Father Emil Kapaun, born in 1916 in Pilsen, Kansas, grew up in one of the poorest families in town and from a young age understood discipline through solid hard work on the family farm. This bright, humorous, tough, no-nonsense Mid Westerner served as an Army Chaplain during the Korean War (1950-1953), a period when the U.S. led United Nations forces to preserve democracy in Southern Korea when it was over-run by Communist North Korea, secretly aided by Communist China and the Soviet Union.
Kapaun was called "The Shepherd in Combat Boots" by the men he served. He was loved not only by Catholics but by Protestants, Jews, and Atheists. He didn't preach unwanted sermons at them. He asked in advance if they wanted him to pray for them. He foraged for food for them, carried litters, wrote letters home for them, ran out into enemy fire to bring the wounded to safety, hopped from foxhole to foxhole to comfort them. He had narrow escapes: his helmet was blown off, his pipestem was shattered. He celebrated Mass from an improvised altar set up on the front end of a jeep. After the jeep was destroyed by a mine, he found an old bicycle and pedaled along narrow trails to search out his men, the 8th Cavalry Regiment.
The poorly trained men often went insane from hours of close combat and brutal fighting. Kapaun told a friend "This fighting is nerve-wracking. It seems unreal. I don't know if I will live through the night. We are close to Heaven, but really we are more like in hell."
When Chinese Communists encircled their 3rd Battalion during the battle of Unsan, cutting off escape, Kapaun didn't flee; he chose to stay behind to care for the wounded, knowing that meant he'd be captured with them. In November, 1950, he and the other captured soldiers were forced on a Death March for eighty-four miles to the Chinese POW camp. During the march, he encouraged the weakened men to help carry their wounded comrades, as anyone too ill to travel and left behind was being shot by their captors. The men listened to him when they didn't want to listen to their officers. After all, he was carrying a wounded man on his own back.
At the camp, Kapaun and the other prisoners were treated mercilessly by their guards, denied food, water, and medicines, and forced to stand for hours without clothes in the freezing cold. Kapaun was ridiculed for his faith. Now his shepherding deepened in intensity. He stole food, coffee, and tea for his men, and the utensils to heat them. He smuggled medicine to their Doctor. He boiled water to stop the ever-present dysentery and gave his own clothes to men who were freezing in the 40 below zero temperatures. At night he slipped into mud huts to lead men in prayer, say the rosary, and administer the sacraments.
"As one of the surviving POWs observed, when Father Kapaun said 'God bless you,' his very presence could just for a moment turn a mud hut into a cathedral." (from an article on Father Emil in "The Catholic Leader.")
On Easter Day, 1951, he didn't have his Mass Kit to celebrate Mass. So, even though forbidden to pray by their captors, he told the story of Christ's Passion and led the men in the Stations of the Cross.
He managed all this while weakened himself from a blood clot in his leg, dysentery, and pneumonia. Eventually his captors decided to take him to a deserted Buddhist temple which they called a "hospital," but which the prisoners called a death house, where failing prisoners were isolated and denied food and medicine.
Before the guards led him away, Father Emil smiled at the weeping men who surrounded him, and said "Tell them back home that I died a happy death. When I get up there, I'll say a prayer for all of you."
Father Emil Kapaun died of malnutrition and pneumonia and was buried in a mass grave near the Yalu River. His remains were never recovered. President Obama bestowed the nation's highest military declaration, the Medal of Honor, posthumously on Father Kapaun on April 11, 2013. His life and death teach us that if we have faith, nothing can separate us from the strengthening Presence of Christ. In Him, we can suffer all, endure all, triumph over all. Our crosses can become our everlasting crowns of life.
"Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
(John 15:13.)