In the 61 years since then, this remarkable man has inspired a growing number of admirers. After his death, the Army recognized his service with a Bronze Star and Distinguished Service Cross. Today, he is being considered for the Medal of Honor by the President and for canonization by the Vatican.

The Post acquainted its readers with him in 1954, when it carried Ray M. Dowe, Jr.’s account of “The Ordeal of Chaplain Kapaun.” Dowe had been in the same prison, and knew how the Captain’s self-sacrifice had helped save the lives of many GIs.

Even before his internment, Dowe said, Father Kapaun had become a legend. He visited front-line troops on an old bicycle after his jeep was destroyed.

Helmet jammed down over his ears, pockets stuffed with apples and peaches he had scrounged from Korean orchards, he’d ride this bone-shaker over the rocky roads and the paths through the paddy fields until he came to the forward outposts. There he’d drop in a shallow hole beside a nervous rifleman, crack a joke or two, hand him a peach, say a little prayer with him and move on to the next hole.

It was his devotion to the wounded that finally cost him his freedom, and his life.

On November 2, 1950, the 8^th Cavalry was encircled by Communist troops at Unsan. The soldiers were ordered to get past the enemy as best they could and regroup behind American lines.

Father Kapaun, who was unwounded, might have escaped with them. He refused to go. Of his own free will he stayed on, helping Captain Clarence L. Anderson, the regimental surgeon, take care of the wounded. And there, just at dark, the Chinese took him as he said the last prayers over a dying man.

Kapaun and Dowe were marched to a prison camp where they were barely kept alive on 500 grams of millet or cracked corn every day.

Korea 1950: An exhausted soldier is evacuated by Capt. Jerome Dolan and Chaplain Kaplaun.

Then they cut it down to 450 grams. It was obvious, Father said, that we must either steal food or slowly starve. And in that dangerous enterprise we must have the help of some power beyond ourselves. So, standing before us all, he said a prayer to St. Dismas, the Good Thief, who was crucified at the right hand of Jesus, asking for his aid. I’ll never doubt the power of prayer again. Father, it seemed, could not fail.

At the risk of being shot by the guards, he’d sneak at night into the little fields around the compound… and find hidden potatoes and grain.

When men were called out to [the supply shed] Father would slip in at the end of the line [then] slide off into the bushes… He’d come up behind the shed, and while the rest of us started a row with the guards doling out the rations, he’d sneak in, snatch up a sack of cracked corn and scurry off into the bushes with it.

Father Kapaun took his greatest risks, Dowe said, to slip away with food and supplies to the isolated house where the wounded were kept.

He scrounged cotton undershirts to make bandages. He took their old bandages, foul with corruption, and sneaked them out and washed them and sneaked them back again. He picked the lice from their bodies, an inestimable service, for a man so weak he cannot pick his own lice soon will die.

He joked with them, and said prayers for them, and held them in his arms like children as delirium came upon them. But the main thing he did for them was to put into their hearts the will to live. For when you are wounded and sick and starving, it’s easy to give up and quietly die.

He gathered and washed the foul undergarments of the dead and distributed them to men so weak from dysentery they could not move, and he washed and tended these men as if they were little babies.

He traded his watch for a blanket, and cut it up to make warm socks for helpless men whose feet were freezing.

He did a thousand little things to keep us going.

Inevitably, Kapaun fell victim to the starvation and harsh conditions that struck down so many of his comrades. Captain Anderson, the camp surgeon, nursed him through two serious illnesses. Kapaun had just recovered from them when he contracted pneumonia and fell into a delirious fever.

I believe that period of semiconsciousness was the only happy time he knew during his captivity. Around him there seemed to gather all the people he had known in his boyhood on the farm in Kansas and in his school days. Babbling happily, sometimes laughing, he spoke to his mother and his father, and to the priests he’d known in seminary.

Finally, he sank into a deep and quiet sleep, and when he awoke, he was completely rational. The crisis had passed. He was getting well.

He was sitting up, eating and cracking jokes, when the guards came with a litter to take him to the hospital [where] men in extremis were left to lie untended in filth and freezing cold, until merciful death took them.

The doctors protested violently, but the Chinese ordered Kapaun onto a stretcher and forbad anyone from going along to care for him.

Father himself made no protest. He looked around the room at all of us standing there, and smiled. He held in his hands the golden ciborium, the little covered cup in which, long ago, he had carried the blessed communion bread.

“Tell them back home that I died a happy death,” he said, and smiled again.

Then he turned to me. “Don’t take it hard, Mike,” he said. “I’m going where I’ve always wanted to go. And when I get up there, I’ll say a prayer for all of you.”

I stood there, crying unashamed, as they took him down the road, the little gold cup still shining in his hand. Beside me stood Fezi Gurgin, a Turkish lieutenant, a Mohammedan. “To Allah who is my God,” said Fezi Bey, “I will say a prayer for him.”

A few days later he was dead.

We hasten to add that Emil J. Kapaun, while a remarkable and inspiring individual, made no greater sacrifice than any of the 36,000 Americans who died in that war, or the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives defending this country.

All are heroes. All deserve to be remembered for the price they paid for our liberty.

Father Kapaun helping a wounded comrade. Statue located in Pilsen, Kansas. Image taken by Art Davis… Wikipedia

The Non-Combatant Hero: Emil Kapaun The Saturday Evening Post

The War Horse, Model 2011: U.S. Special Forces on horseback in Afghanistan.

The horse was also conscripted during the Korean War. A war horse named Reckless served the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Marines on the Bunker Hill-Panmunjom line with such distinction that she earned the rank of sergeant.

Her story, written for the Post by Col. Andy Geer U.S.M.C.R., began when a Marine raiding force was nearly cut off by Chinese troops as it fought its way back into Allied lines. To cover the incoming marines, the battalion created a ‘fire curtain’ using recoilless rifles — called “Reckless Rifles.”

Ammunition carriers ran over hills and across paddies in an exhausting race against time and space. It was a killing job, man-packing the 75-mm. artillery shells to the firing positions. The fire of the recoilless weapons was slowing to an intermittent cough when the last of the raiders married up with the main body.

The battle convinced 2d Lt. Eric Pedersen a horse was required to supply his portable artillery pieces… The next day, though suffering from leg, hip and face wounds, Pedersen hooked a trailer to his jeep and took the rough road south.

His destination was a race track in Seoul, where all racing had been canceled for the duration of the war. There he met breeders eager to sell the horses they could no longer race. Pedersen found a promising young Mongolian mare and paid $250 of his own money for her. Her name had been ‘Flame of the Morning,’ but the Marines soon rechristened her ‘Reckless.’

T/Sgt. Joseph Latham put the recruit through ” hoof ” camp. Long hours were spent in the hills, teaching the little sorrel to become accustomed to a friendly firing and not to bolt when the recoilless rifles back-blasted their horrendous pathway of destruction.

Latham taught her how to cross over communication and barbed wire and to move into a tent or bunker without invitation. Although the marines had built her an open-faced bunker, Reckless roamed the camp, and when it began to rain she walked into the nearest tent. Upon her appearance, a marine would say, “Here’s Reckless,” while the rest simply pulled up their legs or shifted a sleeping bag or two to make room.

By the end of her training, Reckless was routinely carrying ten rounds of 75mm shells: 220 pounds in all. Then, in July, the Chinese launched an all-out attack on four Marine outposts.

The savagery of the battle for the so-called Nevada complex had never been equaled in Marine Corps history.

A 75 mm. recoilless rifle in use during the Korean War.

Reno [had been] lost with all hands aboard. Vegas was lost with heavy casualties. Elko and Carson held tenuously.

Orders came from higher command to recapture Vegas. The second battalion, 5th Marines, was ordered in for the counter-attack, with Reckless and her rifles in close support.

The fury of the battle reached such heights that veterans of the first and middle wars are unable to compare it with previous engagements. Enemy in-coming artillery and mortar shells were judged to be at the rate of 500 rounds a minute.

Losses were staggering. Capt. John Melvin’s D Company of the second battalion (over 600 men) was shot away from a full complement to sixteen men in less than two hours. E Company of the same battalion suffered nearly as badly.

It was under these brutal conditions that the Marine’s war horse showed her indomitable spirit, following her orders without supervision or even guidance.

To supply the guns that were supporting the assault units, the little sorrel had to carry

Reckless and her combat trainer, Sgt. Joseph Latham.

her load of 75-mm. shells across a paddy and into the hills. The distance to the firing positions of the rifles was over 1800 yards. Each yard was passage through a shower of explosives. The final climb to the firing positions was at a nearly forty-five-degree angle.

Because of the steepness of the climb, Latham loaded her with only six rounds.

On the first few trips Latham or Pfc. Gary Craig or Monroe Coleman — particular friends of hers— led her from to the front lines. After the fourth or fifth trip she returned from the forward position to the dump alone.

Upon being loaded, she took off across the paddy without order or direction. Thereafter she marched the fiery gauntlet alone.

Fifty-one times Reckless delivered her load of explosives. All three weapons were kept in action; one fired so fast the barrel crystallized.

Vegas was retaken and held against murderous counterattacks. The violence of battle ebbed, Vegas was secure (until Turkish forces from the U.N.) relieved the marines.

When the fighing was over the battalion’s gratitude toward Reckless was only exceeded by their pride their war horse.

When the 5th Marines held a regimental parade honoring the heroes of the Vegas battle, Reckless passed in review with her unit. She had become a celebrated marine. Generals and colonels came to call on her; newspapermen interviewed her and she appeared on television.

None of this, however, can be said to have affected the distance between her ears. She was content to do her job, live on marine chow and, of a hot day, have a beer before turning in.

The battalion was still on the front line when the Korean cease-fire was signed. The entire unit, plus its war horse, was assembled for a final parade before returning state-side.

At a ceremony as formal as could be arranged on a wind-swept Korean field, Reckless

Reckless welcomed at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. Lt. Eric Pedersen is shown on right.

was cited for her bravery. Maj. Gen. Randolph Pate, division commander, pinned sergeant’s chevrons to her shiny new red-and-gold silk blanket. It was Sergeant Reckless now.

Her farewell citation said, “Disregard for her own safety and conduct under fire were an inspiration to the troops and in keeping with the highest traditions of the Naval Service. Reckless’ attention and devotion to duty make her well qualified for promotion to the rank of sergeant. Her absolute dependability while on missions under fire contributed materially to the success of many battles.”

The Marines refused to leave Reckless behind in Korea. Thanks to considerable string-pulling, favor-cashing, and public support stirred by Reckless’ story in the Post, she was eventually brought to California. She spent the rest of her life as the 1^st Marine Division’s mascot at Camp Pendelton. In 1957, the Post offered this one final postscript to the Reckless’ story.

Combat experience is the best preparation for motherhood: Reckless and Fearless in 1957.

Last month Andy Geer got a phone call from Camp Pendleton, California, where Reckless had been pastured with other horses, announcing that the Sergeant, who is lady, had that day foaled a son, named Fearless.

Go to www.sgtreckless.com to learn more about this remarkable war horse, and how you can help build her a memorial monument.

A War Horse Earns Her Sergeant’s Stripes: 1953 The Saturday Evening Post

The country was also learning the difficulty of waging war where there would be no clear victory or immediate benefit to the U.S. In a pattern that was to be repeated in many of our foreign conflicts,  popular enthusiasm quickly faded, and the war seemed almost forgotten.

Certainly this is how James Michener saw it. Writing for the Post in 1952, he said that even among Americans who knew better—

American men are dying… in the barren wastes of Korea, with a heroism never surpassed in our history. Be­cause they are so few, we forget that they contribute so much.

They seem to fight in a vacuum, as if America didn’t care a damn.

The Post had commissioned Michener, who was already a nationally recognized novelist at the time, to write about the war. So, in 1952, he sailed aboard the carriers USS Essex and Valley Forge. In his article, Michener introduced readers to the pilots who were flying the Navy’s fighter jets and rescue helicopters.

One of these extraordinary men was Lieutenant Sam Murphey, whose plane was shot down over enemy territory. Murphey was determined not to become one of the North Koreans’ prisoners of war. So he decided to fly to the coast, “even if I cracked up doing so.”

He cracked up all right. A mile inland, his plane roared down through trees, high-tension wires, and into a rice paddy. It burst into flame, but by that time Murphey was walking away. He was at the edge of a communist village. And he was much worse off than he knew. For his mates aloft, watching the amazing landing and the flaming wreckage, were sure he was dead. They headed home.

Lt. Sam Murphey after his escape from North Korea.

Seeing the villagers starting toward him over the frozen fields, Murphey lay down in an irrigation ditch, “resting on one elbow, trying to survey the situation. I believed I had been seen by the men of my squadron. I believed they would come back to rescue me pretty soon, and that my job was to evade the communists for, say, ten minutes. So I got up and started to run.”

It was a long ten minutes. From the crowd of villagers, two soldiers ran forward with rifles and started firing. Murphey continued running across the rice paddies. He ran for an hour. After the first few minutes, he thought his lungs would explode, but whenever he looked back, there were the two communist soldiers. His big boots cracked through the ice at every step. When he fell, he pitched his face into manure. And the rifle fire kept getting more accurate. Finally one of the bullets passed clean through Murphey’s neck. But by one of those unbelievable miracles of war, this bullet, although passing right through his neck, had hit only loose skin.

He took time out to look back, and there were the two communists, coming steadily.

Suddenly it occurred to Murphey to set off a flare.

“Don’t ask me why I didn’t do it sooner”… his fellow pilots saw him, an aston­ishing four miles away from his burning plane. But Murphey’s run had taken him into a terribly dan­gerous spot. He was now pretty well surrounded by antiaircraft guns. When our people back on board the Antietam plotted Murphey’s position, they could not command any helicopter pilot to fly in there to get the pilot. That would be suicide. But one helicopter man, Jack Stultz, of San Diego, radioed back: “All you have to do is give me cover. I’m going in.”

For any kind of gun, a helicopter is an absolutely dead duck. But somehow Jack Stultz pushed his ‘copter down into the rice paddy where Murphey was still running away from the two communist soldiers. The rescue was made. A few days later, with a patch about his neck, Murphey was flying again.

Michener declared these pilots—

as heroic as any men who have ever fought for the United States. They are as brave as the marines on Guadalcanal or the tank crews in Nor­mandy.

I hold their heroism to be great… for [those soldiers] could feel that his entire nation was behind him, dedicated to the job to which he was dedicated… today the fighter in Korea cannot feel this sense of identification with his own nation.

What kept these pilots aloft and fighting, Michener believed, was their own sense of integrity, their mutual support, and their patriotism.

It is difficult in these cynical days to state in simple words that young men fly dangerous missions to sometimes certain death because they believe that what their country is doing is right. But that is the simple truth.

[In one fighter] group every pilot wears a wed­ding ring, every one has children. Most of them were recalled unwillingly from civilian jobs they had built up painfully after long years in service last time. I doubt if you could find men less eager for war—more acutely aware of what they have surrendered to participate. But they go out day after day over the icy seas, over the high mountains.

They still go out these days, flying or marching into distant, hostile countries. And they continue fighting our wars, even when the public enthusiasm fades.

The Forgotten Heroes of Korea The Saturday Evening Post

Douglas MacArthur is a particularly good example of these controversial Americans. Born 130 years ago on January 26, MacArthur still inspires incredible devotion and harsh criticism. Any American who sparks such extreme opinion must represent something deep and valuable in the national character.

MacArthur had an extensive military career, to say the least. His military history began in 1903 when he graduated from West Point with honors. He served with distinction in the First World War, where he commanded the 84th Infantry Brigade. His soldiers were among the first to cross no-man’s land in the final advance into German-held territory.

By 1918 he was near the top ranks of the military, and was selected as the army chief of staff in 1930. The timing of this promotion was unfortunate due to the economics of the time and his efforts were mostly directed at preserving the military’s meager strength during the Great Depression. He retired from the US Army in 1937, only to be recalled to active duty in July 1941.

He is best known for his command of the Pacific Theater in World War II. After escaping from enemy encirclement in the Philippines in 1942, he directed the Allied forces that pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific, island by island. In 1945 he received the surrender of the Japanese Imperial forces and, until 1951, directed the allied occupation of Japan.

The Courting of Jean Faircloth
by Col. Sid Huff
September 8, 1951

When the Post published a series of articles about MacArthur in 1951, you would have been hard-pressed to find Americans not familiar with the man. He had commanded the first nine months of the Korean War on behalf of the United Nations forces. He had launched a decisive invasion on the Korean coast in the rear of North Korea’s army. His forces threw the communists back so decisively that a fearful Communist China launched a counterattack. President Truman ordered MacArthur to pull back American forces. MacArthur wanted to continue his advance and wage war in the style he knew best, without political complexities. He spoke out publicly against Truman’s decision, and Truman relieved him of command.

The Post published eight articles about MacArthur written by Col. Sid Huff, MacArthur’s aide for 15 years. The article presented a side of MacArthur not familiar to the American people. The series didn’t focus solely on his military leadership and war heroism, but also on his family, and the man “behind closed doors.”

In the first article from September 8, 1951, Huff talked about the General’s personal character. When asked by some if MacArthur was always the military man featured in the news and public, Huff responds,

“Actually the General is a very serious man who has been occupied for years with problems of grave import to America, and he so concentrates on what he is doing that there is little time left for any relaxation except the movies. He has no hobbies. He plays no games, such as golf or cards. He has no interest in ‘small talk.’ And he doesn’t enjoy meeting people merely for the sake of making new acquaintances. On the other hand, he has tremendous charm as well as a commanding, exciting personality; he can be tactful, gracious and even gallant, as the occasion commands, and he can and often does lean back in his favorite red-painted rocking chair and enjoys a real belly-laugh that makes the rafters ring.”

Huff describes MacArthur’s reaction to command being taken from him.

The General's Last Fight
by Col. Sid Huff
October 27, 1951

“Anybody who knows MacArthur soon realizes that he is sensitive to criticism. In a way, this sensitivity is his Achilles’ heal… MacArthur was widely criticized — much of the criticism arising from political motives — and the more he was criticized the harder he worked. He directed a masterful retirement in Korea and he seemed in public to be as unaffected by the attacks made on him personally as he had been earlier by the lavish praise he received when he was winning. But in the lonely watches of the night it hurt. It hurt him so keenly that his staff did everything possible to protect him. We even hid newspapers and magazines from him if they contained particularly unrestrained criticism…”

When notified of being relieved his military command, Huff says, MacArthur responded, “without much change of expression or demeanor. He didn’t like it, but it was an order.” MacArthur did not drag his feet. He tied up the loose ends and returned to the US.”

Even beyond the articles featured in The Post in 1951, MacArthur lived out his days rather quietly. Other than chairing the Board for the Remington Rand Corporation, he lived his final years in New York City. He died in Washington, DC in 1964.

MacArthur’s critics cannot be dismissed; they point to the general’s arrogance and self-absorption, his short-sighted preparations in the Philippines, his readiness to promote a war with China, and his political posturing in the ’40s and ’50s. They also compare MacArthur’s performance with those of Generals Eisenhower and Marshall — men who achieved greater things without his posturing or recklessness.

Still, MacArthur was a powerful figure to Americans during the war years. He became a symbol of America’s strength and determination. He inspired devotion and confidence, both of which proved valuable to our success in the World War. Any man who draws such lasting admiration from so many Americans must represent something great about our country.

In the 1977 Saturday Evening Post article “More Than A Star,” Gregory Peck described his role as the general in the movie, “MacArthur.”

“I came to this role with a grab bag full of prejudices… Now I’m full of admiration for the man. His faults were on such a grand scale they’re too obvious to discuss. They weren’t petty. There was no meanness in him and most of the things that MacArthur detractors say are based on idiosyncrasies — his long hair, his corncob pipe, his informal dress. It was kind of inverse snobbism — never wearing any medals. It was the theatricality of knowing less is more. When he stood with generals and admirals, he stood out in his simplicity. He made them all look silly.”

Read The Courting of Jean Faircloth, published on September 8, 1951 [PDF].

Read The General’s Last Fight, published on October 27, 1951 [PDF].

The Controversial Hero The Saturday Evening Post