enlist, but he'd been hit in the eye with a bbie when he was a kid, so he wasn't sure he'd be able to. Somehow he managed to fake his way through the physical We've heard that story before. John was just one of the guys and hilarious. Here's the soldier ed Dion again. 00:10:40 Speaker 5: Father Washington probably told more stories than anybody I've ever heard. He kept ongoing. He had a good irish with two. 00:10:49 Speaker 1: The four chaplains hit it off immediately, and as soon as the journey began they got to work caring for the men on board. The chaplain shared a room, but they were barely in it. They held services for their different faiths. They organized the talent show, but James Mcatney remembers their comfort and support most of all. 00:11:10 Speaker 4: You'ven seen him at all hours, not just me lower, but wherever there was a gathering of any sort, one or more of than would be around, you know, filling in and talking and joking and participating. They had tremendous empathy with what most of us were going through, the uncertainty and the fear and all the other sentiments. 00:11:34 Speaker 1: About nine days after the ship set sail, their job got harder. The Dorchester was rocked by a terrible storm, the worst. 00:11:43 Speaker 8: Storm in fifty years in the North Atlantic. 00:11:47 Speaker 1: Ernie Heaton was a soldier on the Dorchester and nineteen at the time. He found the storm so terrifying that he clearly remembered it decades later. 00:11:57 Speaker 8: I'm telling you that ship was all over that ocean waves forty foot waves break clear over the bow of that ship, and it was cold, and I start building up on that ship. 00:12:11 Speaker 1: The outside of the ship was covered in a thick blanket of ice. Inside men were throwing up furniture flew. Three men were seriously injured, and two of the chaplains carried them to their bunks and bandaged them. The two others walked the ship, offering crackers and fruit to the men. And there was another bigger problem. The storm meant that the Dorchester was moving even slower, and sonar had picked up evidence that they were being followed by a pack of German submarines. That night, John Washington led Catholic Mass in the dining hall after all enemy ships meant the men were at risk of death. They would need all the prayers they could get, But he didn't limit his pastorship to Catholics. Here's ed Dion again. 00:13:01 Speaker 5: We all knew that torpedo was out there somewhere, and he came around. Didn't make any difference who they were. He said, all of you know the Lord's prayer. Poydon sang it, saying whatever he said, it'll help you. And that was the only time that I ever saw that he brought his religion in the rest of the time, he was just a man who wanted to take care of other men. 00:13:25 Speaker 1: By the late evening, the storm died down, but now that the seas had calmed, the threat from the U boats got worse. Ernie Heaton remembers an announcement coming over the loudspeaker. 00:13:37 Speaker 8: Captain come on and said, everybody is to stay fully dressed, absolutely fully dressed with life jackets. We've got soundings of subs in the area and we're going to do everything we can to keep them away from us. 00:13:54 Speaker 1: The message was clear. They were all at risk of being blown into the icy water. So not only were life preservers important, but everyone needed to wear all of their clothes, hats, gloves, and shoes as insulation against cold. The water was around thirty four degrees. You could only survive in it for twenty or thirty minutes, even less if you weren't fully dressed. But many of the men didn't listen. Their bunk rooms were stuffy and hot, and nobody wanted to stay in their heavy winter gear all night, and life fests weren't exactly comfortable. And remember most of these soldiers were eighteen nineteen twenty years old. I remember being nineteen years old and feeling like nothing is going to happen. They told themselves they only had to make it to daylight. Then they would be close enough to Greenland that Allied planes would escort them to safety. They just had to make it through the night. By midnight on February third, nineteen forty three, life on the USS Dorchester felt almost normal. Yes, they were being tailed by Nazi submarines, but safety was waiting in Greenland, only one hundred and fifty miles away. After the storm ended and the warnings went out over the loudspeakers, the guys just did what they usually did. Here's Ernie Heaton again. 00:15:41 Speaker 8: We were playing cards all evening. The ship had settled down some, it wasn't bouncing around like it was, and I had lost twenty bucks. So I said, hey, yes, enough. So I went to my own room and I sat down on my bunk and I said, darn it, I haven't even had my shoes off for five days. I'm going to at least take my shoes off. You know, if I just went over like this to take my shoes off, and the next thing you know, there was a big and that's when that torpedo hit. 00:16:16 Speaker 1: It was twelve fifty five am. Immediately the lights went out. It was pitch black. The steam pipes broke, the bunks went down like a house of cards. The torpedo had hit close to the engine room. Dozens of men died on impact. A flood of icy water roared into the lower compartments. 00:16:39 Speaker 8: When that torpedo hit, it penetrated the ship and then exploded inside the ship, and it split that chip open from blow the waterline clear to the top deck. It just started to break it apart. And the next thing, you know, in a very short period of time, it had already started the list. 00:17:00 Speaker 1: Ernie knew he had to get out of his bunk room and up to the deck. The torpedo had hit the refrigeration system, so toxic fumes hung in the air. 00:17:09 Speaker 8: As soon as I stepped out that door, there or whifts of amonia coming up out of that station. Now it's getting hard to breathe, but I had to go halfway the length of that ship to go onto the bow. 00:17:23 Speaker 1: There were three Coastguard cutters traveling in the convoy with the Dorchester, but without electricity, the Dorchester couldn't signal that they had been hit. The ship blew its whistle six times and then the steam ran out. Aside from a few flashlights, the only lights that work were little blinking ones on the men's life jackets. 00:17:45 Speaker 8: You couldn't say hand in front of your face, although every life jacket had a red light on it, and all you had to do was reach up and twist it and you had a red light that they could find you. 00:17:58 Speaker 1: In the dark hold of the ship, where the bunks were. The halls were blocked by soldiers fighting to get out. Up on the deck, it was chaos, clanging bells, emergency sirens, men sh The soldiers had assigned lifeboat stations. There should have been plenty for everyone, but because the ship was tilting, some of the lifeboats weren't usable. Others were frozen solid to the boat men piled into the few that did work. Soon they were massively overcrowded, capsizing as they hit the waves, So the men left on the ship were told to get into the water. Either they could jump from the deck or shimmy down ropes into the waves. 00:18:42 Speaker 8: They already told us that you couldn't live over a half hour in that water. If they tell you to cut a rope, let it slide into the ocean and then jump in after it. 00:18:54 Speaker 1: Everyone was panicking trying to find a lifeboat or life raft that still had space. 00:19:00 Speaker 8: As I'm trying to push my way through. This is where I saw the four chappas. They're telling everybody go to your station, Please, go to your station. But there was guy scream and I can't swim, and it was just you can't imagine what it was like. 00:19:17 Speaker 9: Was horrible. 00:19:18 Speaker 1: Yes, the four chaplains were on deck together. They were handing out life preservers and giving out instructions, trying to keep the men calm. It was an impossible task. Navy Gunner Roy Summers was on the deck. 00:19:33 Speaker 10: One of the boys had the chaplain almost by the neck and hanging on to him and it's just screaming and this chaplain has shaking him some and trying to get his attention, and tried to talk to him and tell him to get on the fall line. Keep a prayer on your lips and I'll be praying for you. 00:19:53 Speaker 1: Ernie noticed something else about the chaplains. 00:19:56 Speaker 8: They didn't have a red light on and I wonder why I didn't put that red light on, And when I got closer, they didn't have their life jackets on. 00:20:05 Speaker 1: There was a reason for this. Many men had gone to sleep without their life jackets, and after the attack they had left them down in the bunks. The Chaplains were giving out all the life preservers they can get their hands on. A private named Charles Mackley watched them. 00:20:21 Speaker 11: They were handed out life jackets. You know, they even gave up their own. 00:20:27 Speaker 1: In fact, the Chaplains gave up everything they could to the men on that ship. One man later said he had gotten to the deck and realized his gloves were back in his cabin, so Alex Good took off his own gloves and gave them to him. The four Chaplains weren't thinking about their own survival. As the freezing waters slashed over the deck, they called out words of encouragement. They calmly ordered terrified men to save themselves, but they didn't try to take a spot on a lifeboat or swim away. 00:20:59 Speaker 11: In fact, I told his Catholic chaplain, I said, finally get off the ship. The ship was going down. Still reallyased to do it, though, as I got off the ship when I went down on a rope that were joining has Afford of the wall together. It just stayed there and the water was starting to come into the main deck. They made no attempt to get off the ship at all. 00:21:21 Speaker 1: The men on the lifeboats and rafts had gotten as far from the sinking ship as they possibly could. If they stayed too close, they could have gotten sucked down with it. Benjamin Epstein, the guy who called the Dorchester a suicide ship, made it to a lifeboat from a spot on the water. He took a last look back. 00:21:42 Speaker 3: As I turned around, I saw a sight that will forever be with me. It was the Dorchester making its last lurch into the water, and it looked like a Christmas tree, because that little red light represented a soldier. They were soldiers hanging on to the rail of the ship who were too frightened. Not that I can blame them. Who would want to jump? What are you jumping into the cold water the waves? The situation was an impossible one. 00:22:20 Speaker 1: But those men hanging onto the rail of the ship weren't alone. George, Alex Clark and John had stayed behind to take care of them. From this spot on a life raft, A young soldier named James Urdley called the last glimpse of the four Chaplains there on the Dorchester as she sank. 00:22:40 Speaker 9: When she rolled, she rolled to starboard and all I could say was the keel up there and there showed the four Chapelains standing arm in arm on the top of the boat. 00:22:53 Speaker 12: And then the boat took a nose, diving right down. They worked with it. That's the last time we show them. 00:23:14 Speaker 1: Hundreds of red lights blinked in the water around the USS Dorchester. Roy Summers watched them from his life. 00:23:21 Speaker 10: Raft Men were all around us, and man with life jackets on with one cell lights drifting and bobbling in the water, and it kind of looked like a wheat field with a lot of light. Need bugs over the top of the wheat field, bobbing up and down with the light. 00:23:38 Speaker 1: He makes his sound so peaceful and reality. It was anything but the ship was surrounded by debris and the men got caught in it. It happened to Charles Tichia. 00:23:50 Speaker 13: As I was in the water, something grabbed my life jacket that had taken me down with it. I pulled and I pulled, and I pulled, and finally got free. Then I was trying to make my way up to the surface. I thought I'd never breathe there again. Finally there it was, and right in front of me was this life wren. Few fellows grabbed my back and to help bring me aboard. And I can hear the depth charges all around, being dropped by the coast cut cutters. And I can hear the people in the water saying, hell, shave me, shave me. 00:24:33 Speaker 1: Even with layers of clothing on, men in the water succumbed to hypothermia quickly. For those in the boats, things were barely better. Waves drenched the men with water, which then froze into sheets of ice. Ernie Heaton got lucky for a sort of crazy reason. When he jumped off of the boat, he was coated in oil. It soaked through his clothing and insulated him against the cold. As he was drifting, he saw a cluster of little red lights shining in the distance. He decided to swim towards it. 00:25:07 Speaker 8: I started swim as good as I could, and finally I got it was a lifeboat. It was a full I couldn't get in, so I told a god it was setting pushed to me. I said, let me stick my arm in there, and you lean against my arm, which he did. Then I just went almost limb. 00:25:27 Speaker 1: He floated there, one arm in the boat, the rest of his body in the icy water, waiting to be rescued. None of the Coastguard cutters in the Dorchester's convoy had been torpedoed, and yet they didn't come and help the men immediately. Why they were ordered not to. The German U boat was still out there somewhere. A naval doctrine said that when a ship was torpedoed, the other vessels in the convoy should seek and destroy the enemy submarine before rescuing survivors. So the men of the Dorchester waited and waited. The cutters didn't start to rescue survivors until fifty minutes after the explosion. By the time they arrived, they were greeted by hundreds of blinking red lights from life jackets, all attached to floating dead bodies. The rescue mission took hours, prowling through the darkness looking for each little lifeboat and raft. One Coastguard cutter was named the Escanaba. It would eventually pick up a total of one hundred and thirty two survivors. One of them was Ernie Heaton. He was still being held onto the lifeboat by his arm. As the Escanaba threw nets towards the men on the boat, he felt himself slipping away. 00:26:47 Speaker 8: This guy that was holding my arm. Men knew that I would couldn't do it, but I couldn't do anything. I was just about gone. And finally I could hear you holler, this guy's still alive. This guy's still alive. Comin get him, comin get him. He wouldn't leave that boat until they come and got me. 00:27:06 Speaker 1: Charles Chichi. I was saved by the Escanaba Iwo. 00:27:09 Speaker 13: They threw a lateral the side, but dianes were frozen. One of the men from the ship came down and helped us go aboard. Once I got on a deck, I kneeled down, I kissed the deck, smiling. 00:27:26 Speaker 1: Another Coastguard cutter was the Comanche. That boat wasn't supposed to be picking up survivors at all. They were meant to still be looking for the U boat, but the captain felt he had to help, so, even though they weren't trained or equipped for rescue, the Comanche's men started diving into the freezing waves. They saved ninety four from the Dorchester. The Coastguard boats reached Greenland at three am the morning of February fourth. Less than a third of the men aboard the Dorchester survived, but for those who lived, the four Chaplains lived on as well. In the years that followed the sinking of the USS Dorchester, the men who survived kept looking back on that night and on the actions of George Fox, Alex Good, Clark Pulling, and John Washington. Benjamin Epstein marveled at the sacrifices they made. 00:28:25 Speaker 3: Could I do what the Four Chaplains did, take their life, preserve off from give it to someone else? Absolutely not. I don't think I could do it. I didn't do it. That's why I say their bravery, their heroism is beyond beyond belief. 00:28:45 Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, each of the four Chaplains received the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross, and in nineteen forty eight the US Postal Service issued a three cent stamp in their honor. It had the heading the Immortal Chaplains and an illustration of the four men. This was a huge deal. Back then people used stamps every day. Was no email and normally no stamp could be issued until the subject had been dead for ten years, but Congress waived that rule in nineteen sixty one. The four men were each awarded a specially designed Congressional Medal of Valor. Many believed they should have received the Medal of Honor, but ultimately they were ruled ineligible since they were not on the field of battle. There are literally dozens and dozens of memorials to the Four Chaplains. There are stained glass windows and statues, chapels, and monuments from West Virginia to South Korea. But their legacy is more than medals and memorials. Their story has become a touchstone for the inter faith movement, people who believe that religions should work together, that we should focus on our common hopes are common humanity. Remember James Mcatney, he saw the Four Chaplains as an inspiration. 00:30:12 Speaker 4: Here are these men who in my day and time would have been diametrically opposed in so many areas to what the other believed, and yet they did what they did and got together so well and everything else. And I think they embody that brotherhood that we all report to strive for and have and yet you're not likely for a while to attain. They epitomize what brotherhood and caring for each other really means. 00:30:48 Speaker 1: The four Chaplains are honored every year and hundreds of interfaith services around the country. The American Legion marks the anniversary of the sinking with non denominational services across the United States. They celebrate the Chaplain's brotherhood and they're shared hope for peace. The Chaplains came to symbolize a dedication to democracy too. Here's President Dwight Eisenhower speaking in nineteen fifty two human Rights. 00:31:17 Speaker 14: The rightful workp as we please to speak and to think, and to earn, and to say, we are specually inspired in our resolution to descend those rights by the memory of Burd Chaplin, who met death bravely, quietly, even tranquility in the thinking of adults. They gave their alives without some points, so that their fellow citizens could live. 00:31:50 Speaker 1: I like how he says tranquility, because that is part of their story that I think a lot about. They stayed calm and tranquil during all the chaos. It's pretty incredible. I think they were able to do that in part because they had each other. Their shared mission. Their friendship gave them strength. It allowed them to show kindness and generosity until the end when they can do nothing more to help the men of the Dorchester. And then they held hands and prayed in English and Latin and Hebrew as the cold water lapped at their feet. Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Sweikert. Our editor is Lydia Jane Kott. Sound designed by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer is Constanze Gayadro, fact checking by Arthur Comforts, and original music by Eric Phillips. The rest of our team includes Malcolm Gladwell, Carl Cadele, Greta Cone, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Grace Ross, Morgan Rattner, Jordan McMillan, Kira Posey, Owen Miller, and Jake Flanagan. And extra special thanks to Polly Fox Britton, the wife of David Fox, who recorded many of the interviews you heard in this episode. That tape was provided by the World War Two Museum. Additional thanks to series creator Dan mcinnon, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and our research intern Emmaline Jones. This is our last episode of this third season, but we want to keep hearing from you. Tell us what other stories you would like to listen to on the show. Email us at Medalal Honor at Pushkin dot Fm. Thank you for listening. I'm your host, JR. Martinez and 00:34:15 Speaker 6: S.