As their torpedoed ship sank in WWII, the Catholic priest, rabbi and two Protestant ministers gave their own life preservers to soldiers and went down praying with those who couldn't escape.
For a long time, the story of the four chaplains was everywhere.
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| Photos of the four chaplains — from left, Rabbi Alexander Goode, Catholic priest John Washington, Dutch Reformed minister Clark Poling and Methodist minister George Fox — are displayed at the Immortal Chaplains Memorial Sanctuary aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach. (Gary Friedman, Los Angeles Times / Feb. 3, 2013) |
In classrooms, posters showed the men of different faiths, arms linked in prayer, braced against the waves engulfing the deck of their torpedoed troop ship on Feb. 3, 1943. They had given their life preservers to frantic soldiers and urged troops paralyzed with fear to jump into the icy North Atlantic before they were sucked down by the sinking ship's whirlpool.
