Trump to award Medal of Honor to three combat veterans

President Donald Trump on Thursday is set to award the nation’s highest award for valor in combat to two Marine Corps veterans and a recent U.S. soldier, after years of advocacy by colleagues to upgrade the recognition that each previously received.

Those receiving the award are retired Marine Maj. James Capers, the late Marine Col. John Ripley and medically retired Army Maj. Nicholas Dockery, the White House said Thursday in a statement. Capers and Ripley, both long revered within the Marine Corps, will be recognized for bravery under fire in Vietnam, while Dockery will receive the award for actions in Afghanistan.

Capers, 88, initially received a Bronze Star with V, a recognition that sits a few levels below the Medal of Honor in the military’s hierarchy of valor awards, for leading his nine-man reconnaissance unit through a hellacious four-day operation in the spring of 1967. He suffered grave injuries and lost a significant amount of blood during an ambush but continued to coordinate supporting fire and the team’s movements to a helicopter after receiving morphine for his pain, according to past Marine Corps accounts.

The Marine Corps upgraded Capers’s award to a Silver Star, two levels down from the Medal of Honor, in 2010, but an advocacy effort continued to get him the nation’s highest combat award.

He has long been celebrated as an African American pioneer in the Marine Corps Special Operations community, and Marines have voiced mixed feelings in the past about whether racial bias may have played a role in him not being fully recognized, according to “Faith Through the Storm: Memoirs of Major James Capers, Jr.,” a book about his exploits.

Ripley’s battlefield heroics have been celebrated for decades. As a Marine captain in April 1972, he climbed beneath a bridge while braving enemy fire to rig it with explosives and prevent advancing North Vietnamese soldiers from crossing.

Ripley, who died in 2008, had been instructed to “hold or die,” according to “The Bridge at Dong Ha,” a 1989 book that explored Ripley’s actions and elevated his profile among a new generation of Marines. He previously received the Navy Cross, one tier below the Medal of Honor, for his actions.

Dockery was a second lieutenant in October 2012 when his unit was ambushed in Afghanistan’s Kapisa province by Taliban fighters wielding rifles, machine guns and other weapons.

Dockery scrambled into a courtyard to defend a group of U.S. soldiers after hearing that one of them was wounded, led a counterattack to clear the area and used his body to shield a fellow soldier from a Taliban grenade explosion, according to Army accounts.

Dockery noticed that two Taliban fighters were dragging away an unconscious U.S. soldier, killed both of the adversaries in close combat and then began first aid on the soldier, saving his life, according to the citation for a Silver Star that Dockery previously received for his actions.

A few years later, Dockery went on to earn a second Silver Star as a captain in a Special Forces unit in 2018. Now 41, he left the military this year and has started the Nicholas Dockery Foundation, focused on helping people overcome traumatic situations.