In Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, she wrote the following discourse for Atticus Finch, her attorney-hero character: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
This past Sunday, I read a newspaper article about that same quality of courage shown by a man of peace who served and died in our military. He was deployed into a region of combat but he carried no weapon. His story is inspirational to say the least because he not only possessed significant physical courage, but also enormous moral courage.
Emil Kapaun was born on April 16, 1916 to a poor, but faith-filled farm family on the prairies of eastern Kansas. Life was hard and even the children had to learn to be resourceful as mechanics and carpenters and to care for the animals during bitter winters and brutally hot summers. With a strong desire to become a priest, he attended Benedictine Conception Abbey and there he completed both high school and college undergraduate studies, then he continued his spiritual education and training at Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis. He was ordained a priest in 1940.
When the United States entered World War II, he asked to become a military chaplain. His bishop initially refused, but later relented. Fr. Kapaun enlisted in 1944 in the Army, served for two years in Burma and India, then returned to civilian life. Two years later, he reenlisted and was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in Japan.
In June 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel, and advanced quickly toward Seoul, South Korea. The U.S. intervened militarily, with the 1st Cavalry Division executing an amphibious landing to block the advancing army. The enemy onslaught was severe and the U.S. units soon were in retreat. Fighting was intense. Fr. Kapaun, with his soldier-parishioners in danger, was tireless. He moved among the GIs, ignoring enemy fire, comforting the wounded, administering the last rites, burying the dead, and offering Mass whenever and wherever he could. On one occasion, he went in front of the U.S. lines, in spite of intense fire, to rescue a wounded soldier.
By August, the U.S. troops had been pushed to the southern end of Korea, near the port of Pusan. Then, on September 15, 1950, the war took a radical turn when U.S. troops landed at Inchon behind the invading army. The North Korean forces fled northward, with the Americans in pursuit. Within a few weeks, the 1st Cavalry Division had crossed the 38th parallel. Unknown to them, China, which had secretly moved a huge army into North Korea, was about to enter the war.
The night of November 1st was quiet. Fr. Kapaun’s battalion, having suffered some 400 casualties among its roster of 700 soldiers, was placed in a reserve position. Chinese troops, however, had infiltrated to within a short distance of them. Suddenly, just before midnight, there was a cacophony of bugles, horns and whistles, as the enemy attacked from all sides.
Fr. Kapaun scrambled among foxholes, sharing a prayer with one soldier, saying a comforting word to another. He assembled many wounded in an abandoned log dugout. All the next day, he scanned the battlefield and, some 15 times, when he spotted a wounded soldier would crawl out and drag the man back to the battalion’s position. By day’s end, the defensive perimeter was drawn so tightly that the log hut and the wounded it contained were outside of it. As evening came and another attack was imminent, the chaplain left the main force for the shelter so that he could be with the wounded. It was soon overrun, and Fr. Kapaun pleaded with the enemy soldiers to no avail for the safety of the injured. Approximately three-quarters of the men in the battalion had been killed or captured. One fellow prisoner, Sgt. Herbert Miller was huddled in a makeshift trench, his ankle broken from a grenade attack. He had played dead for a time, hiding beneath the corpse of an enemy soldier. But, ultimately, he was discovered by another Chinese soldier. As Miller recalls six decades later, “He pointed his gun at my head. I was looking into the barrel. I figured to myself: ‘This is it. I’m all done.’ ”
Then almost miraculously Miller saw a slender GI approaching across a dirt road. As he neared, Miller noticed a small cross on his helmet. It was Fr. Kapaun. He pushed the enemy soldier aside – shockingly without retribution. Vividly remembering the incident, his voice choked with emotion Miller whispers, “Why that soldier never shot Fr. Kapaun, I’ll never know. …I think the Lord was there directing him as to what to do.”
After the battle, hundreds of surviving U.S. prisoners were marched northward over frigid, snow-covered crests. Whenever the column paused, Fr. Kapaun hurried up and down the line, encouraging the men to pray, exhorting them not to give up. When a man had to be carried or be left to die, Fr. Kapaun, although suffering from frostbite himself, set the example by helping to carry a makeshift stretcher. Finally, they reached their destination, a frigid, mountainous area near the Chinese border. The poorly dressed prisoners were given so little to eat that they quickly began starving to death.
For the men to survive they would have to steal food from their captors. So, praying to St. Dismas, the “Good Thief,” Fr. Kapaun would sneak out of his hut in the middle of the night, He’d forage in sheds and fields stealing a sack of grain, or stuffing ears of corn, peaches, potatoes and other food stuff into his pockets, knowing if he were caught he would be immediately executed. He then gave it all to his starving fellow soldiers. He would pound rocks on bombed out tin roofs to shape them into pans he then used to wash the wounded. He volunteered for details to gather wood because the route passed the compound where the enlisted men were kept, and he could encourage them with a prayer, and sometimes slip out of line to visit the sick and wounded. He also undertook tasks that repulsed others, such as cleaning latrines and washing the soiled clothing of men with dysentery.
Despite merciless treatment by his Chinese captors, Fr. Kapaun’s faith never wavered. He continually reminded prisoners to pray, assuring them that in spite of their difficulties, Our Lord would take care of them. As a result of his example, some 15 of his fellow prisoners converted to the Catholic Faith.
Fr. Kapaun’s practice of sharing his meager rations with others who were weaker, lowered his resistance to disease, and eventually led to his death. On May 23, 1951 as he lay dying, his body wracked by pneumonia and dysentery, Lt. Mike Dowe tearfully tried to comfort the man who’d given him and so many others hope and relief during the dark months they had spent in captivity. Suffering and barely able to maintain consciousness, Fr. Kapaun actually tried to comfort the sobbing Lt. Dowe. He clutched his hand and with obvious great effort murmured these last words, “Hey, Mike, don’t worry about me. I’m going to where I always wanted to go and I’ll continue praying for all of you after I get there.”
Although Emil Kapaun never asked for or desired any glory other than his heavenly reward, he did receive the Distinguished Service Cross among other medals and honors after the conflict subsided. But Lt. Dowe and others never forgot the good and courageous thief that was their rock throughout their torment. For over 60 years they lobbied to have the Medal of Honor awarded to Fr. Kapaun. Just yesterday two of his young fellow prisoners, now in their mid-eighties, one of whom was Mike Dowe the other named Robert Wood, joined Kapaun’s relatives and others at the White House where Fr. Emil Kapaun was finally posthumously awarded our Nation’s highest military honor. Recalling Kapaun’s many selfless acts, Wood commented, “As the kids say, he didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk. When I think about him, I get all choked up even 60 years later. It was chaos. It was hell. To have this one man who still had a spark of civility in him – it was an inspiration.”
Though seemingly unrelated, but only seemingly, this past Monday night my wife and I were watching Antiques Road Show on television. One of the items being valued by the appraisers was a water canteen used by a soldier during the Civil War. The canteen had been inscribed in honor of its bearer who perished in the fighting at only 22 years of age. Painted in rough script below the memorial was the following declaration:
We live in deeds, not years.
I believe that same inscription was written by the very hand of God into Rev. Emil Kapaun’s Book of Life as he entered Paradise.
“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it…” – Wilferd Peterson
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque