Trump to award Medal of Honor to three Vietnam, Afghanistan heroes

The Medal of Honor is being handed to three men whose acts of valor were separated by 45 years, a reminder that extraordinary bravery is often recognized only after records are revisited and institutions decide to correct what was missed. President Donald J. Trump was scheduled to award the nation’s highest military decoration to retired Maj. James Capers, Jr. of the Marine Corps, Col. John W. Ripley of the Marine Corps posthumously, and retired Maj. Nicholas Dockery of the Army.

Capers will be honored for actions from March 31 to April 3, 1967, in the Republic of Vietnam, when he served as a team leader with 3d Force Reconnaissance Company, 3d Reconnaissance Battalion. According to the citation, he kept his patrol moving despite repeated contact with a numerically superior enemy force, directed fire onto an enemy base camp, and refused evacuation until every one of his men had been extracted.

Ripley’s recognition reaches back even further, to April 2, 1972, at Dong Ha, Vietnam. As a senior Marine adviser to the Third Vietnamese Marine Corps Infantry Battalion, he moved 500 pounds of explosives into place and spent three hours under intense enemy fire destroying the Dong Ha bridge to stop a North Vietnamese mechanized assault. His award comes posthumously, underscoring how often the full weight of military recognition arrives long after the battlefield has gone quiet.

Dockery’s case is the most recent. On Oct. 2, 2012, as a platoon leader with 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, his platoon was ambushed by a large Taliban force. The Army says the unit had left Forward Operating Base Tagab that morning to provide security for a meeting between U.S. and Afghan leaders, and Dockery repeatedly risked his life over four hours to protect and evacuate three wounded soldiers.

The June 18 ceremony also highlights how the military award system can move only when records, law and command attention align. The Nicholas Dockery Medal of Honor Act, H.R. 7194, authorized the president to present the decoration, and Dockery was identified by the Army as one of its newest Medal of Honor recipients in 2026. The rarity of the award remains stark: the Congressional Medal of Honor Society says there are 64 living recipients. Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes inducted three Army Medal of Honor recipients on March 3, 2026, including Vietnam veteran Terry P. Richardson and the posthumous recipients Roderick W. Edmonds and Michael H. Ollis, a separate reminder that public memory of valor is still being corrected in real time.