Hero Card 112, Card Pack 10
Photo credit: U.S. Army, via Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation (digitally restored)

Hometown: Gilman, VT
Branch: U.S. Army
Unit: Army Chaplain Corps
Military Honors: Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Purple Heart (2) Chaplain’s Medal for Heroism
Date of Sacrifice: February 3, 1943 - Labrador Sea, near Greenland
Age: 42
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

George Lansing Fox was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, on March 15, 1900—one of five children. Eager to leave home, he quit school at age 17 and convinced Army officials that he was 18. As the United States entered “the Great War” (World War I, 1914-1918), Fox trained as an ambulance driver and medical orderly, then was sent to France and the war’s Western Front.

During his WWI service, Fox’s bravery earned him the Silver Star medal and the French Croix de Guerre for rescuing a wounded soldier from a battlefield filled with poison gas, even though he wore no mask himself.

After the war, Fox returned home to finish high school, then briefly took a job with the Guarantee Trust Company. In 1923 he enrolled at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, married, and became an itinerant Methodist preacher. In November of 1924, his son Wyatt Ray Fox was born. George served as a student pastor in Downs, Illinois, and in 1929 enrolled at Illinois Wesleyan University to continue his studies.

After graduation, Fox again took a student pastorate—this time in Rye, New Hampshire. He enrolled at Boston University School of Theology, where he earned a Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree. He was ordained as a Methodist minister on June 10, 1934, and accepted pastorates in Waits River, Vermont, and later in Gilman, Vermont. While in Gilman, a second child was born to the Fox family: daughter Mary Elizabeth.

With his service as a war veteran and Methodist minister, Fox was appointed as the state of Vermont’s American Legion chaplain and historian.

By 1939, war was again raging in Europe. With the December 7, 1941, surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the United States could no longer sit on the sidelines. Fully aware of the horrors of war, George Fox joined the Army Chaplain Service, beginning active duty on August 8, 1942—the same day his son Wyatt enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Fox was assigned to the U.S. Army Chaplain School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He and three classmates would soon become known to the nation as the “Four Chaplains” because of an act of uncommon selflessness and courage.

[NOTE: The following account of events aboard the Dorchester is repeated for each of the Four Chaplains]

German U-boat Attack

On January 23, 1943, the USAT (United States Army Transport) Dorchester left New York harbor, sailing through the North Atlantic into the Labrador Sea. Her destination was the southern tip of Greenland—where the U.S. Army had constructed Narsarsuaq Air Base in 1941.

The base housed as many as 4,000 servicemen who were rotated out on a regular basis due to the harsh weather of Greenland. Narsarsuaq was one link in the Allies’ North Atlantic Ferry Route, in which American aircraft were sent to Europe during World War II.

Disrupting this flow of military assets became a high priority for the Germans. Due to frequent encounters with German U-boat submarines, the dangerous trip to Greenland aboard slow troop transport ships kept American service members on edge until they arrived safely on shore.

Dorchester was part of a convoy, and carried 902 people—soldiers, merchant seamen, and civilian workers. At 12:55 a.m. on the night of February 3, 1943, just 150 miles from their destination, German U-boat U-223 fired three torpedoes at the Dorchester. One exploded into her starboard side. A hundred men were killed instantly.

Dorchester’s electrical systems were destroyed, and she was rapidly taking on water. Panic swept the dying vessel, those not trapped below decks scrambled topside—stunned from the explosion, the frigid darkness, and the blasting arctic winds.

Hans J. Danielsen, the ship’s captain, gave the order to abandon ship. Dorchester would slip beneath the waves of the Atlantic’s icy waters within 20 minutes.

The “Four Chaplains”

Four U.S Army chaplains—all classmates at Harvard—were aboard Dorchester that fateful night: Methodist minister George L. Fox, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, Dutch Reformed pastor Clark V. Poling, and Catholic priest John P. Washington.

According to the U.S. Army’s account:

Once topside, the chaplains opened a storage locker and began distributing life jackets. It was then that Engineer Grady Clark witnessed an astonishing sight. When there were no more lifejackets in the storage room, the chaplains simultaneously removed theirs and gave them to four frightened young men.

As the ship went down, survivors in nearby rafts could see the four chaplains—arms linked and braced against the slanting deck. Their voices could also be heard offering prayers and singing hymns.

Only 230 of the 902 men aboard Dorchester survived. There weren’t enough life rafts. In the chaos, darkness, and stormy sea, only two of the 14 lifeboats were successfully used in abandoning ship.

Each of the Four Chaplains was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their bravery. George L. Fox’s citation reads:

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously) to First Lieutenant (Chaplain) George L. Fox (ASN: 0-485690), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an enemy of the United States. On the night of 3 February 1943, the U.S.A.T. Dorchester, a loaded troop transport, was torpedoed without warning by an enemy submarine in the North Atlantic and began to sink rapidly. In the resulting confusion and darkness some men found themselves without life jackets and others became helpless through fear and the dread of plunging into the freezing water. Chaplain Fox with three fellow Chaplains, moved about the deck, heroically and calmly, encouraging the men and assisting them to abandon ship. After the available supply of life jackets was exhausted they gave up their own and remained aboard ship and went down with it, offering words of encouragement and prayers to the last. Chaplain Fox’s great self-sacrifice, personal bravery and zealous devotion to duty exemplifies the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States and reflect great credit upon himself, the Chaplains Corps, and the United States Army.

Tributes

Numerous tributes, memorials, chapels, bridges, magazine articles, and books preserve the story of the Four Chaplains. In 1948, a U.S. postage stamp was issued commemorating their courage. A stained-glass window depicting the four heroes was installed on the third floor, in the A-ring of the Pentagon. The U.S. Congress created a Four Chaplains Medal, which was presented to the chaplains’ families by Secretary of the Army Wilber M. Brucker on January 18, 1961 at Fort Myer, Virginia. By an Act of Congress, February 3 has been designated as Four Chaplains Day.