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Early on the morning of February 3, 1943, survivors from the torpedoed U.S. troopship Dorchester shivered in lifeboats as they watched their ship slide slowly into the nerve-deadening cold of the North Atlantic. Peering through darkness occasionally lit by waving flashlights, they perceived four figures standing close together in a circle on deck.
None of the four wore life jackets. Each had handed his to one of the many young soldiers who—against the captain’s standing order—had shed them in the overheated sleeping quarters below. In the chaotic aftermath of the torpedo hit, sleeping men were startled awake and staggered up to the deck without grabbing their jackets. Launching the lifeboats had also proved a fiasco. Only a few of the boats were usable; the rest were thickly covered with ice that withstood desperate attempts to hack through to the pulleys designed to lower the boats. Some of the life-jacketed men bobbing in the oil-slicked swells made it to the few lifeboats. Most died of the cold.
From the four figures silhouetted on deck, snatches of a hymn reached the shuddering survivors:
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm doth bind the…
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Lord, send us such men and women of Godly love, courage, and ecumenical spirit. We need them now more than ever.