President Donald Trump on Thursday handed America's highest military honour to an 88-year-old Vietnam veteran who waited almost six decades for recognition.
Retired Marine Major James Capers Jr. stood at the White House as Trump placed the Medal of Honor around his neck. The president briefly steadied him as he walked to the stage, and the room rose in applause.
Capers earned it during a four-day reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam from March 31 to April 3, 1967. As a team leader with 3rd Force Reconnaissance, he and his nine-man squad were hunting for a North Vietnamese base camp.
They hit a larger enemy force three times. Capers kept pushing forward and directed fire that stopped an impending attack on a nearby Marine battalion.
On the final day, his patrol was ambushed by a claymore mine. Badly wounded and losing blood, he still led his men, called in close air support for an hour, and refused to board the rescue helicopter until every Marine was safe.
Trump told guests that Capers was first recommended for the Medal of Honor in 1967, but the paperwork was lost after his commanding officer was killed. Congress later passed H.R.3377 to waive the time limit, and Trump signed it into law.
Capers made history long before Thursday. He became the first African American to command a Marine Reconnaissance company.
The president also honoured two other heroes at the same ceremony — Army Major Nicholas Dockery for leading his platoon under heavy Taliban fire in Afghanistan on October 2, 2012, and Marine Colonel John W. Ripley, posthumously, for single-handedly blowing up the Dong Ha bridge in Vietnam on April 2, 1972 to stop enemy tanks.
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