A Korean War hero

Good day all. With the current news of North Korea threatening to restart the Korean War, I thought I would report on a true hero from the last time one of the Kim’s started something. This man never fired a shot at the enemy and didn’t carry a gun.

He was a U.S. Army Chaplain and his name was Father Emil Joseph Kapaun ((Emil Kapaun)) and he is credited with saving hundreds of soldiers during the war. Now, it looks like he is going to receive America’s highest award, the Medal of Honor ((Medal of Honor)). Here are some of the details from Fox News:

In the cold, barren hills of Korea more than 60 years ago, two teary-eyed soldiers stood in a prisoner of war camp where their chaplain lay dying.

The Rev. Emil Kapaun was weak, his body wracked by pneumonia and dysentery. After six brutal months in the hellish camp, the once sturdy Kansas farmer’s son could take no more. Thousands of soldiers had already died, some starving, others freezing to death. Now the end was near for the chaplain.

Lt. Mike Dowe said goodbye to the man who’d given him hope during those terrible days. The young West Point grad cried, even as the chaplain, he says, tried to comfort him with his parting words: “Hey, Mike, don’t worry about me. I’m going to where I always wanted to go and I’ll say a prayer for all of you.”

Lt. Robert Wood wept, too, watching the Roman Catholic chaplain bless and forgive his captors. He helped carry Kapaun out of the mud hut and up a hill on a stretcher after Chinese soldiers ordered he be moved to a hospital, a wretched, maggot-filled place the POWs dubbed “the death house.” There was little or no medical care there. Kapaun died on May 23, 1951.

These two soldiers — and many more — never forgot their chaplain. Not his courage in swatting away an enemy soldier pointing a gun at a GI’s head. Not his talent for stealing food, then sneaking it to emaciated troops. Not the inspiring way he rallied his “boys,” as he called them, urging them to keep their spirits up.

The plain-spoken, pipe-smoking, bike-riding chaplain was credited with saving hundreds of soldiers during the Korean War. Kapaun (pronounced Kah-PAHWN) received the Distinguished Service Cross and many other medals. His exploits were chronicled in books, magazines and a TV show. A high school was named for him. His statue stands outside his former parish in tiny Pilsen, Kansas.

Father Kapaun was a true hero, in more ways than one. He never thought about himself, but only for others. He lived the ideals of the Catholic Church and the Chaplain Corps ((Chaplain Corps (United States Army))). Now, after way to many years, he is going to receive the recognition he truly deserves.

Dowe and other POWs had lobbied on and off for years, writing letters, doing interviews, enlisting support on Capitol Hill. Dowe’s recommendation was turned down in the 1950s.The campaign stalled, then picked up steam decades later. Kapaun’s “boys” grew old, their determination did not.

Now it has finally paid off.

On April 11, those two young lieutenants, Dowe and Wood, now 85 and 86, will join their comrades, Kapaun’s family and others at the White House where President Barack Obama will award the legendary chaplain the Medal of Honor posthumously.

“It is about time,” Dowe says.

This isn’t all that is happening. The Catholic Church is considering Father Kapaun for sainthood.

An hour away from Pilsen, the Rev. John Hotze, judicial vicar of the Wichita Diocese, has been leading the case for sainthood.

When he officially started the project in 2008, he says, his first task was to look for any reasons Kapaun wasn’t worthy. The closest thing to a flaw he found, he says, was a doctor in the POW camp who’d been frustrated because Kapaun, as a patient, gave his food to those he felt were needier. “That,” he says, “was the worst anybody said about Father Kapaun.”

Over the next three years, Hotze, with a team of researchers, presented a 160-question survey to some 55 people who knew Kapaun from his childhood to his dying days. Personal interviews were conducted around the country and an 8,000-page record was amassed of every word written about and by Kapaun, including some 1,500 articles and even his homilies, some of them in Czech. (The Kansas-born chaplain learned his parents’ ancestral language.)

A postulator in Rome will assemble the case for canonization, which is ultimately decided by the pope.

Two miracles are needed, and Hotze says there are potential candidates: a college student who suffered a life-threatening head injury in a pole-vaulting accident but recovered and teenage girl who healed from liver and lung disease, without any need for dialysis. In both instances, Hotze says, their families and friends prayed to Kapaun for his intercession.

I’m somewhat aware of the process for canonization, and it is deliberately meant to be difficult. I don’t know about the two miracles listed above, but I would say Father Kapaun definitely had the interest of God. Here are a few things that happened while he was in Korea.

It was November 1950 when Chinese soldiers overran the U.S. troops near Unsan. Sgt. Herbert Miller, a hardened World War II vet, was huddled in a ditch, his ankle broken from a grenade attack. He played dead for a time, hiding beneath the corpse of an enemy soldier. But he was ultimately discovered by another.

Miller picks up the story 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 the soldier’s helmet. Kapaun simply pushed the enemy aside — shockingly, without retribution.

“Why he never shot him,” Miller says, “I’ll never know. I’ll never know. … I think the Lord was there directing him what to do.”

Kapaun reached down, scooped up Miller and carried him on his back as they were taken captive.

“Put me down. You can’t carry me,” Miller repeatedly told Kapaun. And he recalls the chaplain’s reply:

“If I put you down, they’ll shoot you.”

Kapaun carried the wounded sergeant, or supported him, hobbling on one foot, until they arrived days later at the village of Pyoktong, where a POW camp was eventually established.

There is a phrase that everyone should know. The phrase?

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

Father Kapaun probably saved the life of Sargent Miller. Historically, Asian armies aren’t noted for the care of prisoners of war. Father Kapaun was not what you might call a model prisoner either.

It was there on Easter Sunday 1951 that Kapaun, defying his captors, conducted Mass with a makeshift crucifix on a brilliantly sunny day. At the end of the service, Dowe recalls, the hills and valley echoed with the prisoners singing “America The Beautiful.”

Would you care to guess how well that went over with the Communist guards? I can give you a hint. Anyone else probably would have been beaten to death, but Father Kapaun was not touched. He was also very ill at the time of this event.

By then, Kapaun, a patch covering one injured eye, was very sick. About a week later, he almost died from a blood clot in his leg. But he kept going.

An American Hero, and possibly a saint in the Catholic Church. He could have given up, he didn’t have to be in the places he was, but he had answered a higher calling. Now, it is our turn to show our respect for a great man.

Father Kapaun’s nephew, Ray Kapaun, now 56, will accept the medal on his family’s behalf. He’ll be joined by two other nephews and a niece of the chaplain. Kansas political leaders, Latham, the historian, Hotze, others members of the Wichita Diocese and the Pilsen parish will be there, too.

And I think that Father Kapaun will be there as well, watching over his old parish and other soldiers in need.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~ (Not feeling all that angry right now)

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