2 Marines and 1 soldier receive the Medal of Honor

WASHINGTON — Two Marines from the Vietnam War and a soldier from the war in Afghanistan received the nation’s highest award for courage under fire Thursday at the White House.

“As we approach the 250th anniversary of our founding, we remember that we owe everything to heroes like those we celebrate today. Men who went willingly to the darkest and most dangerous corners, ordered to defeat evil so that we could live free,” President Donald Trump said during the ceremony.

More than 3,500 individuals have received the nation’s highest military honor since its creation in 1861.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made it in time for the less-than 30-minute ceremony after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

Retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr., a stern but soft-spoken son of a sharecropper born in Jim Crow-era South Carolina, enlisted in the Marines at 18 without an inkling he would spend the next two decades wearing the service’s storied uniform.

One of only a few Black men, Capers, now 88, entered boot camp at Parris Island in 1953 — only 11 years after the service opened its ranks to Blacks and seven years before it would achieve full racial desegregation — aiming to stand out among his peers.

Early in his career he’d make another choice uncommon among Black men of his generation, electing to go into special operations. As a Marine it meant joining Force Reconnaissance, small teams tasked with long-range surveillance and intelligence gathering, often taking the commandos deep behind enemy lines with little support from the larger U.S. military.

“If I was going to die there in Vietnam, I was going to die fighting,” Capers, whose 22 years in the Corps would earn him fame as a revered and innovative fighter and one of the Marines’ first Black special operators, told Stars and Stripes in 2018. “That was just the way we fought. You go out fighting. You kill as many enemy as you could — and that would mean that they could not further fight your guys or other American troops.”

It was April 1967, after three days of patrolling behind enemy lines in search of a reported North Vietnamese encampment near the village of Phu Loc just north of Hue city, when Capers’ nine-man Third Force Recon Team — known as Team Broadminded — found itself in the crosshairs of an entire NVA regiment.

The fighting was as intense as any he had seen in nearly a year in Vietnam spent conducting dozens of commando raids in northern South Vietnam, Capers recalled.

Capers, with two broken legs and peppered with shrapnel from the blast of a Claymore mine, battled a mental haze brought on by massive blood loss and a shot of morphine as he fought to free his men from the assault.

“I hope this isn’t giving you some bad memories, Jim. But I’ll tell you, everybody admires you for what you went through,” Trump said.

With his entire team wounded and their loyal service dog, King, killed in action, Capers ordered his Marines to evacuate on a small H-34 chopper. He continued the fight — calling in strikes on “danger close” enemy positions as he fended off the attackers with his M-16. But the extraction helicopter was overloaded, and his men needed critical medical attention. Capers made the impossible decision — let the chopper take his men and King’s body away from danger while he stayed behind to face certain death.

“I figured it’s better to lose one man than to lose the whole team,” Capers, 88, told Stars and Stripes in a recent telephone interview from his home near Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C. “Any commander worth his salt would care for his men before his self.”

But the men would not leave their leader behind.

Capers was pulled aboard the chopper. After two failed attempts at liftoff, the pilots finally got the H-34 airborne, carrying the men to safety and beginning Capers’ journey toward recovery. He would later become the face of the Corps’ first recruiting campaign targeting young Black men.

Capers first was awarded a Bronze Star with V, which was upgraded to the Silver Star.  

“The nation kept you waiting far too long. So I say to you, congratulations, you made it. Thank you,” Trump said.

Capers received a standing ovation from the audience in the East Room. The retired Marine rose to stand up but needed assistance. Hegseth walked over to lend a hand.

After his application to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was rejected in 2004, Dockery enlisted as an infantryman in the Indiana Army National Guard.

In 2005, he transferred to the New Mexico Army National Guard and entered the Army ROTC Simultaneous Membership Program while attending the New Mexico Military Institute.

Dockery applied to the U.S. Military Academy for a second time and was accepted. Although he was offered a commission by the New Mexico Army National Guard, he turned it down in favor of attending West Point. He graduated in 2011 and was commissioned into the infantry.

As a second lieutenant leading a combined force of American and Afghan soldiers in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, on Oct. 2, 2012, Dockery’s unit came under attack from a large Taliban force armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.

They were ambushed by 150 Taliban fighters swarming in from multiple directions, Trump said.

“Nick raced across the open ground to rally his scattered team. They were all very concerned, very nervous. There was not a lot of hope,” the president added.

Over the course of four hours, he fought and maintained contact with the enemy in extremely restricted urban terrain, personally risking his life on numerous occasions to protect and evacuate three wounded members of his platoon, according to the Army.

After consolidation and reorganization, he directed rotary wing aircraft in the defense against subsequent enemy counter-attacks from an exposed rooftop while his unit evacuated the wounded soldiers.

Dockery continued serving after his deployment, earning the Green Beret and leading Special Forces teams in some of the military’s most demanding assignments.

Dockery retired from active duty as a major last month. He was working within the Special Operations Command’s Pentagon unit.

“Major Dockery, you were the last man to depart the battlefield that day, and you left it a legend and a hero,” Trump said.

The president drew laughs from the room as it took him close to a minute to tie the medal after Dockery’s neck.

“That’s not coming off now,” Trump said as Dockery turned around laughing too.

Marine Corps Col. John Ripley, a graduate of the Naval Academy, is known for his actions in Vietnam.

In April 1972, then-Capt. Ripley single-handedly destroyed a major bridge in Vietnam, swinging hand-over-hand across its steel girders to plant explosive charges even as an enemy tank fired at him.

His three-hour, one-man assault on the Dong Ha Bridge has long been a hallowed story in the Marine Corps. Fellow Marines, friends and advocates have pushed for decades to see the Navy Cross he was awarded for the battle upgraded to a Medal of Honor.

In the waning years of the war, Ripley was stationed near the city of Dong Ha with a garrison of about 300 North Vietnamese troops. To stop the advancing enemy, the then-Marine captain devised a plan to destroy a bridge over the Cua Viet River in South Vietnam’s Quang Tri province.

On Easter Sunday 1972, more than 20,000 North Vietnamese troops launched a major offensive against South Vietnam near the village of Dong Ha. The North Vietnamese Army was moving toward a bridge built by Navy Seabees because it was their only was to cross the nearby river. With a small garrison of around 600 South Vietnamese troops, Ripley knew that the only way to stop the offensive was to destroy the bridge, according to the Marine Corps.

Working by himself, Ripley moved 500 pounds of explosives into position.

“As the only (Marine) with sufficient demolition experience, John reached for the first load of explosives. Everyone said, ‘Don’t do it, John, don’t do it,’ ” Trump recounted.

He then exposed himself to fire from enemy rifles, machine guns and tanks while he fastened an intricate web of explosives and fuses across critical points in the bridge structure.

As he set the final fuses, Ripley noticed that they were wet and might not light. He recalled that he was prepared to trigger a grenade and drop down into the river in the hope that the current would carry him far enough before the bridge came crashing down upon him.

To his luck, the fuse lit and Ripley successfully escaped peril and accomplished the mission. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the service’s second-highest award for valor.

Ripley remained in the Marine Corps until 1992 and retired as a colonel, according to the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Ripley soon afterward became the first Dean of Southwestern Virginia College, later accepting the position as chancellor. Ripley returned to “duty” in July 1999, leading the Marine Corps History and Museums Historical Center.

Ripley died October 2008 at 69, and his son, Tom, received the award on his behalf.

Ripley is the first Naval Academy graduate to receive the Medal of Honor since Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale in 1976, the school said in a news release.

“Congratulations, he’s looking down on you, you know that,” Trump told Ripley’s family in attendance.