May - Korean War Veterans Association

72
stone on tin at 5 a.m. and look out to see
the bearded priest in his filthy uniform
with a stone in his fist. He’d hammer
cooking pans out of shredded tin
scrounged from bombed-out huts in
Pyoktong. Then, with firewood and pans,
Kapaun would boil snow into water.
“Hot coffee!” he’d call out.
He wore an eye patch now. He had
chipped a sliver into an eye while chopping
wood; the eye got infected.
An officer named Felix McCool saw
this after inquiring for a priest one day,
and men pointed to a ragged man wearing
a black eye patch.
Esensten by now had discovered that
he felt a strange peace when talking with
the priest.
They lived in filth and spent much of
each day picking lice out of their clothes.
They smelled like excrement; no one had
bathed in months. The Jewish doctor
would forget all this in long talks with
Kapaun about philosophy and religion.
Esensten knew nothing about
Catholicism, but Kapaun knew Judaism
thoroughly.
Esensten teased him, though; Kapaun
seemed blindly rigid about religious
dogma. This puzzled Esensten, who saw
how open-minded Kapaun seemed about
all other ideas.
So Esensten argued:
Shouldn’t rules about morals or religious
teachings be more flexible in some
circumstances, such as when you’re in a
prison camp?
“No,” Kapaun said.
But when guards coerced starving
Americans to inform, and when other prisoners
wanted to harm the informers,
Kapaun came instantly to their defense,
protecting them.
Esensten thought: Kapaun was rigid
about church rules until the moment he
saw a sinner needing mercy.
Lt. William Funchess met Kapaun for
the first time that winter as the young lieutenant
hobbled around the enlisted men’s
compound on his wounded foot.
Funchess had falsely told guards he
was an enlisted man because he worried
they might shoot officers. He hobbled in
pain and fear; men died of infections from
lesser wounds than his. Like everybody,
he ate snow that he scraped off the ground;
there was no water.
He saw a man bent to the ground, acting
strangely. His cap was a sleeve torn
from a GI sweater; he wore an eye patch;
he looked like a hobo, filthy and thin.
The man motioned to Funchess.
Funchess hesitated.
The man beckoned. Funchess hobbled
over.
The man bent over a tiny fire. Funchess
marveled; the guards at that time had forbidden
fires. There was a pot made of rusted
tin; it steamed.
“Would you like a drink of hot water?”
the man asked.
“Yes! I would!” Funchess said. In his
Carolina accent, “yes” sounded like
“YAY-ess!” He drank. The warmth in his
throat felt like bliss. “Did that taste good?”
The man had a soft voice.
“Yes!” Funchess said. “I’ve not had a
drink of water since Nov. 4.”
He shook hands.
“I’m Father Emil Kapaun,” the ragged
man said. “Funchess,” Funchess said.
“Where you from?”
“South Carolina.”
“Kansas,” the priest said.
Kapaun said he’d come to the enlisted
area to help GIs. Funchess blinked. No
wonder the priest behaved oddly,
Funchess thought. Kapaun was hiding his
little fire, the lighting of which could get
him shoved into a freezing punishment
hole. To come here, Kapaun had sneaked
hundreds of yards carrying wood and a
pan.
Funchess was a devout Methodist who
concealed in his filthy clothes a small
copy of the New Testament. He had not
known many Catholics. This one had guts.
He thanked Kapaun. “That was the best
drink I ever had in my life.”
The priest grinned.
Funchess felt suddenly and strangely at
peace. He would remember this moment
all his life.
They would be close friends now. But
only for a time all too brief.
Contributing: Travis Heying of The Eagle
Reach, Roy Wenzl at 316-268-6219 or
rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com
The young man
in the sea
We had made the invasion of Red
Beach at Inchon, Korea on Sept. 15,
1950. The beach head was secured and we
unloaded all troops, tanks, and supplies.
We sat there high and dry for 24 hours
until the next evening, when the tide came
back in.
It was around 1800 hours when we
backed off the beach. We left Inchon harbor
and headed for Sasebo, Japan. We
were in the sea about four miles off the
coast of South Korea when the port lookout
shouted, “Man overboard.”
I stood watch with a chief warrant officer.
We looked, and sure enough there was
a man in the water. The officer ordered all
engines stopped, and we put our LCVP in
the water. The crew picked the man out of
the water and brought him back to our
ship.
...he was to be
executed. They
asked if he had a
last request. He
said he would like
to be shot down by
the riverside,..
We had a ROK
officer aboard for
the invasion of
Inchon as an interpreter.
He questioned
the man,
who turned out to
be a South Korean
soldier.
The man said he
had been captured by the North Koreans
in their push south. As his story went, he
was to be executed. They asked if he had
a last request. He said he would like to be
shot down by the riverside, so one North
Korean soldier took him to the river and
tied his hands behind his back. When they
got to the river, he continued, he asked for
a cigarette.
The North Korean soldier put his rifle
against a tree, untied the South Korean’s
hands, and gave his prisoner a cigarette.
When the North Korean lit a match to give
the prisoner a light, the South Korean soldier
said to himself he had nothing to lose,
so he made a dash for the river.
He dove in and swam underwater as far
as he could. By that time, the North
Korean soldier had his rifle and was
shooting at him. The South Korean reported
that he went under water and swam as
far as he could.
Continued on page 79
May – June 2010
The Graybeards