Four Chaplains Field Chapel

Four Chaplains Field Chapel. . The four chaplains giving the National D-Day Memorial field chapel its name were among 4 soldiers, merchant seamen, naval armed guard, coast guardsmen, and civilian workers embarked for Greenland aboard USAT Dorchester . At 0100 hours on 3 February 1943, German submarine U 223 torpedoed the vessel amidships. In less than twenty minutes she sank in the icy waters between Newfoundland and Greenland. , , Abandoning any thought of personal safety, the four chaplains did whatever they could to transmit calm, preserve lives, and minister to the foundering ship’s compliment. At the last, the four linked arms and prayed as the deck they stood upon disappeared beneath the waves. Of the 904 aboard, only 229 survived. Chaplain George L. Fox (Methodist), Chaplain Alerandor D. Goode (Jewish), Chaplain Clark V. Poling (Dutch Reformed), and Chaplain John P. Washington (Roman Catholic), were not among them. The embodiment of valor, fidelity, and sacrifice, the four died ministering to the men their care. Their selfless pastoral acts exemplify the military chaplaincy at its best and doubtless elicited similar service from the Allied chaplains on and beyond D-Day. , , The space for this chapel was consecrated by the Right Rev. E. Neff Powell, Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, during a 1940s Protestant field chapel service held on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 29 September 2008. A sermon preached by the Right Rev. George E. Packard, Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies, Episcopal Church USA and Micronesia, preceded the consecration. An archangel in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths, St. Michael is the patron saint of warriors. , Given by Richard and Kathryn Pumphrey.