Chaplain Kapaun Carries a Man Through the Cold

The wind in the Korean hills cut like a blade. Snow had turned the ground white, and the night was so cold that breath hung in the air like little clouds. Among the American soldiers huddled at Unsan was a Catholic priest named Emil Kapaun. He was not supposed to fight. His job was to pray, to comfort, to heal. But on the first day of November, 1950, enemy soldiers swept down the hills by the thousands, and everything changed. Bullets hissed through the dark. Men shouted. Sergeant Herbert Miller lay wounded on the frozen ground, unable to move. Other soldiers were already pulling back. It would have been easy for Emil to run. He did not run. Emil walked calmly into the open ground. He knelt beside Herbert, took the big man's arm around his own shoulders, and lifted. Step by step, through the smoke and the shooting, Emil carried him back to safety. Then Emil went back for someone else. When the battle ended, Emil and hundreds of American soldiers were captured and marched into a prison camp. Cold, hungry, and watched by guards, the men grew discouraged. Some stopped speaking. Some stopped hoping. Emil would not let hope die. He sneaked food to sick men. He made a small bowl from tin scraps to brew broth for the weakest prisoners. He led the men in prayer every morning, his voice low and steady, like a lamp that will not go out. "God is still here," Emil told them. "And so are we." Emil Kapaun died in that camp in the spring of 1951, still praying, still tending his men. Decades later, the United States awarded him the Medal of Honor — the highest honor a soldier can receive. His faith had been his greatest weapon, and he had spent every bit of it on the men beside him.