Army chaplain Emil Kapaun, a priest from Pilsen, Kansas, shipped out to Korea in July 1950, soon after the outbreak of war, along with the Eighth Cavalry Division, Third Battalion. From the moment he arrived, he shared every danger with the troops, often rescuing wounded soldiers under fire and taking his turn digging latrines.

On November 2, the Eighth Cavalry was overrun by Chinese troops near the Yalu River. As they fought their way into retreat, Kapaun and an army doctor volunteered to remain behind with the wounded, allowing themselves to be captured. At great risk, he intervened when their captors prepared to execute the prisoners. Instead, they were marched eighty-seven miles to a North Korean prison camp.

In the camp the prisoners endured freezing cold, while subsisting on starvation rations. Kapaun devoted himself to raising morale. He was also adept at scrounging or stealing contraband—serving up hot water with a few beans or grains of millet, likely saved from his own rations, and calling out, “Hot coffee!”

Much of his time was spent ministering to the sick and dying. Eventually Chaplain Kapaun, skeletally thin, his feet frozen, suffering from dysentery and pneumonia, was among them. Sometime in May 1951, the guards carried him to an empty shelter called “the hospital,” where he died on May 23.

In 1993 his cause for canonization was accepted by the Vatican. In 2013 Kapaun, the most decorated chaplain in U.S. history, received the Medal of Honor.

“Oh God, we ask of thee to give us the courage to be ever faithful.”

—Servant of God Emil Kapaun