We give thanks & pray for our beloved family members and all others who have served the USA.
Another Veteran that we pray for & give thanks for us Fr. Emil Kapaun.
After his ordination in 1940, Fr. Kapaun’s first assignment was as the assistant parish priest at St. John Nepomucene in his own town of Pilsen. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Fr. Kapaun felt called enter the Chaplain Corps. Finally, his bishop gave permission and Fr. Kapaun joined the Army in August 1944.
Assigned to the 8th Cavalry Regiment of the famous 1st Cavalry Division, Fr. Kapaun shipped out in 1950 to Japan and then on to Korea where war against the Communists was raging. On the field, he was fearless in serving his men: he commonly braved machine gun fire to rescue the wounded and to move from foxhole to foxhole, providing comfort to hungry and cold soldiers. He continuously provided the sacraments in all conditions, becoming famous for constantly risking his life to save others.
The demands and privations of military life appealed to this son of a Kansas farmer; he loved caring for the spiritual and, at times, physical needs of “his boys,” as he called the men. He served in India and the Burma Theater and was promoted to the rank of Captain before being discharged in 1946. After earning his Masters in Education from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Father was permitted to rejoin the Army in 1948.
After repeatedly rejecting appeals to flee, he was captured along with the survivors of his unit by Chinese Communists on All Souls Day, 1950 near Unsan, North Korea. His ministry continued in a prisoner of war camp farther north.
In addition to doing all he could to help the men physically, his most important impact was supernatural: resisting the atheistic communist indoctrination, providing what sacraments he could, and openly defying his captors by holding a sunrise service on Easter Sunday, 1951.
Finally crushed by blood clots, dysentery, and pneumonia, Fr. Kapaun died on May 23, 1951 and was buried in a mass grave.
He was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor Device in September 1950 and the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously in August 1951. After 60 years of petitions from those who served with him, on April 11, 2013, Fr. Kapaun was awarded the nation’s highest decoration: the Medal of Honor. – Andrew Clarendon
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