assisting frantic soldiers

[angliholic]

Not long after midnight on February 3, 1943, a German submarine fired three torpedoes at the U.S.A.T. Dorchester, a transport vessel, and scored a direct hit. The four U.S. Army chaplains on board immediately began assisting frantic soldiers by distributing life jackets.



I wonder if I could reword the line in bold as the following. Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

The four U.S. Army pardres aboard immediately began aiding panic soldiers by giving out life jackets.

[David L.]

Not long after midnight on February 3, 1943, a German submarine fired three torpedoes at the U.S.A.T. Dorchester, a transport vessel, and scored a direct hit. The four U.S. Army chaplains on board immediately began assisting frantic soldiers by distributing life jackets.


The four U.S. Army pardres
This is spelt padre (s). A chaplain is a minister of either a protestant church, or a Roman Catholic. A padre is specifically a Roman Catholic chaplain, so you will have changed the meaning - we don't know from the sentence what faiths the chaplains were.

aboard immediately began aiding panicked soldiers by giving out life jackets.
You could, but I suggest you look up the distinction in meaning between panicking, and being frantic

[angliholic]

Thanks, David.
For the sake of simplicity, could you use a few words to describe the basic difference between panic and frantic? I did look them up dozens of times, but I'm still bewilered by them.

[David L.]

panic
noun
sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior

frantic
adjective, adverb
• acting in a hurried, excited way, typically because of the need to act quickly : frantic attempts to resuscitate the girl.

Panic suggests that the soldiers were running about not being sure what to do.
Frantic suggests that they were seized by the urgency of the need to save the ship or themselves; that their actions were performed as quickly as they could; and that they knew exactly what had to be done. The urgency and danger of the situation did not cause them to panic and run around without any clear aim as to what they each needed to do.
In this situation, "panicked" might be the better word. I was concentrating so hard on the grammar, and the phrasing, I missed part of the meaning. It was a transport ship, moving soldiers from one combat zone to another, or perhaps back home. I was thinking that these were the sailors, who would have been trained in exactly what they would have to do in such an emergency: they would work frantically, but as professional sailors, familiar with their ship, I doubt that they would have panicked. However, the soldiers are passengers and would not be familiar with the ship. When the torpedoes hit, and the ship might be sinking, the soldiers could well be panicking. The Army Chaplains were apparently less panicked, and knew to start distributing life-jackets.