Roa Remembers "The Forgotten War" Korea - Korean War testimonials

"He wore the cross of the Corps of Chaplains" and was "the best foot soldier I ever knew, and the bravest man, and the kindest.... When trouble came, [all] drew courage and hope and strength from him. He's dead now, murdered by the Red Chinese, and his body lies in an unmarked grave somewhere along the Yalu. But the hundreds of men who knew and loved him have not forgotten him. And I write this so that the folks at home can know what kind of man he was, and what he did for us, and how he died."

Thus begins the testimonial to Father Emil J. Kapaun, which began in the April issue. Originally published in a memorial booklet on the history of the 8th Cavalry the story was written by fellow-POW 1LT Raymond M. (Mike) Dowe Jr. and submitted by COL George L. Tucci, USAR (Ret.), of Grove City, Pa., a lieutenant with the 3rd Battalion aid station, 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division. Both Lieutenant Dowe and Father Kapaun were taken prisoner when the Chinese Army overran the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, 2 November 1950 at Unsan.

Lest we forget--and "so that the folks at home can know what kind of man he was ... and how he died"--The Officer continues Lieutenant Dowe's tribute:

"He did a thousand little things to keep us going. 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. All in one day, in a freezing wind, with a sharp stick and his bare hands, he cut steps in the steep, ice-covered path that led down to the stream so that the men carrying water would not fall. The most dreaded housekeeping chore of all was cleaning the latrines, and men argued bitterly over whose time it was to carry out this loathsome task. And while they argued, he'd slip out quietly and do the job.

"In mid-January, in subzero cold, they marched us eight miles back to Pyoktong, into houses still shattered by the bombing and the fire. Nine of the sick and wounded died that day, and many of the rest of us, sick, half starved and despairing, were on the point of giving up. But Father led scrounging parties out, to prowl through the ruins to find nails and tin and broken boards to patch the houses and make them livable. In the yard of the officer's compound, he built a little fireplace with bricks he had stolen. On it, with wood he had stolen, he would heat water in pans made from tin he had stolen and pounded into shape with a rock. (Once they caught him stealing pickets from a fence and made him stand for hours, stripped of his outer garments, in the bitter cold.)

FATHER OFFERS "COFFEE" AND HOPE

Every morning he'd bring in this pan full of hot water, calling cheerfully, 'Coffee, every body,' and pour a little into every man's bowl. And though there was no coffee in it, some how this sip of hot water in the morning gave each man the heart to rise and pick off his lice and choke down his bowl of soupy millet, and face, if not with cheerfulness, at least without despair, another day of captivity and abuse.

"He was always telling us we'd soon be free, and he was always dreaming up fancy menus--10-course meals we'd eat when we got home. At night we'd hear the roar and see the flash of great explosions to the south. It was our bombers, working over the roads and bridges on the Reds' supply routes to the front. But we thought it was our artillery. 'The guns sound closer tonight,' Father would say. 'They're coming. They'll be here soon. The moon is full tonight. By the time it's full again, we'll be free.'

"As the weeks and months passed, robbed of all strength by pellagra and beriberi, men grew weaker. The unbroken diet of millet and corn became nauseating. We could hardly choke it down.

"By mid-March we were in desperate condition, boiling green weeds in our hunt for vitamins. The hideous swelling of the body that is the first mark of approaching death by starvation was showing up on more and more of us. The night before St. Patrick's Day, Father called us together and prayed to St. Patrick, asking to help us in our misery. The next day, the Chinese brought us a case of liver--the first meat we had had--and issued us golian instead of millet. The liver was spoiled and golian is sorghum seed, used as cattle feed in the States, but to us they were like manna. Later he prayed for tobacco, and that night a guard walked by and tossed a little bag of dry, straw-like Korean tobacco into our room.

REDS REV-UP PROPAGANDA

"As our bodies weakened, the Reds stepped up the pace of their propaganda assault upon our minds. Hour after hour we sat in lectures while Comrade Sun, a fanatic little Chinese who hated Americans with an insane hatred, assailed our rotten, capitalistic Wall Street civilization. Then we'd have to comment upon the great truths revealed by Comrade Sun. A few bold men commented in unprintable words of contempt and were thrown into a freezing hole or subjected to other severe tortures, some times resulting in death. Some veiled their ridicule. 'According to the great doctrines taught us by the noble Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Engels, Amos and Andy...,' they would read aloud in the classes.

"Father was not openly arrogant, nor did he use subterfuge. Without losing his temper or raising his voice, he'd answer the lecturer point by point with a calm logic that set Comrade Sun screaming and leaping on the platform like an angry ape. 'When our Lord told us to love our enemies,' he said once, 'I'm sure He did not have Comrade Sun in mind.'

"Strangely, they never punished him, except by threats and ominous warnings. Two officers who knew him well were taken away and tortured. With their hands tied behind them, they were lifted by ropes until their wrist joints pulled apart. They then were brought back to accuse him publicly. They charged him with slandering the Chinese, which was true -- if you call the real truth slander, as they did. They said he advocated resistance to the Red's study program and that he displayed a hostile attitude toward his captors, all of which was also true. They said he threatened men with courts-martial on their return if they went along with the Chinese, which was not true. Father never threatened anybody. When the two men came back after their ordeal, unsure of their welcome, Father was the first to greet them. Looking at their twisted hands, he told them, 'You never should have suffered a moment, trying to protect me.'

"We expected that the public accusation would bring on a farcical trial in which Father would be convicted and taken out and never returned. Instead, they merely called him in and bullied him and threatened him. We realized then what we had half known all along. They were afraid of him. They recognized in him a strength they could not break, a spirit they could not quell. Above all things, they feared a mass rebellion, and they knew that if Father were maltreated, the whole camp of 4,000 men would mutiny.

FATHER CELEBRATES EASTER

"On Easter Sunday 1951, he hurled at them his boldest challenge, openly flouting their law against religious services. In the yard of a burned-out church in the officers' compound, just at sunrise, he read the Easter service. He could not celebrate the Easter Mass for all his Mass equipment had been lost at the time of his capture. All he had were the things he used when administering the last rites to the dying--the purple ribbon, called a stole, which he wore around his neck as a badge of his priesthood, the gold ciborium, now empty, in which the Host had been carried when he had administered Holy Communion, and the little bottles of holy oil used to administer the last sacraments. But he fashioned a cross out of two pieces of wood, and, from a borrowed missal, he read the Stations of the Cross to the scarecrow men sitting on the rubbled steps of the burned church. He told the story of Christ's suffering and death, and then, holding in his hand a rosary made of bent barbed wire cut from the prison fence, he recited the Glorious Mysteries of Christ risen from the tomb and ascended into Heaven.

"As we watched him, it was clear to us that Father himself at last had begun to fail in strength. On the starvation diet we were allowed, a man could not miss a single day's meals without growing too weak to walk, and for months Father had been sharing his meager rations with sick and dying men. The week after Easter he began to limp, hobbling along on a crooked stick. The next Sunday, as he read the services for the first Sunday after Easter, as he reached the line in the Epistle, 'And this is the victory that overcomes the world, our Faith his voice faltered and we caught him as he fell.

FATHER'S HEALTH FALTERS

"Beneath his tattered uniform, his right leg was dreadfully swollen and discolored. For weeks, we knew he had been suffering terrible bone aches, a by-product of hunger that came upon men at night with such fearful pain that they would scream and beat the ground in agony. Father, when awake, had never whimpered, though tears of pain filled his eyes. When he slept, though, his iron will broke and he would moan pitifully. Finally, the pain went away, but the leg continued to swell until it was one great mass of purple, blue and yellow flesh. The communist 'doctor,' a brainwasher posing as a medical man, pronounced the usual diagnosis by which they sought to convince us--or themselves--that we were an evil, immoral and decaying race. Father, he said, had syphilis. Doctor Anderson and his medical companion, Capt Sidney Esensten, knew it for what is was, a blood clot choking circulation to the leg.

"They applied hot packs, and slowly the swelling began to subside. Soon Father could walk again, though he was so weak and shaky he would often fall. Then a fearful dysentery seized him, and as he so often had done for us, we cared for him as best as we could. And he beat that and got on his feet again. Then, one raw, cold day he arose, a walking ghost, to give the Last Sacrament to a dying man. The next day his eyes were bright with fever and his breath came in a hoarse rattle. He had taken pneumonia and soon was in delirium. Thinking back upon it, I believe that period of semi-consciousness 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, some times laughing, he spoke to his mother and father, and to the priests he'd known in semi nary. Even in his delirium, his unbreakable spirit manifested itself in sallies of humor. 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.

"But the Chinese did not intend that he should live. He was sitting up, eating and cracking jokes when the guards came with a litter to take him to the hospital. We knew then that he was doomed, for the hospital was no hospital at all but a death house so dreadful I will make no attempt to describe it here. In the room where he was placed, men in extremis were left to lie untended in filth and freezing cold, until merciful death took them. The doctors protested violently against his being taken there, but the Chinese cursed them and forbade them to go along and care for him. The rest of us protested. All they answered was,

'He goes! He goes!'

"Father himself made no protest. He looked around the room at all of us standing there and smiled. He held in his hands the ciborium, the little covered cup in which, long ago, he had carried the blessed bread. 'Tell them back home that I died a happy death,' he said, and smiled again. As they loaded him on the litter, he turned to Lieutenant Nardella, from whose missal he had read the services. He put the little book in Nardella's hand. 'You know the prayers, Ralph,' he said. 'Keep holding the services. Don't let them make you stop.' He turned to another officer who, before his capture, had been having trouble at home. 'When you get back to Jersey, you get that marriage straightened out,' he told him, 'or I'll come down from heaven and kick you in the tail.' Then he turned to me. 'Don't take it so 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.'

POWS CRY AND PRAY

"I stood there, crying unashamed, as they took him down the road, the little golden 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 Father Kapaun was dead.

"Not long afterward, the little daughter of the Chinese camp commander walked past the compound gate. She was tossing up and catching something that glittered in the sun. It was Father's little gold cup. On the demands of the POWs, it was returned at Big Switch. We brought it back to commemorate his deeds and the deeds of all who died at the hands of the communists. It is to be placed on a memorial in his hometown.

"A year later, on the anniversary of his death, Ralph Nardella asked the communists for permission to hold a service in his memory. They refused. I was glad they did. For it told me that even though he was dead, his body lost forever in a mass grave, they still were afraid of him. They feared him because he was the symbol of something they knew they could not kill, the unconquerable spirit of a free man, owing final allegiance only to his God. And in that sense, I know he and the things he believed in can never die."

Father Emil J. Kapaun died in the Korean POW camp at Pyoktong in May 1951 at the age of 35. For his exploits while serving as a chaplain of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, he was awarded the Bronze Star with the "V" Device for Valor. For his heroism at the time of his capture, he was awarded, posthumously, the Distinguished Service Cross.

An addendum to Lieutenant Dowe's story notes: "Dr. Clarence Anderson, who is mentioned several times in Lieutenant Dowe's story, was a member of Medical Company and also volunteered to remain behind to care for the wounded, and thus shared Father Kapaun's ordeal. In addition, the listing of the members of the company reported as missing in action at Unsan, Korea, on 2 November 1950, and later dropped from rolls, contains 26 names. Of those 26 men, only two, Dr. Anderson and SFC Charles McDaniel, both now deceased, are accounted for in information on file. It is assumed that the remaining 24 men were either killed or shared the horrors of the prison camps."

Providing their own stories for May 1951, contributors this month tell tales of an explosion in Korea with long-lasting reverberations; of USNS visits to ports of allied U.N. countries; and of a father's surprise home-coming on his son's special day.

MAY 1951 MISSION FROM IWAKUNI: BETWEEN WONSAN & KAESONG

Col John F. McCormick, USAF (Ret.), of Destin, Fla., was a pilot, a first lieutenant, with the 731st Squadron, 3rd Bomb Group, in Korea from September 1950 until July 1951. He submits the text of a speech presented by Col Bill Scholsser of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., at a reunion of the 731st in 1999. An excerpt follows:

"About 12 to 15 years ago, a retired North Korean general moved to China. When the American air attache officers at the American Embassy found out about his whereabouts, they sought him out, since he had been a North Korean plans and operations officer during the Korean War. Would he mind a few questions, they asked. 'No,' he said with a smile, because he 'didn't plan on going back.'

"Among their questions, they asked: 'What was the most effective action, the most effective weapon system, the most troublesome against them, that Americans had carried out?' 'Oh,' he said, 'the answer to that is clearly the mission of the American night-intruder B-26 aircraft that had radar.' He added: 'We never knew when or where they would hit. Their raids were aggravating and intimidating, kept us off balance, kept us fearful every night, and were very damaging.'

"When I read this intelligence report, I immediately thought of Charley Lee of the 731st Night Attack Squadron. I want to tell you about a mission he performed and why surely the North Korean general must have been referring to B-26C radar missions exemplified by what Charlie accomplished....

"The 731st was the first USAF night squadron with Q-13 and shoran bombsights, black-painted aircraft and WWII-experienced crews. Small wonder that the North Korean general dreaded their missions and the results. One of these missions was accomplished by our Charlie Lee....

"In May of 1951 during the biggest fight of the Korean War--the Battle of Imjin River--Charlie was a member of a 731st B-26 crew. They left Iwakuni with six 500-pound bombs and had already dropped three on a not-remembered target. Charley's pilot in turn made two decisions: Decision One? The remaining three bombs were Charley's to drop wherever he decided, using his radar and shoran where it would be the most effective.

Charley told his pilot, 'Climb to and fly at 11,000 feet.'...

"Charley directed his pilot toward a target and broke off the run; he decided there wasn't much there.... After a bit more cruising around, he became very excited and exclaimed that he was getting a tremendous return. He directed his pilot on a fairly long run. At this point, he asked the pilot what intervalometer setting to use. The pilot made his second and last decision. He recommended using 300 feet, the maximum, since there were only three bombs.

"Charley really went after his young pilot. 'You're 50 feet off your altitude. Nail it down! You're two degrees off the course. Hold it right on!' There was a good crosswind at that altitude, but the pilot struggled to follow Charley's directions.

"When the 'Bombs Away' light lit three times, the pilot tipped the airplane into a very steep continuous turn, so that all four crew members could see the results.

"An immediate huge explosion occurred on the ground that was at least a mile wide and a mile long, with a huge cloud of smoke and debris 4,000 to 6,000 feet high. The crew remarked that this was so large and so immediate that none of them saw the second or third bombs go off....

"The explosion was so strong that it nearly blew the resultant fire out, but then numbers of secondary explosions and fires occurred around the periphery of this huge blast area and appeared to re-ignite many more throughout the whole conflagration.

"Chet Blunk wrote about this mission in his book, but one point he made was conservative. Chet said that the resultant continuing fire could be seen for 100 miles. Actually, the crew could see it for 165 miles, still seeing it burning and blowing when they left the Korean coast east of Taegu. The target was halfway between Wonsan and Kaesong.

"On the way back to Iwakuni from the mission, the crew wondered what they had hit. Charlie and the bombardier-navigator felt that it was some nondescript small town. All the discussion was wonderment about what had been hit.

"But years later, it became apparent that it wasn't 'what,' but that the 'significance' of the hit was important....

"At the time, Charley and his crew didn't know the importance of what he had accomplished. But 17 years later in Vietnam, I found out. In 1968, by chance, the North Vietnamese put a 122 rocket round into the Da Nang Air Base bomb dump, which immediately blew the equivalent of a 3-kiloton nuclear explosion. It was a mile wide, a mile long and a mile high. Two weeks later, they got a 122 rocket into the main ammo dump of the U.S. Marines in I Corps area: same explosion, a mile long, a mile wide, a mile high (the same size as Charley's!).

"Suddenly, we in the plans and operations business were frightened. We had 60,000 U.S. Marine infantry in I Corps area, and two enhanced air wings with no ordnance. We were very worried that the North Vietnamese would sense that we were very vulnerable and had little or no ammunition to fight with. Fortunately, they didn't put us to the test.

"I thought of Charley Lee and his mission. He had helped do the same thing to the North Koreans and Chinese. His was a sortie deserving highest recognition for accomplishment of the 731st mission. In 1978 in Vietnam, we found out why the North Korean general had worried so about the night attack invaders in the 1950-53 Korean War."

JULY 1950-SEPTEMBER 1953 USNS GEN. M.B. STEWART & GEN. C.H. MUIR

CAPT Donald P. Garrido, USNR (Ret.), of San Antonio, Texas, was assigned to the USNS General M.B. Stewart (T-AP 148), October 1949 until 31 August 1950, and the USNS General C.H. Muir (T-AP 142), 13 September 1950 till 19 September 1953.

"On 14 July 1950, the USNS General M.B. Stewart (T-AP 148) departed New York for Seattle, Wash., via the Panama Canal. In Seattle, the Stewart took on board some 3,000 U.S. Marines (possibly the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade) for Pusan, Korea," Captain Garrido writes.

"Off the southern tip of Japan in the vicinity of Nagasaki, the vessel rendezvoused with a U.S. Navy escort and arrived in Pusan on 2 August 1950. At night, you could see the first-line action in the hills surrounding the city. Soldiers in full 'Rambo-style' were roaming the city, and the pier area was well patrolled by members of the South Korean army. There was a hospital ship in the harbor, but I forget the name.

"The General Stewart was among the first troop transports to arrive in Pusan. I was told that this was the worst period for the U.N. forces during the entire Korean War," he says.

"While on board the USNS General C.H. Muir, we made frequent voyages from Belgium, Greece, Turkey and Thailand, carrying supplies and their troops to Inchon and Pusan, South Korea," he continues.

"I remember one such trip where we boarded a full complement of Turkish troops in Izmir, Turkey. After leaving Izmir, the ship mounted a large arrow on the fore mast of the vessel and, as the navigation officer, it was my responsibility to point the arrow toward Mecca each day before sunrise. It was one of the first, and to my knowledge, the only time we had a flag officer on board with their troops."

He notes that the United Nations flag was flown from the yardarms as a sign of their mission.

USNS vessels are public vessels operating under the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) and as such are components of the operating forces and under the command of the Chief of Naval Operations, Captain Garrido explains.

21 MAY 1951 MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

LTC Edward J. LaClare, USAR (Ret.), of Vienna, Va., was an 8-year-old, living with his mother and younger sister at his mother's parents' home in Minneapolis for 20 months while his father, Col Edward F. LaClare, USAF, was overseas.

"My dad was assigned to Okinawa in the fall of 1949 and commanded a squadron of F-80s when the Korean War broke out. It did not take long before he was flying combat missions in his second war," Colonel Edward J. relates. He continues:

"I well remember Sunday morning, 21 May 1951. This was a special day for me because I was to make my First Holy Communion at 8 o'clock Mass at nearby Ascension church. Shortly after 7 a.m., while I was struggling unsuccessfully to properly tie the tie to the white suit I was to wear, I heard the doorbell ring, followed by much commotion down stairs. As I reached the landing halfway down the stairs, to see what was going on, I was surprised to encounter my father heading up the stairs. After he hugged me, I asked him whether he could help me with my tie. He knelt down on one knee in front of me and, in short order, I was ready for church.

"I was too young to have any memories of my father returning from Europe after World War II, but I will never forget his return from Korea. I also will never forget the two very special ways God blessed me that day."

KOREAN WAR CHRONOLOGY MAY 1951

1 May

First phase of Chinese offensive halted north of Seoul.

17-22 May

Chinese Communist Forces launch second spring offensive. Four U.S. divisions (U.S. Army's 2nd, 3rd, and 25th Infantry Divisions, and 1 st Marine Division) participate.

20 May-20 September

Operation Strangle. Massive all-out air interdiction campaign 20 is carried out by FEAF, TF77 and 1 st Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW).

23 May

Eighth Army begins offensive.

28 May

Eighth Army takes Hwachon and Inje.

30 May

Eighth Army back on Kansas Line once more.

Sources: The Korean War by Matthew Ridgway; The Korean War by Max Hastings; and Homepage, 50th Anniversary of the Korean War Committee--http://korea50.army.mil/

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