There Remains Only One Course: That I Die
True story…
One of my absolutely closest and most cherished (a far better word than “prized” or “special,” because, for me, it means I “carry him in my heart”) friends was kicked out of the prayer service the night before my father’s funeral.
His crime?
Crying too loudly.
“Young man,” demanded a self-appointed-muckety-muck-of-manners, “Go to the bathroom and throw some water on face and don’t come back until you’ve composed yourself.”
As some in Washington attempt to tear the nation asunder and others sink every more deeply into an emotional La Brea Tar Pit of fear, depression and loss, the theme of my homily that rain-battered night - probably the first words we learned as kids - becomes all the more important:
“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts,
which we are about to receive
from Thy bounty…”
Through this Lenten period and over the next forty-five months, they may be among the few words that strengthen many of us.
Among the soul-moving, soul-strengthening stories of World War II heroism is – not was, is! - that of Alexander D. Goode, George L Fox, Clarke V. Poling, and John P. Washington – a rabbi, American Reformed Church and Methodist ministers, and a Catholic priest respectively – aboard the 5,649-ton United States Army Transport Dorchester, struck by three torpedoes fired by the German submarine U-223. (Just Pray That I Shall Be Adequate — Authentic Healers.org)
In the first hour of February 2, 1942, six-hundred-and-seventy-two American soldiers, sailors, merchant seamen and civilians were burned to death aboard the Dorchester or drowned in the icy waters off Greenland. Two-hundred-and-twenty-nine were saved by the crews of the United States Coast Guard cutters Escanaba and Comanche.
Survivors reported the small, heroic acts of The Immortal Chaplains of the Dorchester in the minutes before it sank into the North Atlantic: Fox saying “Here take mine” to a soldier plaintively shouting “I can’t find my life jacket”; Mahoney giving his gloves to Navy Lieutenant John Mahoney; and, in the find seconds of the Dorchester, the chaplains praying together in Hebrew, Latin and English.
Small acts. Little “gifts.” Their lives that others might live.
In 2004, U-233 first officer Gerhard Buske addressed the sixtieth anniversary ceremonies of The Immortal Chaplains Foundation:
“[W]e ought to love when others hate…we can bring faith where doubt threatens; we can awaken hope where despair exists; we can light up a light where darkness reigns; we can bring joy where sorrow dominates.”
Imagine.
Just for a moment.
Imagine courage. True courage.
And kindness. Genuine kindness.
Born in Washington, D.C., reared in Auburn, N.Y., educated and ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and (with the permission of the Archbishop of Baltimore) one of the first members of Maryknoll (Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America), Patrick James Byrne arrived in Korea in 1923. After a brief period of stateside service to Maryknoll (1929-1935), he began a new mission – in Japan (1935 – 1940), before returning to Korea.
Bishop Patrick Byrne
Appointed the first Apostolic Delegate (personal representative of Pope Pius XII in Korea) and ordained a bishop in 1949, he was arrested by North Korean Communist forces in July 1950. During his show trial, the judge declared “Either Bishop Byrne will broadcast by radio a denunciation of the United States, the United Nations and the Vatican, or he must die.”
“There remains only one course: that I die,” responded the bishop
On October 31, 1950, dressed in light khakis and a cotton shirt, Bishop Byrne and more than 750 American soldiers and 59 civilians, including children, began a murderous nine-day, 110-mile trek over rough roads and through snow to the North Korean town called Hanjan-ji. As soldiers and civilians fell by the wayside – either dead or to be executed where they fell, the bishop stopped briefly to pray for and bless them; at one point he called together the other pilgrims on the road to death and gave a general absolution.
Aiding others was risky. Some of the prisoners were shot for dropping out of line, while others were executed for aiding those who had become immobilized. Nonetheless, the bishop continued to help others and gave his entire blanket to a Methodist missionary who was suffering worse than he.
“Bishop Byrne never claimed his fair share of anything, except of work; and of that he always claimed more than his due,” wrote Death March survivor Father Philip Crosbie.
Sent to the unheated, medicine-less Hanjang-ni “People’s Hospital” prisoners called “The Morgue,” Bishop Byrne died on November 25, 1050. “After the privilege of my priesthood, the greatest privilege of my life is to suffer for Christ with all of you,” he told his fellow prisoners.
Father Emil Kapaun
“Gee whiz, I have a feeling that I am far, far from being a saint,” Emil Kapaun, the older of two sons of Czech-American immigrant farmers in Pilsen, Kansas, once wrote to a cousin.
On Easter morning 1951, the thirty-five-year-old Army chaplain stood before a group of American prisoners of war in Camp No. 5, in Pyoktong, North Korea and cried as he apologized, explaining that the lack of bread and wine made it impossible for him to celebrate mass and offer communion.
Among the American POWs, he was in the worst shape after having carried a wounded soldier for miles after their capture and sharing his feed with his fellow prisoners.
Ordained a priest in June 1940, he joined the Army Chaplain Corps at the end of 1941, serving the final months of the war in Inda and Burma before returning to parish life in Kansas. When the Army appealed for new chaplains, he re-upped and was assigned to Japan in 1949
In an April 1950 Armed Forces radio broadcast, he declared prophetically, “We can surely expect that in our own lives, there will come a time when we must make a choice between being loyal to the true faith or of giving allegiance to something else which is opposed…”
In July, he accompanied American troops landing in at Inchon, Korea and, in November, became known for calmly exposing himself to enemy fire to provide first-aid and the Sacrament of the Sick to injured soldiers. After he lost so many of the Jeeps on which he established makeshift altars to enemy fire, he began riding a bicycle to reach soldiers along the battlelines. Eventually, it was shot up.
On All Souls Day (November 2) 1951, when Chinese forces overran American troops at Unsan, Father Kapaun gathered wounded Americans to a makeshift aid station and, with Army Doctor Clarence Anderson, insisted on staying with the wounded to help after their capture. When a North Korean soldier prepared to shoot Sergeant Herbert Miller, Father Kapaun pushed the North Korean aside, picked up Miller and carried him to safety.
Father Kapaun, a U.S. Army chaplain, is pictured celebrating Mass from the hood of a jeep Oct. 7, 1950, in South Korea.
“It was easier to die than live in those days,” one POW later wrote, referring to the sub-zero conditions and starvation diet. Father Kapaun became known for beating discarded metal sheeting into pots to boil snow and raising prisoners’ spirits with morning “coffee.” He bathed men too weak to bath and clean themselves, washed their soiled cloths in a frigid stream near the POW camp and sewed bits of fabric into socks.
Happily (we say this in 2025 and because we enjoyed his priest-POW humor), he prayed to St. Dismas – the “good thief” who died next to Jesus – before setting off to find food in the fields around the POW camp and stealing rations from the guards’ storerooms. When men died, he volunteered for burial duty so that he could say a few prayers over their graves.
During political indoctrination sessions, when camp authorities and political agents challenged “Where is your God?” the priest responded, “God is as real as the air you breathe but cannot see; as the sounds you hear but cannot see; as the thoughts and ideas you have but cannot see or feel.”
When Father Kapaun began to suffer from pneumonia and a blood clot, the Americans hid his failing health. As he began to recover, in mid-May, the Chinese learned of his condition and ordered his removal to the “Hospital,” where soldiers recognized the Chinese simply allowed prisoners to die.
“Don’t worry about me,” he told his fellow POWs, “I’m going where I always wanted to go, and when I get there, I’ll say a prayer for all of you.”
Alone in the Death House, thirty-five-year-old Father Kapaun died on May 23, 1954. His is the story most repeated by American soldier-survivors of Prison Camp No. 5.
Father Emil Kapaun was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on April 11, 2013 by President Barack Obama.
On February 24, while he continued treatment at Rome's Gemelli Hospital, Pope Francis issued a series of decrees moving forward several “causes” for sainthood, including for Father Kapaun. The pope recognized his sacrifice as an "offering of life.”
Father Joseph Verbis Lafleur, Lieutenant, U.S. Army Chaplain Corps
It may be impossible to be more Cajun that Joseph Verbis Lafleur of Villie Platte, Louisiana, who was stationed at the Clark Field air base in the Philippines when, just ten hours after Japanese Forces attacked Pearl harbor, it too was attacked.
“On the day of the first attack at Clark Field, he was magnificent. With absolute disregard for his personal safety, he went among the would soldiers giving spiritual comfort to those who desired it, assisting the doctors in giving care to the wounded, and helping in their evacuation. Never once did he take cover, never once did he think of himself,” wrote Army Air Force Col. Eugene L. Eubank to Lafleur’s mother.
In February 1942, an Army Air Force Major Smith suggested “Padre, I don’t think you should go to Malaboug this afternoon. There is a rumor that planes will be in tonight…”
“Where will the men be? Will all the men be going, too?” Father. Lafleur asked.
“No, only a few,” came the reply.
“Then I shall stay here. My place is with the men,” Fr. Lafleur stated with finality.
While evading capture aboard the S.S. Mayton, he helped save the life of three men who had gone overboard during a Japanese bombing attack.
Like other Americas stationed in the Philippines, Lafleur was on or about January 1, 1942 and became a POW. During his two-and-a-half years of incarceration, he was transferred to four camps and routinely sacrificed his own rations and malaria medicine for other soldiers. It is reported he even punched a POW who attempted to steal another’s meager rations.
Monument outside Father Lafleur’s home parish - St. Landry Church in Opelousas, LA - depicts the chaplain pushing other POWs to safety after the Shinto Moru was torpedoed.
His sister, Edna Lafleur Delery gives us some indication of his behavior in captivity:
“Noting that they [prisoners] were receiving very little medical care and food and scarcely had clothes to wear, he traded everything he owned with the [island] natives - his watch, his clothes, his food, even his eye glasses in an attempt to secure necessary items for the sick… [When] the Japanese decided against sending a Chaplain [to imprisonment]… ‘Padre’ then went around from one man to another begging to go in someone’s place. All refused. Finally, one man consented….”
Ultimately, Japanese forces loaded 750 prisoners into the hold of the Shinto Moru – shipping them to the grueling work of repairing a Japanese airstrip. Father Lafleur exchanged places with one of the American POWs; he wanted to provide priestly service to the other American prisoners. Three weeks later, the ship – with no white flag flying to indicate POWs were on board – was targeted by the American submarine USS Paddle. The hatch of the ship opened and the American POWs invited Father Lafleur to escape first. He refused.
Instead, weak and emaciated, he struggled to save as many servicemen as possible, helping them up the exit ladder to safety. Only 83 of the 750 prisoners survived. Father Lafleur was not among them. The exact cause of his death – drowning, gunfire, exploding ammunition – was never determined. He was last seen blessing and helping another soldier off the sinking ship on September 7, 1944.
Many Americans fear our nation is sliding into an almost four years long period of Lent. It is impossible to see even the slightest glimmer of a national Easter-like sunrise.
But Lent will yield to the quiet flicker of the Pascal Candle…
If we learn from The Immortal Chaplains to offer a smile of kindnesses – today’s version of a lifejacket or pair of warm gloves.
If we learn from Bishop Byrne that “the greatest privilege of my life” is to suffer with the suffering and be silent hope to the hopeless.
If we learn from Father Kapaun that “God is as real as the air we breathe but cannot see; as the sounds we hear but cannot see; as the thoughts and ideas we have but cannot see or feel.”
If we imitate the example of Father Lafleur - pushing others up and to safety, even at the cost of our own lives.
If we have the courage to pray
“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts,
which we are about to receive
from Thy bounty…
Amen.”