Father Emil Kapaun-Korean War POW earns posthumous Medal of Honor
This man waited way too long to be honored; he sounds like a dear.
As Pyongyang blusters, Korean War POW earns posthumous Medal of Honor
Courtesy Catholic Diocese of Wichita
Father Emil Kapaun, a pipe-smoking Army chaplain who later saved men in battle and in captivity.
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor
In a moment laced with modern irony and timeless glory, President Barack Obama awarded Thursday the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest military decoration — to an Army chaplain and sainthood candidate who died 62 years ago in a North Korean prison camp
Father Emil Kapaun, once a Kansas farm boy, has been hailed for decades by fellow POWs as a rousing, one-man resistance front, rallying starving inmates with clean water and stolen food while enraging his captors by openly mocking their pro-communist speeches.. But days before the Catholic priest succumbed at age 35, ill with dysentery, pneumonia and a blood clot in his leg, he also raised his hand to bless and forgive the guards.
At the White House, Obama posthumously offered the medal, encased in glass, to Kapaun's tearful nephew, Ray, in front of several former American prisoners who suffered with the chaplain. Meanwhile, in the Asian country where the honoree once flashed his quiet bravado, North Korean forces are reportedly readying a missile for launch.
“Interesting timing, isn’t it?” said Amy Pavlacka, spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita where the chaplain served before the Korean War. “Father Kapaun took care of every person he could. He even sat with his enemy. If, globally, we all could just take a piece of that, if all of us had learned anything from him, I don’t know that we’d be in this current situation.”
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http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/11/17696693-as-pyongyang-blusters-korean-war-pow-earns-posthumous-medal-of-honor?lite
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