DOB/DOD: August 7, 1910 (Columbus, OH) – February 3, 1943; 32 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Elizabeth M. Jung (1915-1982) on June 21, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After her husband’s death, Elizabeth remarried to E. Gayle Fitzsimmons (1911-1950). Then remarried one last time to Bruce Cunningham-Werdnig (?-).
CHILDREN: One son, Clark V. “Corky” (1940-2021). One daughter, Susan Elizabeth Poling Smith (1941-).
SCHOOLS: Rutgers University, 1933, A.B. Yale University Divinity School, 1936, B.D.
ORDAINED: Ordained in the Reformed Church in America, October 9, 1936
PARISHES SERVED: Student pastor and Assistant Minister at the First Church of Christ, New London, Connecticut. In March 1938, he accepted a call as Pastor of the First Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York.
ENLISTMENT: Appointed on June 10, 1942, and entered active duty June 25, 1942
SERVICE NUMBER: O-477425
UNIT: 131st Quartermaster Truck Regiment, Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
FAMILY: Born to Reverend Doctor Daniel A. Poling [Chaplain in WWI] (1884-1968) and Susie J. Vandersall Poling (1882-1918). Stepmother, Lillian A. Diebold (1880-1967). One brother, Daniel K. (1908-2007). Two sisters, Mary S. Poling Wood (1912-2001) and Elizabeth J. Poling (1917-1999). Two half-sisters, Joan M. Bromage Malcolm (1917-1999), and Treva M. “Billie” Bromage Roy (1920-2011).
NOTE: His father, who had served as a World War I chaplain, told him chaplains risk and give their lives, too—and with that knowledge, he applied to serve as an Army chaplain
Graduated from Oakwood, a Quaker high school in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1928. Photos contributed by Matthew A. Voorhees, School Archivist. NOTE: Three of Lieutenant Poling’s sisters also attended Oakwood: Ann (1932), Jane (1935), and Treva Poling Roy (1937). Clark’s brother, Daniel, was the commencement speaker in 1927 and 1935, and his great-grandson, Dylan Shad (2005), and great-granddaughter Lillian Shad (2007) are also graduates.
Hope College, Holland, Michigan. Photos below from Hope College yearbook, Class of 1930.
Rutgers University, Class of 1933
Yale University School of Divinity, Class of 1936
The Clark V. Poling Scholarship at Yale University
The Clark Vandersall Poling Memorial Scholarship was established in 1945 by his parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Daniel A. Poling, and his wife, Elizabeth Jung Poling, as a memorial to Chaplain Clark Vandersall Poling, Class of 1936, who was one of the four chaplains of the United States Army who gave their lives for others when a troop transport was sunk by enemy action in the Atlantic Ocean on the night of February 3, 1943.
From Yale Alumni Magazine, May/June 2006 edition
SACRIFICE AT SEA
by Judith Ann Schiff, chief research archivist at the Yale University Library
In 1948, 12 years after he graduated from the Yale Divinity School, Clark Vandersall Poling’s name was carved in one of the marble tablets that line the walls of the war memorial adjacent to Woolsey Hall. Poling is among the 514 Yale alumni who died in World War II, and though his name is not well known today, his wartime sacrifice as one of the “Four Chaplains” was mourned throughout America in 1943. In February of that year, Poling and three other pastors—a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Methodist minister—were sailing for Greenland on the troop ship Dorchester when it was torpedoed. Without hesitation, the clergymen gave their life jackets to four servicemen, and, praying together, the four chaplains went down with the ship.
Clark Poling ’36BD was the son of Rev. Daniel Poling, a nationally known religious leader and writer. Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1910, the younger Poling graduated from Rutgers in 1933 and from the Divinity School three years later. Poling represented the seventh generation of ordained ministers in his family and served two congregations in Connecticut before being appointed minister of the First (Dutch) Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York, in 1938. He married Elizabeth Mane that same year; they had two children.
In late 1942, Poling’s church granted him a leave of absence to enter the army. After completing chaplain’s training in Mississippi, he reported to Camp Miles Standish in Taunton, Massachusetts. Poling quickly became friends with three other chaplains who were awaiting overseas transport: Rabbi Alexander Goode, Father John P. Washington, and the Reverend George L. Fox.
On January 23, 1943, the four chaplains sailed from New York. The Dorchester, a troop ship carrying 904 men in all, was 23rd in a 64-ship convoy. On February 3, a little before 1:00 a.m. and just 90 miles from Greenland, a torpedo fired by a German U-boat tore a gaping hole in the Dorchester. There were not enough lifejackets, and only minutes were left to jump into the darkness into the lifeboats or the icy water. Of the 904 on board, 678 were lost.
“Transport Victims Froze at Their Oars” read the headline of a New York Times account of the tragedy. Details of the four chaplains’ heroism emerged as survivors recovered and were interviewed. One of the 226 survivors was Engineer Grady Clark, who had been standing close to Chaplain Poling. Clark said: “They quieted the panic, forced men ‘frozen’ on the rail toward the boats or over the side, helped men adjust life jackets, and at last gave away their own.”
Clark spoke of Chaplain Poling’s contagious laugh and continued, “I swam away from the ship and turned to watch. The flares now lighted everything. The bow came up high, and she slid under. The last I saw, the chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again.”
In December 1943, the Army awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to the families of each chaplain. “The manner of their dying was one of the most noble deeds of the war,” said Brigadier General William R. Arnold. “Men of all faiths can be proud that these men of different faiths died together.”
The Four Chaplains have been memorialized in many ways. In 1944, Rev. Daniel Poling dedicated a book, Your Daddy Did Not Die, to his son’s children. In 1948, he gave up the pulpit of the largest Baptist church in Philadelphia to become chaplain of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains—a shrine dedicated to people of all faiths. More recent commemorations include Sea of Glory, a novel; No Greater Glory, a nonfiction account; and Four Chaplains, a documentary. In 1997, relatives of the four men founded the Immortal Chaplains Foundation in Minnesota to perpetuate their legacy and to “honor those who have risked all to protect others of different faith or race.”
At Yale, Poling’s family established the Clark Vandersall Poling Memorial Scholarship in May 1945. His Divinity School classmates, in their 1943 newsletter, dedicated to Poling the following testament: “Clark had more life than any other member of the Class. It is perhaps fitting that he should be the first to move ahead into the adventure of the life beyond. Yet his going is the keenest personal loss to all who knew him and loved him. His place can never be filled by anyone else. His sacrifice makes vivid the tragedy of war, that the price war extracts is the best of human life.”
Clark V. Poling was the youngest of the four chaplains and the seventh generation in his family to be ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church. When war came, he was anxious to go, but not as a chaplain. ” I’m not going to hide behind the church in some safe office out of the firing line,” he told his father. The elder Poling replied, ” Don’t you know that chaplains have the highest mortality rate of all? As a Chaplain, you’ll have the best chance in the world to be killed. You just can’t carry a gun to kill anyone yourself.” So Clark Poling left his pastorate in Schenectady, New York, and enlisted as a chaplain. Just before he left for active duty, Clark asked his father to pray for him — “not for my safe return, that wouldn’t be fair. I just pray that I shall do my duty … never be a coward … and have the strength, courage, and understanding of men. Just pray that I shall be adequate.” Poling began active duty on June 10, 1942, and served until February 3, 1943.
World War II United States Army Chaplain. Born in Columbus, Ohio, he attended Hope College in Holland, Michigan, but finished his studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, graduating in 1933. His postgraduate study was at Yale Divinity School. He served a student pastorate in Connecticut before being elected pastor of the First Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York. After Pearl Harbor, he volunteered as a chaplain and was appointed on June 10, 1942. He served as chaplain with the 131st Quartermaster Truck Regiment and reported to Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, before attending Chaplain training at Harvard, where he first met his classmates, Jewish chaplain Alexander Goode; Methodist chaplain, George Fox; and Catholic chaplain, John Washington. In January 1943, he was reunited with his classmates as the four chaplains embarked on the converted ocean liner USAT Dorchester, which was transporting 902 soldiers to Britain via Greenland as part of convoy SG-19. On February 2, 1943, a German U-boat fired on the convoy; a torpedo struck the Dorchester sometime after midnight. The Dorchester lost all power, and in the cold and dark, men scrambled for the lifeboats. The four chaplains calmly organized the men as best they could, handing out life jackets from storage, encouraged the men with prayers, and tended to the wounded as best as was possible. When it became apparent that there were not enough life jackets, each of the chaplains took off his own life jacket and gave each to a young soldier. When the last of the undamaged lifeboats were away, the chaplains prayed with those left behind on the sinking ship. Less than thirty minutes after being hit, the Dorchester sank with the loss of 672 men, including the Four Chaplains. The survival of as many as 230 men was directly credited to the chaplains’ actions. On December 19, 1944, each of the chaplains was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross. A U.S. postage stamp was issued in 1948 commemorating the Four Chaplains. A stained glass window in memory of the Four Chaplains was installed in the A-ring of the Pentagon on the third floor. On July 14, 1960, Congress created the Four Chaplains Medal, which was presented to each of the chaplains’ next of kin by the Secretary of the Army. For their courage and self-sacrifice, by Act of Congress, February 3 is designated Four Chaplains Day.
Clark Summit, Deering, New Hampshire
The high point of the town of Deering, New Hampshire, formerly known as Wolf Hill (1570 feet), was renamed Clark Summit in Lieutenant Poling’s honor, and a memorial plaque with the following inscription was placed at the summit outlook.
“Located on what was once family land, Clark thought this was a peaceful place and would often go there to reflect on big decisions in his life. In fact, it was at Wolf Hill’s summit that Clark decided to become a minister.”
From deering.nh.us
Clark Poling loved hiking in the woods of Deering. Before joining the US Army as a chaplain, he spent two nights alone on a granite ledge on Wolf Hill, hoping to hear ‘The Voice.’ Later he told his father: “I did not hear it — The Voice,” he continued. He spoke very slowly and as though only incidentally to me. “But Dad, I am glad I went; yes, I’m glad. Some things are clearer now and other things will be, I know.” And I know that on the mountain he had met himself.
Memorial stone in Poling Cemetery, near 144 Wolf Hill Road, Deering, New Hampshire. Photo from deering.nh.us.
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