A Thousand Days of Courage and Compassion
He could have given up when a bullet ripped through his foot. Or when his captors forced him to walk wounded through the snow on a 17-night death march. When he spent weeks with nothing to eat in a prisoner-of-war camp near the border between North Korea and China. Or when he was made to stand naked in 28-degree weather for refusing to renounce his country.
Instead, he tore up his hands and knees to keep himself from falling behind. He ate snow when he was starving. And he never betrayed his nation, his friends…or himself.
We’re referring to a man named Bill Funchess. You’ve probably never heard of him before. He was one of the millions of Americans to serve in the Korean War…and one of the thousands to spend most of it as a prisoner-of-war. In honor of Veterans Day, we’d like to share his story with you.
Bill was born on a farm in South Carolina in 1927. After graduating from Clemson, he married, earned a commission as a lieutenant…and soon, found himself leading a platoon of 50 men deep into North Korea. They had nearly made it to the Chinese border when they suddenly found themselves surrounded. China had just entered the war.
There was no hope of victory. Instead, Bill and his platoon fought a desperate last stand. The reward was knowing that the rest of his battalion, some 700 men, were able to escape.
The price, for him, was “a thousand days of torment.”1
After somehow surviving his gunshot wound, and his death march, Bill found himself in a kind of outdoor prison — just a collection of mud huts on the banks of a frozen river. All he’d been able to eat were snow and millett. But one day, he saw an older man crouching in front of a fire. The man had scrounged a piece of tin which he used to turn into a bowl. As Bill later recounted:
“This man called out to me – would you care for a drink of hot water? He gave me about a half cup of warm water. It tasted so good.”1
That man was a Catholic Army chaplain named Emil Kapaun. You’ve probably never heard of him either, but to the men under his care, he was a legend. He’d been captured because he refused to evacuate during an earlier battle, choosing instead to stay with the wounded who couldn’t leave. During his own death march, he’d carried a comrade all the way to camp so the enemy wouldn’t execute him. In the camp itself, he would often sneak out at night to steal food and medicine for the other POWs. He would pray and whisper words of encouragement whenever anyone was beaten or tortured.
Soon, though, Kapaun became sick with pneumonia and dysentery. He was put into the same hut as Bill and fourteen others. Here is how Bill described it:
“There were no Catholics in my room, and I think that’s the reason they put him in with us. They thought we would not take care of him. I took it upon myself to take care of him. I had to spoon feed him. When he’d mess up his clothes, I’d take off his pants and put them outside for five or ten minutes and it would freeze. I’d either beat it up against a wall and shake the dried fecal matter off or take a stick and scrape it off. There was no water to wash things with and even if there had been it would have been frozen. When he got cold and shivering, I’d wrap my arms around him. Sometimes, he’d wrap his arms around me. We became very close friends.” 1
After six weeks, soldiers came and took Kapaun away. He died soon after.
Bill would remain a prisoner for two more years, now without his friend to care for, or to care for him. He was beaten, starved, and soon weighed less than one hundred pounds. Perhaps nearly as bad was the attempted brainwashing. Bill’s captors used daily propaganda sessions to get the prisoners to denounce their countries and religions and defect to the other side. At one point, while being pressed into confessing that Americans in his unit had committed atrocities, Bill had enough. He stood up and fearlessly declared it to be a lie. In response, his captors stripped him and forced him to stand naked for hours in the snow while they held a kangaroo court to determine his fate.
Behind the scenes, though, hostilities were coming to an end. An armistice was agreed to in July of 1953, and two months later, both sides began exchanging POWs. But Bill had one more gut-wrenching moment to endure…when every single prisoner was released except him. His “trial” was the reason: He was considered a war criminal, not a POW. For one day, Bill was all alone in the camp.
Thankfully, Bill was released the next day and soon found himself back in the arms of his wife. For the next four decades, he lived a quiet life. Nobody really knew the extent of his experiences. His past remained in Korea. Finally, though, in the late 1990s, he decided he needed to process the trauma of his 1,038 days in captivity. So, he wrote and self-published his memoirs. And he also helped lobby for Emil Kapaun to be awarded the Medal of Honor — which he finally was in 2013.
Stories like Bill’s are why Veterans Day is so important. We imagine there are thousands of stories like this one. Thousands of Bills all around the country. Stories of veterans who showed immense courage and unbelievable caring even in their hardest moments. Of veterans who refused to leave a wounded buddy or wrapped their arms around a comrade no matter how ill they were. Of veterans who stood up or spoke out even when it would have been easier not to.
In his book, Bill called his experience a thousand days of torment. But it was also something else: A thousand days of courage and compassion.
Most stories like this will never make it into a history book. Most will never go further than a family conversation. But they happened, and they matter. Because it’s those moments of courage, of resilience, of compassion, that make ours a country worth fighting for.
Veterans Day is a chance to share and learn about those stories. To keep them alive long after the people who lived them are gone. To ensure that, in a world where disasters and scandals and petty politics take up a lot of oxygen, the most noble things are given their proper due.
We are so grateful for this country we live in and grateful to the veterans who have shaped and safeguarded it. In honor of them, we wish you and yours a safe and peaceful Veterans Day.
1 “ The Unbreakable Tiger,” U.S. Army, https://www.army.mil/article/178006/the_unbreakable_tiger