Shawn Ryan Show - #180 Major James Capers Jr. - Vietnam Marine Commando Silver Star Recipient

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Major James Capers Jr. is a distinguished Marine Corps veteran renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to U.S. military special operations. As one of the first African American members of the elite Marine Force Reconnaissance unit, he led numerous covert missions during the Vietnam War. His valor and leadership earned him multiple commendations, including the Silver Star, Bronze Stars with "V" devices, three Purple Hearts, a Navy Commendation Medal, and a Navy Achievement Medal. Beyond his military service, Capers chronicled his experiences in the book Faith Through the Storm: Memoirs of Major James Capers, Jr., offering a firsthand account of his combat missions, personal sacrifices, and the challenges he overcame. His pioneering efforts have left an indelible mark on military tactics and continue to inspire future generations of service members. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://patreon.com/vigilanceelite https://shawnryanshow.com/newsletter Major James Capers Jr. Links: Documentary - https://www.capersthedoc.com Book - https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Through-Storm-Memoirs-Capers/dp/1642986399 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's good to be here. It's good to have, it's an honor to have you here. Thank you. So you popped up on our radar, I think about a couple of weeks ago, and man, I just want to say, I think, I mean, it is a real honor to have you here. You're the first Vietnam veteran to be on the show, and that's something that I've been really looking forward to getting somebody on the show that's served in that war. And to have you here is just, I'm over the moon about it.

It's such an honor to have you here. We haven't documented this war at all yet and so this is something that I've been real excited about and so thank you for making the trip. It's good to be here. So I want to get right into it. So I want to do a life story on you and from what I understand there's a really good possibility that your silver star might be getting upgraded to Medal of Honor. And I hope this gets to the right people to make that happen. I just want to put that out right up front so everybody listening understands how important this interview is and we want to be

a part of making that happen and documenting your life story. So everybody starts off with a introduction. So here we go. Major James Capers, you are a retired United States Marine Corps officer and true American hero. You're a pioneer in reconnaissance, training, tactics, and recognize for your legendary career that overcame obstacles and broke barriers on and off the battlefield. You're one of the first African American Marines to serve in the elite force reconnaissance companies and the first to receive a battlefield commission.

You are a recipient of numerous awards, including the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with Voweller, three Purple Hearts, and induction into the U.S. Special Operation Command's Commando Hall of Honor. You are the author of Faith Through the Storm, Memoirs of Major James Capers Jr. You are the subject of the documentary Major Capers, the Legend of Team Broadminded. You are a father figure to Team Broadminded, a specialized group of force reconnaissance Marines, and you continue to honor their legacy

through annual reunions and your ongoing involvement in special operations community. Welcome to the show. Thank you. All right, so, we got quite a bit to cover here. Okay. But what I'd like to start with is your childhood.

So I understand you grew up in South Carolina. Partly. I lived there early years, and then my father was put on the chain gang. This was back in the old days, 30s. What is the chain gang? The chain gang is when they took mostly African Americans and put them out and they did hard labor.

It was sort of a, I don't know, I wasn't born back then, but mostly black individuals was put on this chain gang, tough living they took away from their families. My father was on this chain gang, but some way he got away and went to Baltimore, Maryland. And I had gotten sick. Before he left, he gave me to a white family. This was the family that, you know, they were all farmers out in this area. And they took me in and brought me back to health.

And today they're trying to find descendants of that family. How old were you when you were given to a white family? Probably about four. Four years four years old you have any Recollection of that. Oh, there were days when I thought I could remember a female who obviously would feed me and care for me and In my memory she Looked like a blonde lady.

I could remember a female with blonde hair. And so that's all I really remember, except I was cared for. But at some point, I was given back to my family once I'd been cured. Back in those days, we had a lot of childhood diseases. We lost a lot of young American, black Americans from those diseases at that time. And I was given back to my family completely cured or healed. And then my mother, my sister, and two brothers, and myself,

at some point at night, a vehicle showed up at our shack. That's where we lived back in those days. And we picked cotton, cropped tobacco in the rule south. And the vehicle showed up, and we in up in Baltimore. And I was probably five or six or something like that. I don't, nobody really knows.

There's no records. There's no records of my being born. I don't have a birth certificate. That's the rule of self back in those days. And I finally got to Baltimore and started in school. So you were working in the fields as a five to six-year-old child. So a lot of kids were like that. Had these bags on your shoulder, and you're out there picking cotton.

Now you had adults out there that would go along with you, but everybody worked. Couldn't stay home unless you were sick, something like that. I picked a lot of cotton and learned to crop tobacco and slop the hogs and all the room work. Everybody worked. Wow. There was no downtime. Do you remember the vehicle showing up in the middle of the night at the shack?

Yeah, it was like an old Ford, like a 29 Ford or something like that, one of the old vehicles thrown into the car and we took off. What did your parents tell you? Do you remember? Well they, my father wasn't there. He was in Baltimore. It was an, apparently, a range for another group to take us to Baltimore.

So we got in the vehicle, and next thing I know, we were in Baltimore as a child, those are my memories. Back in the old days, you couldn't eat at restaurants. You couldn't go into the facilities, bathrooms, things like that. You had black and you had white. And so these are things my mother told me how difficult it was for her as a female. There have been a lot of books written on this subject, how African Americans made that transition, almost slavery.

It was not slavery, of course, we know that that was over, but the remnants were still there. We were treated like slaves, and there were a lot of pieces to that that I saw and I remembered. But when I got to Baltimore, they put me in school as a child. I had no birth certificate, so nobody really knew who I was. And the first James Capers Jr. passed away, so they renamed me James Capers Jr. So they renamed me James Capers Jr. But there was always some feeling that I was reincarnating my older brother.

But no, I had no birth certificate. Years later, we tried to find something out. But that was a problem that I had. And even today, I got two birth dates, the 25th of August and the 27th of August. Nobody knows how that happened. Which birthday do you like better? 25. Right on.

So how was it when you got to Baltimore? Well, it was a year for ya. I loved it. Buildings and schools and restaurants, of course, wasn't designed for folks like us coming from the South. We didn't know anything, basically. We had to learn the system there in Baltimore. And went to school, did well, graduated high school there. Were you welcomed in school?

Yeah. They didn't have any of those Jim Crow laws? Well, not in Baltimore, but it was an all black school. Everybody was teaching with blacks, students were black. So it was hard for me coming from the South, that was certainly different from where I had been until Baltimore. That streetlights and automobiles and all those things

that I never saw on the cotton fields in South Carolina. Interesting. How long did it take you to get used to that? That culture change? Well, it took me a while because I was a country boy. They didn't readily accept me into the city. You know, I didn't know the language. You know, it took me a while to learn there was stores on each corner.

And, you know, the school was different. The children there spoke differently than I spoke for the South. But I knew that I could do it. And I pressed on. How did your family integrate? Were they, I mean, was there a sense of relief being up there? Was everybody happier? Well, I was happier. Color by skin took that away. We worked hard. And my father got a job. And us children, we were happy about that.

He got a job in the steel mill. World War II was there. I remember World War II. And he worked in a steel factory. I guess they built ships for the fleet back in those days, the Maryland Dry Dock Company. And they were in a pretty good living and was able to sustain us. But when I became a little older, I sold newspapers and sold junk. Did anything I could to add to the company, to the family. How old were you when that started? About seven.

Seven years old you started selling newspapers. Then they stopped because they had a law then that you had to be at least 12 years older as a child to work. But no, we did all hustling, whatever you could do, you know, to do those types of things to add to the income of the family. Did you have any hobbies as a kid, or was it just work? Mostly work, but yeah, you always find some kind of way

to do something. Shoot marbles, and I don'tbles and they don't know about marbles these days, but you know, we did that. And we played all of the games, basketball, which we didn't have the hoops and things. We had took baskets and put them up on a wall or something, and that was our net. We had to be, you know, we had to really be creative because they didn't provide anything from us, force. So we worked hard and I learned how to take care of myself because in a way it was kind of dangerous, you know. Everybody carried knives and guns and things

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You kept away from that? Yeah. Did you carry a weapon as. You kept away from that? Yeah. Did you carry a weapon as a kid? No. No? Worst weapon I had was when I joined boot camp in 1956. What got you interested in the military? Back in those days, everybody, you know, after World War II, I joined in 56.

But World War II was over and Korea, we were still digging out of Korea. That happened in 54 and I joined in 56. And I had learned quite a bit. We had television there in Baltimore. I had never seen a television before. So we had television and we saw these military guys on TV and they were recruiting back in those days. You had to join or they would draft you. You know, so if you didn't join, someone would come by and, then when you turned 18, yeah, you had to join some military. And I saw the Marine uniform on TV and I saw some of the recruiters.

I mean, that looks pretty good, you know? I'll go ahead and join in rain. So we did. My old buddy, we joined in June of 1956. Did you want to go to war? Yeah. You did? World War II, all the newspapers, we were patriotic, loved that flag.

And we happened to go protect it. We were patriotic. Loved that flag and we have to go protect it. We were taught that. And I really couldn't wait to protect my country. That was my thought process as a young man. Were we involved in any conflicts in the year 1956? The U.S.? In the U.S. in 56. That was peacetime, correct?

Well I joined the military in 56. Yeah. And I went to war in 56. You went to war in 56. I got out 56 boot camp They sent me to Suez Canal the Egyptians had closed the Suez Canal And so Eisenhower was our president And he said, you know

We're not gonna put up with that. He was a wartime president so he sent send the 1st Battalion 2nd Marines over there. And we got it done. We didn't land, but just the appearance of that battalion coming in with the American flag, and they opened it back up again. I went back in 1957 when the Syrians started a war. We went back and we didn't have to land to chase the Syrians. We just went back as a show of force. And in 58 I went back and we

landed in Beirut. The gypsies had closed the Suez Canal. Our job was to get it back open again. That's 1958 when we actually, the Syrians and the Lebanese started a big war. And of course Eisenhower was still president. He was president until Kennedy come in. And so we went there again, we landed, and we fought in the mountains, and fought the snipers and all of the things that was happening at that time.

Is that the, is 58 when you evacuated Americans from Lebanon? The airport, yeah. Is that the first time you saw combat? Yeah. First hand? Mm-hmm. How did that feel? Describe that experience.

Well, you know, I mean, I was a Marine. Hell, it wasn't a problem for me. We landed. We evacuated the airport, we took the civilians out, the embassies that were there, we got them out, but we had a thousand Marines though. And I was a squad leader, you know.

I was in charge of some troops and I had to get it done. I was an NCO now. And dying for me, wasn't that big of a deal. I'd been trained by guys that fought in Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. And coming through as a young man, so that's what we were trained to do.

You're gonna fight. And we went up to the mountains with the old M1s, do a lot of hand grenades. We learned to make parapets and dig foxholes and eat terrible rations. It was a hard tour, a duty for us, but we all got a nice letter from, uh, from our Isau, you know, thanking us. And then we got one from our Commodot thanking us.

It did a good job. How long was that battle? Few months. You were there for a few months? A few months. Wasn't that long. Was it fighting every day? Yeah, we had to go into the mountains

and that's where they were. And some of them had come across from Syria. You have to understand how that stuff was back in those days. No one liked us, the Syrians, but they took all our money and the things that we brought over there. We came in on ships. They didn't fly us in.

The other guys that came in from Germany, Army group came in from Germany, and they sort of gave us some relief. But they could fight. They had been in Germany since World War II, so this is 1958. They came in and relieved us, and then when we were tired, we'd been fighting in those mountains day and night,

and I had my first experiences of killing a human being. Didn't really bother me. I didn't feel any real problem. It didn't bother you? Killing a human being. I had my first experiences with killing a human being. Well, let's talk about that experience. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How was the first human you killed? How did that experience go?

In the mountains, up on top of the mountains, they had buildings up there and they had their hideouts and things up there. So my job was to go up there and clear it out with my squad. And I hit a small building and a couple of the guys tried to run out and my squad and I hit a small building and a couple of the guys tried to run out and I shot and killed both of them. I didn't feel anything. Nothing. No remorse.

And then we, when we were hit at night in the mountains, you know, we fought them off, you know, so. Never lost a battle. And 20 years of my experience in Marine Corps, I was never defeated. No one ever defeated me. What was it like for you to come home after rescuing Americans in Lebanon during that Civil War. When's the first time you went back home to see your family? Well, we were there for six months' cruise.

And after we fought in Lebanon, they put us aboard ships and they sent us back. Took us 30 days to get home. and they sent us back. Took us 30 days to get home. You know, it was enlightening. And then when we were told we were going home, we got home. And part of that was my high school sweetheart,

which I had fallen madly in love with, Dottie Capress. We were married 50 years, still love her today. Never remarried. That's my son back there. But at any rate, I'm sorry. When is the first time you went home to your mom your brothers and your sisters? Oh yeah that was good. I came home from Lebanon. I was an NCO. I

wanted to see my mom but I I wanted to see my wife. We were with my wife, my girlfriend. I had met and loved with Dottie Capress. Never loved a woman other than Dottie Capress. We weren't married at that time, but I called on her, and it was a whirlwind type of thing. This was 1958, December or so along there. We went into the Caribbean for a while.

I had to do some work down there. We had some thugs and whatever, so we had to go do that. Then the Syrian thing popped up all in this area. I don't know if I got the timing right. It was a long time ago. But 59 come around and my three years was up. I could either stay in the Marine Corps or I could get out now and go home,

but going home wasn't much of an attraction now. I'd been with some of the finest military guys in the world. I'd fought with them, I shed blood with them. I wanted to stay with them, but I saw Dottie and I decided to stay with the Marine Corps. I re-enlisted. How did you meet Dottie? She was my high school sweetheart.

You met her in high school? I met her in high school. The first time I saw her, I was in love. She was walking by and I was with a group of other guys and I saw she had on a yellow dress. And I looked at her, I couldn't believe it. I went home and I told my mom, I said, Mog, guess what? I saw this girl today and she said, sit down son, we'll talk, we'll talk. But I loved her so much. And every chance I got to see her,

in the halls of the school there, was a carver high school. And I tried to find a way to sneak around to see her. And sometimes in the hallway, I had the nerve to stop her. And I talked to her and fell in love. And when I held her hand, when she was dying, she winked at me. She was dying of cancer.

I was holding her hand. We'd been married 50 years. But that was her. Strong woman. Military wives. You know, back during that time, you know, they got it done. Because we were gone a lot. You know, I did 14 years overseas. I fought two wars,

including the thing in the Middle East. When did you guys get married? June of 1959. So I re-enlisted. And they paid me a lot of money. Wasn't much. In today's we look at it and they say that was no money at all. But that was great for me because I was a military guy. I didn't need a whole lot of money.

At the time though, when I joined, I was sending my parents monies. That's what we all did, we had allotments. And because I just appreciated what they'd done for me You know coming from the south and all that and they were not really educated folks. We were farmers basically But I Did well marry Donnie we went to California. I hooked up with first force recon company Well before we get to first force, you were married for 50 years.

Yeah. So I want to ask you, what is your, in your opinion, what is the secret to a successful marriage? I will tell you. I loved Dottie Caperson the first time I saw her. We went through hell. We raised a blind child. Our first child, Gary, was born blind and special needs. And good child. He played the flute, the melodic of the organ, piano, But he had other difficult things.

And after we were married, oh, we were married, then the military didn't have schooling for him, for my son. Wonderful child. I loved him so much. I was holding his hand when he closed his eyes He died of appendicitis Then seemed like the next day my wife died of cancer and the demons come home How do you stay happily married for 50 years

What's the secret? I love this so much. She kicked me out once. She kicked you out? Kicked me out once. What'd you do? Did you deserve it? Yeah, I went out with the guys and stayed overnight, and I didn't call her.

I came home. and I didn't call her. I came home, I used to wear cowboy hats, you know, back in the old, that was one of the things I wore for cowboy boots like I have on now, and I wore cowboy hats. So she took my cowboy hat and threw it out, then went over and stomped on it. So I knew that I was in trouble. But I loved her, she let me come back in.

But she was such a sweetheart. I remember we were, a snake bit her, she was out feeding the fish, we had a fish pond. She was out there feeding the fish with her hand, a snake come up and bit her on the hand. This takes away from your, what are you talking about there, it's telling you about that time when a snake bit her. And she didn't panic.

She's scared of snakes. Bit her on the finger, so she come in and said, sweetheart, I've been bit by a snake. I panicked. When I did the first aid, we had to get down to the emergency room. So we went there, but the snake was not poisonous. One of my troops who lived next door, he wouldn't kill the snake, he brought it down to the hospital, and they looked at it. It was not poisonous. But just the whole idea of her demeanor at that time.

I think I would have, I've been struck close by snakes, never got hit by a poisonous snake, but I've been around pythons and all this other stuff in Southeast Asia. But I'm just saying about Dottie, she's so brave, got her taken care of. But we would do a lot of challenges together. I got sent overseas for 15 months as a Marine Pathfinder

back in the old days. And I had to send her home, put her on a train and send her back to Baltimore with my child. And I was gone for that period of time. Interesting world back then as far as Marines are concerned. And the Army guys too, you know, which we did work a lot with and the SEALs were just coming on board. So they came on board and was set to 70-61.

Did you work with the SEALs? Yeah. How was that? It was good because they were young guys. They were UDT guys at first. And then they went to move beyond the high water line. We were all scuba. That's what I did for my time in the military.

I did dive masters and I did combat swims and I did all of that. But the SEALs were new guys. They were underwater demolition team, but they moved them from swimming. Then they went beyond the high water line, which meant that they could go out and blow shit up, part of my language. They were good. They were young.

And we had a lot of Marines went over to the SEALs. Really? Yeah, oh yeah. A lot of the SEALs. Really? Yeah, oh yeah. A lot of the SEALs were Marines. Interesting. Oh yeah. I knew a lot of the SEALs. I worked with them in Vietnam.

Of course, I was an old guy. I was 29 years old. I was the dive master and I did all that because I've been in for a while. I was good at it. I did Let's go back to 1959 all right, we became the first African American to join the Marine Corps special operations

Force recon that's what they tell me. That's what they tell you. That's what they tell me. That's what they tell you? That's what they tell me. I joined up and to join Force recon at that time, you had to be almost a Superman. These guys-

So did you know what Force recon was when you'd signed up for it? I'd heard about it. How'd you hear about it? Guys had told me about, and it had a newspaper there. It was the Scout newspaper in California. And it had an article on them.

A guy jumping out of airplanes and swimming and diving. And I thought this was pretty cool. I'd been in the grunts for three years. So I went down and took the test. They kicked the hell out of me. These guys were nuts. Damn! You think sealed training got to be pretty good?

You know, we didn't have a whole lot of these guys. And I passed, of course. Well, actually, I didn't pass. They said I didn't pass. They said, well, come back on Monday. This was Friday, I didn't pass. They said I didn't pass. They said, well, come back on Monday. This was Friday, I took the test. Said, you didn't make it. Come back on Monday and take it again.

OK. Showed up on Monday, took it again. They said, put him in the, you know, they took me in to see the first sergeant. Then I had to go see the captain. And the captain was in his office and he had a hand grenade on his window seal. I saw it. I'd seen hand grenades before. And he said something dumb like, what will you do with this hand grenade? I said, I'd throw it out the window.

The window was open. And this guy jumped up, grabbed the hand grenade and pulled the pin. It was a joke. They wanted to see if I was going to run. No, I went through all this hell to get here now. You're not gonna make me run out of this office there. But that's a little induction and that type of stuff.

I did three years there. Went overseas with the Marine Path Finest. What was the training like? Well, they sent you to jump school and all types of programs You had a platoon had a team and Out on the West Coast It was crazy. PT every day during the day, I was married at that time,

but now you had to live in the barracks. And for as long as I can remember, we were swimming, running and diving and all kinds of stuff they created. was swimming, running and diving and all kinds of stuff they created. The seals hadn't come on yet. This was 1961, right? This is 60. I went to jump school in 60.

That was separate. Then when I come back, I went through the recon indoctrination. And I was a pretty good kid. I could handle myself, but they were tough. We had guys from World War II in there, not many, but you know, they were new guys. We had some army in there. We had some SEALs, oh, not SEALs, but UDT guys. And the corpsmen were SEALs, oh not SEALs, but UDT guys and the corpsmen were SEALs.

Navy. Right, yeah, Navy guys, yeah. But first force was my indoctrination into special operation. What did it feel like for you to graduate the training? Well we didn't graduate from the training. They just put you in a platoon. You go through all the indoctrination which is the stuff now that jungle warfare and mind-clearing and all kind of stuff we went through

We didn't have a battalion it was one company And the folks that ran that company Pretty tough guys and he only took the best guys they are toughest guys. Had it. Huge guys. I don't know where they got those guys from.

I mean, really, when I saw those guys, and they could fight, could fight, but a lot of them were overrated, I thought. They came hot dogs. And I came there for a serious tourie duty. So I got in a little trouble. Some of the guys thought, well, I'm a black guy, so let's give this black guy a hard time.

Didn't work that way. I didn't back down from him, no. How'd they give you a hard time cuz it's black how I was only black guy there What would they do? Well one time after some horrendous program I was tired and I was in I was in the squad, baby now laid down this bed and the squad bay, and I laid down on this bed.

And the guys came by with this cross and put a rebel flag on me. And this stuff, they laughed about it, and I saw it. So I got up, cleaned myself up, let it go. In doctoration, they thought they were going to scare me. No, you don't scare Jim Capers. I'd worked too hard to get there. By that time, I had a wife and a child.

Of course, they paid you 55, well, listed 55 bucks for jump pay. And I became an officer. It went up to $110. I don't know what they do now, but it was extra pay. So it was incentive. And I enjoyed the tour. But a lot of racism back in those days.

I mean, you know, those things that I saw. And it bothered me, but it didn't deter me. And in 1966, was that your first tour to Vietnam? Yeah. Was that your first tour to Vietnam? Yeah and so What did you think when you got orders to go to Vietnam? Always wanted to go you wanted to go. Yeah, I was that that when I come back from First force They sent me back that East Coast to train troops in something called

ITR. They learned to do those types of things in the field. So I had that type of work to do. I was a Sergeant E-5 at the time and I stayed there for a few months and Force Recon was looking for volunteers. No, I had been in First Force, did that job okay. Now Vietnam guys were bleeding and the casualty list was high. And when I got to Fort Meade, I was on what I don't know they call it hardship. I had a blind child at home. So the commandant of the Marine Corps

said that you don't have to go to combat because you've got a blind son and a young wife. So I went to, didn't have to go to Vietnam, but I saw the casualty list. Saw the news cycles every night. I watched it. And all those young men were dying. I saw the clips. And I'm at home at night.

And then they put me on something called a Fort Meade Guard. It was a ceremonial unit. We went out to Fort Meade, which is where the Star Spangled Banner was written. So I had a little group. We marched out there every Thursday, marched out there and twirled rifles and carried the flag around. And we had a band with us. The band played and we marched and at night when we come home I had to

watch young guys carrying the flag in Vietnam and bringing the dead Marines home, soldiers home, the Airmen home. And one day I asked Dottie, she said, I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. I said, how do you know what I'm thinking? You don't know what I'm thinking. She said, yes, I do know what you're thinking. I see the news also. I know you're training. I've been there with you. I know it's time for you to go. And if you choose to go to Vietnam, Gary and I will be here when you come back. And my adjutant and another officer, a couple days later, came to my house, lived on the base, Army base, and they came to my house

and said, Sergeant, we know you volunteered to go back to Vietnam, or to go to Vietnam, I hadn't been before, and I just wanted to talk to your wife about it. My wife said, you don't need to talk to me. If you don't need something to eat or drink, your wife about it. My wife said, you don't need to talk to me. If you don't need something to eat or drink, your night's over. Night's over. He's my husband. I'm American too.

I'm a citizen too. I'll be here when he comes back. And he will come back. And gentlemen, your night's over. And one officer said, well, Mr. Capers, we just want to let you know that he doesn't have to go. You know, the commandant's got him on the whole. Just, I'm his wife. I gave birth to his child.

And I'll be here. They left. I got orders to go to Vietnam and Joining force recon and that was hard Third force Was made up of first force and second force Anybody else we can get, they had a qualifications. Now I'd been in first force, so I'm good to go.

So my job was to train the other guys coming in. I'd already been to jump and I went to scuba school again. Went to Coronado, I think it was, four week course. No, uh went to Coronado I think it was four-week course it was hard but I was honor graduating You were the honor graduate a graduate You know, they uh, they worked us hard uh We swam a lot.

We did a lot of water work. And I enjoyed it, because I swam my ass off in first force. You enjoyed diving? Yeah. You're the only person I know that enjoyed diving in the Coronado Bay. Well, I did that, and at the end of the course, one of my guys was going, we had 19 rings that was in the class, and we were all going to Vietnam.

So one of my kids did make the distance swim. Before you graduate, you gotta make that distance swim. And they don't give you any slack on that And he was a little bit late So the chief says hey Sarge We can't graduate him. I said chief come on now How long have you we known each other? You see yeah, I know but He didn't make the time swim,

so he can't go right away. He'd been through everything else. I said, Chief, he used to be a pretty good man, but now you're not. I said some other words, but he was my friend. I said, tell you what I'll do, if you let me do this again, I will swim with him. I will take the last, this is the last part of the course.

And so I, he said, yeah, okay, all right, all right, all right. And I said, I thought you really were a candy ass chief, but you made the right decision. I got in the water and swam. I don't know how far it was. I'd already made my swim. I'm good. Now I'm doing a second swim with him and it wore me out. We got about a hundred meters where we needed to be. My leg cramped up. I didn't give up and at the end he was tired and I'm trying to hold on to him I'm trying to deal with the cramp and all that but we got through there together

Crossed the line together damn. Oh Yeah, I did that and over the years. He still thanks me for that Now we should went to war and he survived didn't get a scratch on him. Tom Nicholson. Tom Nicholson. I used to wonder how to truly wake up feeling refreshed in the morning with the energy to hit my days head on and I finally found that using Helix mattress. It really helps me settle into the deep sleep I need every night that I could never get with any of my old mattresses Sleeping on a helix mattress helps me feel recharged Every day and it's made such a huge difference in my life

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Visit patriotmobile.com slash srs or call 972-PATRIOT. I needed to carry as many men as I could and I didn't want to have him come back. So I swam with him. That's documented. But that was Jim Capers. I'm in command. I was platoon sergeant. That's a hell of a leader. Well, did that most of my career.

Got shot to hell some of the times. Did you ever get wounded? No. Wonderful. That's great. That is really great. After all the hell you've been through, I'm glad you came home safe. And you got a family.

And you got a great program. They tell me that you had one of the most I've heard your program. Have you heard some of the other Marines? Mm-hmm. Have you heard some of the other Marines we've had on here from Force Reconnaissance and Marcus Hawk? I don't know that time as much. When did you come on anyway? What year? The show? Yeah. This show started on Christmas Eve of December 2019. I'd gone to California after my wife and my son passed. I moved to California. I lost touch with a lot of things. But what I've heard about your show and what I was told to listen to it you know I figured you another candy ass seal at first but found out that you weren't. You see that sword right there? Yeah. That's uh I interviewed a

Don Graves he was a flamethrower in Iwo Jima. And I interviewed him when he was 98 years old. Oh, great. And he turns 100 years old in May. He's gonna be back here. I don't know if he's coming on the show or not, but he's... I'm hoping to have lunch with him at least, but he sent me that sword and took that off a Japanese soldier in Nerojima. That's a lot. That's pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a Marine. And then one of my best friends, Nick Kefalitis, he was a Marsoc Marine and he was my third episode Cody Alford. and he was my third episode. Cody Alford, he was also a Marsok Marine honor man. Honor man, I think of his sniper class first. First, the youngest Marine to ever reach E8.

Fought in the Battle of Fallujah. He's a good friend of mine. We've had a lot of good Marines on here. Well, you've got a good show. We've had a lot of good Marines on here. Well, you've got a good show. We've had some candy ass seals, too, though. I've seen a few of those in my life. Go ahead. Live here, Ruppey.

Go ahead. Yeah, but let's get back to you. So finish the swim. you passed, and you guys go to Vietnam. Well, the other part of it was I had to get one of my other guys to the face line also so they wouldn't drop him. Another one? No, I did that just the one time with my other sergeant. It wasn't two of them, just one.

Okay. And then we came back to Camp Lejeune. Then we started training for Vietnam. Some of the guys had to go to jump school, and I had taken the swim guys there. But we had to go through the mine program. We went to the jungles down in Panama. We went through almost six months of training. Wow.

Yeah. And then they put us on a bus at night and sent us to Norfolk. How did you like the jungle down in Panama? I did training down there too. I went through three times. I went through with the force guys and I went through with our commanding officer with the grunts. Actually just two times I went there. And it was hard. I was the captain at the time. And trying to motivate the guys. And I took this chicken.

Grabbed the chicken. I stretched him out and bit his neck. I bit his head off. And I stretched him out and bit his neck, I bit his head off. And I threw him out there and the blood was all over me and all over him and the guys going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Motivating. You know, we would, we had one of my trainers, we were in a training part of the program in the jungles and the instructor said you guys take it easy now. All of us was the recon guys, we were all in the bleachers

and the instructor reached down in his boot and pulled out this snake and bit his hand off and threw him out in the sand. Now, I bit the chicken off, but that was just a show for my guys. I had a lot of new guys and we're trying to let them know that the old man can get it done. No, you need to fear me because I will kill you. They were troops. I couldn't do that, but you're trying to scare them a little bit. Sure, you've been through that. But we went through almost six months of training. Then we finally deployed in April of 1966. And they took us to, I forget what they took us to,

all of our equipment, dive stuff, swim stuff. And we went over to, on ship we went over. And I think we went straight into Vietnam, into Da Nang, and started setting up camp. And I think we went straight into Vietnam and to Da Nang and Started setting up camp and started operating and It was bloody what was the mission the mission was to go behind enemy lines and kill those son of a bitches That was the only my mission. That's what we did Just kill as many of them as you can?

Mm-hmm. Kill as many as you can? As you could. If you kill them, KIA, if you wounded them, we didn't really know if we wounded them or not. A lot of them were wounded and they crawled away. You see the blood trails. But if you were KIA, they gave you credit for it.

And we killed a lot of them. Let's talk about your first mission after the camp was built. What did that entail? Well, actually, the camp was already built. What did that entail? Well actually the camp was already built. There was guys there when we came in and they had a mess all set up and all that so we just had to get our stuff together. We went through some phases and launched from a place called Phu Bai, and that was already built. And we took off in area number five, because they had all these pieces of Vietnam in different

areas. And I got area number five. And he was loaded with a lot of NBs, whatever those guys were, you know. The Viet Cong, the NVA soldiers, a lot of them were there and they'd been there for a while, then the Vietnamese soldiers couldn't get them out. And a lot of the Vietnamese soldiers were cowards. They didn't want to fight. No kidding. They didn't want to fight, no.

They'd been there for all these years, and the North Vietnamese come in and wiped them out. So now we got to go in and fight the Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese, there was a border, the 16th parallel, and the NVA came across the 16th parallel, which has set, you know, since the earlier wars in Southeast Asia. And they came across and was coming all the way down in South Vietnam, and we were supposed to stop them. There were a lot of things you know a part of that. We had to set up ambushes. We went into their camps

and we ambushed them at night. There are a lot of individual stories about that. I ran 50 missions. All of them weren't from Fulbi. I went into Kaysan. I went into Fulock. I went into Da Nang. All my guys, and we lost guys along the way. But I had went from staff sergeant. We lost our three officers the first three months.

Wow. Gone. So I went from staff sergeant to second lieutenant. Never spent the day in OCS or basic school officers training. How would you set up on the camps? Would you do an L ambush? Yeah, we did a lot of those. We set up.

How many guys were you with? I mean, guys? Yeah, when you went on a... Let's talk about your first... Would you work primarily at daytime or at night? Both. Both? Oh yeah, you'd go out for five days or so.

Mostly four days though. Because if you're working hard as we did, and had the kind of combat that we had, we had guys that was injured, maybe not gunshot wounds, but it was hard, hard terrain. Through the jungles and trying to avoid the damn snakes. And I had one guy named Miller, he got bit twice by a snake.

And I had to send him down to Da Nang for treatment. Went down there and damn it, the guy got bit again. When we brought him back to Kaysan, he got hit real bad. We had that last mission at full out all of us fought for four days day and night Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, let's we'll get to full lock but

Wanted to I wanted I just want to talk about your first your very first mission. Mm-hmm in Vietnam Yeah, what was what was the briefing? the first mission in Vietnam. Yeah. What was the briefing? The first mission we made three combat dives. We came on a ship and they want to make sure that the ship had not been, they hadn't placed mines on the bottom of the ship. So I took down the divers and the ship was almost 3,000 feet. And we went down with scuba gear. We didn't have any trousers on. We just wore the jackets and had the oxygen and all of that. We went there as a regular scuba dive.

And we had to check and see that there was no mines on the ship on the bottom of the ship. Didn't run into any but we saw that they had something that that I don't know what the hell it was but fire was coming out of it and we had to avoid that you know the fire was coming out of it. And we had to avoid that. You know, the fire was coming out of the, had it in the bottom of the ship. And we were trying to get around that because I wanted to check the whole ship. And one instinct thing had happened.

We got there, had pretty air, no problem with that. And we got to the inn and had these tiger sharks. See the army was supposed to tell the Navy, hey you're here now. Or the Navy was supposed to tell the army, we're here now. Don't feed the sharks or the fish, because we're gonna be in the water,

we got divers in the water. Holy shit. Well, that didn't work that way. Some way the tiger shark showed up. I'm finishing up my dive now. And if you ever seen a tiger shark up close, they're voracious and they were feeding the stuff that the garbage that the army had dropped there

at the base there. So I had one man, his buddy lion, you all know buddy lions of course, and I had ten men or nine men of myself, and his buddy lion came loose, and he was drifting out to where the sharks were feeding. Now, as a leader, you have to make a decision. That's what leaders do. They can't sit on it. I made a decision right here, right now. I unhooked my buddy lion and swam out there and got him. You don't let him die.

You go out there and you bring him back. I brought him back. He's alive. He passed away a few years ago. But that's what I did. No honors, no medals, wasn't that. You save a life because those sharks would have eaten him up. I've seen tiger sharks before.

No honors. But the decision you make when you're a leader, you make that decision right here, right now. You don't think about it. That's what you do, and I've done that so many times. How about the first mission on the ground? Well, we had to get, do the dive missions. I did. We came in, we had to clear the ship. Then we, well, we went and got in country. That was early on, it wasn't the first mission we went on. But,

we lost a man, or the Marines had lost a man, and we had to go down and bring his body up. And while we were down there, we found there was over a couple hundred rounds of ammunition down there buried in the mud. So we brought the kids, wasn't much in the kids' body. They'd eaten them up pretty good. So we brought up what was left and then we decided to go back down and get those rounds because the NVA wouldn't take those rounds and they could use explosives with them. They had them buried there, over 200 rounds.

So we went back down and we pulled up every one of them. When you said that the body was eaten up, eaten up by what? By sharks. By sharks? Oh yeah. Yeah, we had the Songbo River, and they had not just sharks, but they had the Songbo River was a major river. Oh, where they had ships come down, not ships, but boats that come down there. And the Vietnamese, they washed in the river.

I'll bet there were families around there. But that wasn't my concern. We wanted to get that boy's body up. And we did it. And then we found those around. We had to get that boy's body up. And we did it. And then we found those rounds, we had to get those up now. Then what to do with it, EOD came in and they took the rounds. They took the rounds.

I'd lose them in on that one. Didn't lose a man. But it was a hell of an experience. We made, once we got to Da Nang, we anchored on the ship and we went down and did some other water work. We did a lot of water work as recon, swimmers and divers. Because the Grunts were not divers. When they had a problem, you know, they had to call us.

I did a lot of that stuff. I was in the office by that time. No, I really wasn't. I was a staff sergeant. I didn't get a commission until later on. But the first ground missions we went on, we had to go up in the mountains or go into jungles and hunt down the bad guys. And that's the first time they gave us the dogs, gave us the war dogs.

I had two of them on my first mission. And then Argo and King couldn't get along, so I kept King. King was killed later on in the full out. Good dog, tough dog, would kill you. I had him in a big case, a big cage, because you couldn't let him out of the cage. And I had a dog handle it and signed to him. And of course I can handle King.

We all trained with him. And he would kill the enemy soldier, grab him by the throat, groin, whatever that. He killed two in Fulock. Boy, he got killed. First missions on the ground said we had recon zones and we dropped in by helicopter. We were supposed to parachute in, but the jungles were kind of crazy and we'd only get separated, especially if you're going in at night. Some of those were probably done, but I didn't want to take my guys in by parachute. Now we had all this stuff there, but I decided

to take the helicopters, put us in and we can drop maybe 10 feet on the ground in the jungle and We stayed out for a while then they come and pick us up by helicopter and We would Have the helicopter land maybe two two positions because I didn't want to envy a to know where we were So he would drop in here, drop in there, and we were supposed to be at one place. And they knew where we were coming in.

We radioed them, said, we're going to be here. But sometime we would drop a flare over here. We did what we could so the enemy wouldn't know that we were going to be picked up here and jump in on us. Diversions. Yeah. Yeah. We did that. All of our missions and never got caught. But we did a lot of those missions until But we did a lot of those missions until the first part of it coming in on ground, they put us in with the first force.

They were already there. And we became part of the first force, and we fought with them. And then we did work with them and then they sent us out and Colonel Waller had a battalion there and he was our first CO. We were training back in the States. He was CO of a recon battalion and so they put us in with him. They fed us and took care of the things like that and we stayed with them the whole time. First force stay with first first we come a time

the same time, all the time. When was your first firefight in Vietnam? See, they all came together. Damn. Let's talk about the POW rescue mission ordered by President Johnson. Yeah, he did order it in the CIA Hallet. We had one North Vietnamese was in the camp,

and he was a young guy, and they thought he wasn't treating the Americans hard enough. So they put him in the penalty chamber and he escaped. CIA picked him up and brought him to me and brought him to our headquarters from division. And I took him in, his name was Lap. He was 18 years old and he was a soldier.

He slept in my tent with me. He didn't speak much English, didn't speak English. But I talked to him and he had a tent, a rack in my tent with me. Good kid, would have been an American kid, would have done well, but he was a warrior now. He'd been trained, you know, by the North Vietnamese to kill or to harm Americans or treat them bad, and he didn't.

So I've got him now. And he wasn't a bad kid. He would do what I asked him to do. I'd take him to the chow. I'd sit at night with him, and I'd show him a picture of my wife. So she sent me pictures and he would go, he'd smile, you know? You sign up for something,

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one night I Was asleep I woke up and knew something was wrong. I looked over and the lamp was gone. I said, oh shit, so I grabbed my pistol and went looking for him. I saw him. I grabbed him and said, lamp, what the fuck are you doing out here? I need to go to the bathroom. I said, what? I'm going to shoot you right now,

you know? Because I was worried that the guards in the camp, if they saw anybody moving at night that weren't supposed to be moving, they thought they were enemy soldiers, because they would try to infiltrate our bases or steal stuff. You know, you couldn't tell the difference, right? But I grabbed Lap and I brought her back to my tent. And I said, Lap, you know, if you got to go to the bathroom, I don't care what time it is, you wake me up, I'll take you there.

Because one of these, you know, roving sentries, they'll catch you out there and they won't know the difference. But hey, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So he got to be like a son to me. I kept him there for all of the training. And we had to train for this mission. Oh yeah, we had the shooting,

the shooting and the language stuff and all that. Finally we got it done and they decided the shooting and the language stuff and all that. Finally we got it done and they decided that the mission was a go. And then they said, no, we're not going. And so eventually we went and we were supposed to jump in and we worked on jumping in. We still had our parents' shoes and all that stuff, which we brought with us.

And then the weather got bad. It's now, no, we're not gonna jump. So I was gonna be the jump master, of course, because I'm jump master training and all that. Went in by helicopter. And was a big operation. SEALs, they did some recon somewhere. The CIA, they didn't do any water work, you know. But we did the water work.

Checked the rivers, and then it was time to go. So we flew in by helicopter and we landed. And the first night we stayed on a hill watching the area out there. We could see the fishermen, we could see the guys out in the rice paddies, but we stayed quiet. And then the next day we got off the hill and moved toward the camp, avoiding anybody that might have been out there. Third day we hit the camp, killed the first two guards,

and my job was to kill the sentry with my knife. That was, I'm the knife guy, you know, so I was good at that. So it had me scheduled to kill the first two guards or the sentries with my knife. But didn't get that far because everything blew up. All of a sudden, everybody was shooting. God damn it. How am I gonna find out what, well they told us where they thought the POWs was in the tent. The sentries here, the POWs here,

and they were something over there. So my job was to kill these guys, get in there and get the POWs out, five or six of them, POWs. And I got to where I thought they should be, nobody there. So I'm pissed. And one of my guys saw two guys coming toward the camp, and he shot those two. I saw two guys coming toward the camp, and he shot those two, and then I'm pissed now. Everything's happening, and no P.O.W.'s. So I said, fuck it, blow it up.

We blew the whole base up. Blew those places where they held American soldiers. Where they held them. Then I go, this camp will not hold another American Marine or soldier. We burned it. Yeah, we burned it. But I didn't get the POWs. And that was hard on us. We trained for so hard and for so long. And now we're going home without the POWs.

Dammit. You know, we had a captain in charge. You know, I was lieutenant, I believe. But he was in charge of... He's dead now, but he was a coward. He said he didn't belong in recon for what we did. He failed scuba. He wasn't very good.

He could run and all that, but he couldn't do the field stuff. I think he ran maybe two missions and the POW thing. He got the Silver Star for that. and they did two missions and the POW thing. He got the Silver Star for that. He got the Silver Star, he wrote it up himself. Oh man. Got it through. When I got hit, one time he never come to see me.

He never come to see me, never asked how I was doing. He was out for himself. He wanted to be the general's aide. Didn't get that. So he ended up in forced recon. And he wasn't a bad guy, but he shouldn't have been there. Yeah. You mentioned you were good at killing people with a knife. Yeah. You mentioned you were good at killing people with a knife.

Yeah. I killed a man up in the, well, one of them I killed. We were at Kaysom, which is a bloody military base, and we had some troops up there, not many. But I was doing a mission, it started off as a recon mission, but now we're thinking that these guys are coming in the K-SOM to reinforce whatever they had there, and they also had the base surrounded, so I'm looking to see what I can do to get some of these guys out of there. And I run up on some soldiers and I killed the first three. Shot them with my M16.

And then I looked over and I saw another NBA looking out that way. And I got him by his mouth and I put stoke in my head of mine, ripped him, and I stuck my knife down in my cartilage. I killed him. Blood was all over the place. He wiggled a little bit, but then he's down. I took my nine millimeter, there was two others that was moving in between the trees.

And I saw the first one, I shot him, double tap. Boom, boom. He fell, didn't move. And I saw the other one, looked back and I shot him. Boom, boom. I got criticized for shooting them in the back. They're running. I killed both of them. I killed them all.

I cut his throat. I killed as many as I could. Killed a lot of enemy soldiers, but it's up close, you know, we have seven or eight men, and you But it's up close, you know, we have seven or eight men, and you're out in the jungle, you know, most of that time. And we used to run those trails at night, looking for them. We'd catch them cooking, you could smell the food.

We'd throw a damn grenade in there. But unfortunately, we stopped. Might have been children in there. I had a heart. Wasn't a very big heart. But yeah, they tried to kill me once. When they, I was a black Marine and they had some other stuff for me and they put out a reward for me.

This is what I was told by Intel. They said that if you kill me, would get a column and you'd get a two weeks in Hanoi Then come close to killing me They couldn't do it not a lot of black force reconnaissance Marines out there. No, no not in those days. No 50s 60s a lot of these guys, we all know they come from baby cities and didn't have swimming pools that these kids could go through.

There's a lot of social stuff going on with that. But a lot of the guys didn't try hard enough. I tried hard enough because I wanted to be there. I knew I could do it. You know, so... How did that make you feel, knowing that they had a bounty on your head? because I wanted to be there. I knew I could do it. And also... How did that make you feel knowing that they had a bounty on your head? Oh, it didn't bother me.

Folks been looking after me all of my life. You know, they tried to kill me when I was in Hong Kong. I went there on R&R. I mean, I knew it was set up. They brought this girl to my room. She knocked on the door and I was on the phone talking to my wife. I was waiting on the call because you had another server to get through to the states and all that. I'm waiting and she come to my room. She could either capture me or kill me. Ain't nobody would really care.

Another American, especially being black. But no, don't fall for that. And the time, well, there was a lot of times people tried to kill me. I mean, even in Hong of times people tried to kill me. I mean, even in Hong Kong, they tried to kill me. And they tried to kill me in Hawaii. Tried to kill my wife and my son. How'd they try to kill your wife and your son?

I have a long history. I had just come back from a year in Europe. And when I was in Hamburg, they tried to kill me. They missed. But they tried to kill my wife and my son. We had gotten a three-year tour in Hawaii. So Dottie and I, Gary, we went to Hawaii. A year goes by, you know, we're doing those.

She won first place in the hula contest. And we're having a great time. You know, I'm enjoying it and met a lot of Hawaiian friends and I was out of combat. Because most people don't know what happened to me in Germany. Yeah. But anyway, and one day my general called me and he said, Captain, sit down.

I was the captain then. I said, yes, sir. I figured, oh, shit, I've done something wrong now. General's calling me in. He said, I'm sending you home. I said, well, General, I just got here. We're enjoying this tour. He said, I know, but the plan is for,

I didn't want to mention the name, to kill your wife and your son. We've confirmed it. And so to keep you out of harm's way, I'm sending you and your family home. Now you go home and you talk to your wife, and you tell her that you no longer will be in Hawaii. Went home. Dottie's a trooper now.

You got to understand who Dottie is. You would have loved her, because she was a real trooper. I said, sweetheart, something come up. She said, oh, why is it something always comes up when you want to tell me something I don't want to hear? I said, well, sweetheart, I just saw the general, and he told me that we're in trouble. And they figured out that you and Gary

are gonna be shot on Saturday morning at 10 o'clock. And they were supposed to be there. Who was they? You don't even know that. That's a long time ago. Tell me some of your stories and I'll tell you mine. No, it wasn't a good idea for her to stay in Hawaii. Well, you were a SEAL, right?

That's right. So you're a tough guy. You can handle all this stuff. We'll get around to it. I went back and told the general that my wife don't want to go home. She wants to stay here. This is the first time in a long time we've been together and you know the war was kind of hard on me. He said, yeah, Captain, I knew all about that. I said, I know what happened. You were at home call and I know about them two people you killed by the way. I said, I didn't kill those people generally. He said yes You did I know that I'm lying less

General but that was something that happened a long time ago supposed to be secret, but he's a general he's got sources Are these the two people that you killed that were running away is that who he's referencing? Oh, this was in Hong Kong I'm talking about you killed two people in Hong Kong That was a long time ago. I thought we talked about my wife and my son This was in Hong Kong I'm talking about. You killed two people in Hong Kong. That was a long time ago. I thought we'd talk about my wife and my son. But he told me that he knew about the people I killed in Hong Kong.

Who did you kill in Hong Kong? Some bad guys. I killed them both, and I kicked them off off and kicked them in the water. Killed them all. They didn't know who they were fucking with. Yeah, I killed them. They tried to kill them. They tried to kill me.

How did they try to kill you? They tried to set me up. This is Hong Kong now we're talking about. They come to my room. Well, they sent this girl to my room. Pretty girl. I had a wife at home. Is this intelligence?

Hmm? Is it intelligence services? Right, the British there. They own the base. China owns it now. Yeah. Brace with our allies. Sean, there's so many things.

They diagnosed me with PTSD and they also declared me insane. PTSD and they also declared me insane. I'm an old guy now and I have trouble dealing with some of these issues and I know who you are and what you've done and I appreciate it. And I'm doing the best I can to do this piece with you. But a lot of it, you know, was not known through the channels. And when I was in Hong Kong, I was on R&R.

But they tried to kill me. They left me alone. I wouldn't have bothered them. But they didn't leave me alone. And they had to realize who they were messing with. So I did kill them. I killed a lot more. Yeah?

And that's what you want to talk about. But a lot of this stuff, you know, it runs together. The timing, that was, I'm 87 years old. I'm gonna be 88 this year. I spent 14 years overseas. I fought two wars. I have 19 holes that I've bled from. Both my legs have been broken.

Right now, I got six pieces of metal in my body. Two in my thighs and down in my lower legs were broken. I got a piece of metal in my left leg. My right leg is shorter than my left leg. I got scars all over me. I can't hardly walk. That's why I didn't stand when you come in. No disrespect. I didn't take any. Well, let's move into... there was a downed B-52, correct? That supposedly

correct that that that supposedly had a nuclear bomb? B57. B57, excuse me. It crashed in the mountains and I was told, I know it was nuclear equipped, in other words you could carry a nuclear bomb on it and I didn't know if they had a bomb on it or not. But we were supposed to parachute in, left that alone. Didn't want to drop into an area like that. I've been in jumps where the area was smoked. So we landed on top of the mountain, helicopter. We dropped in about 10 feet, we dropped in.

It was a heavy landing, we had our stuff with us. And we went down to the crash and wasn't much there. The Vietnamese had already been there by the time we got there. We had got in there at first, but had a chance to see what's on this thing. But we found some goggles and we knew that somebody had had this aircraft. We brought some of the oxygen bottles back. I didn't find any bodies. We did look.

But the story is we knew that there's no point in looking any further because there's nobody here. The planes crashed and hit the mountain, and the tail was separated from the body. And so I decided, okay, we need to go home now. This enemy territory. And Team Broadminded, so we started to hide.

We went down the mountain and started home, but it started to rain. And I told them that I needed an extraction because we could see tracks on around. I figured there's some bad guys out there. So I called for an extraction and they called back and said, No, we can't come and get you because it's raining and the choppers can't fly. I said, Well, I'll give you a day. I'll stay here for a day, roam around, and then I either got to stay here until you come get me,

or I got to come home. And after all that, I decided we're going home. I got my team together in a little huddle, and I, uh, Dorosky was a very tall point man, still around the day. I said, Dorosky, and I said, point man, take us home. And for the next five days, we walked through enemy territory Went through two minefields Swam a river

Wasn't captured and we got hit the last part of it that They opened fire but that was alright now gonna bother us because the Marines were coming from the other direction to pick us up. So we probably killed a bunch of them, but that didn't bother me, because they weren't gonna really attack us. And the truck showed up, and picked us up, and went home.

And the general said, or the colonel said, why don't you get something to eat? I wasn't hungry. Couldn't eat. I let my troops go to the mess hall, then I had to go down to the colonel's office to see the CIA guy and the debriefing. Sure, you've been in a lot of those.

debriefing. Show you been a lot of those. But they debriefed me and I told them what I knew. I didn't find any bodies on the on the aircraft and then I, Colonel said why don't you go and take a nap. I was tired. I said, I don't know if I can sleep. I've been awake for four days, almost five days. I'm laying down and my eyes had closed and I couldn't get my eyes open. I had mud and dirt, cake, everything was in my eyes. I was laying there and I couldn't get my eyes open. I was moving my head. I was trying to get them I had to had to do this my arms were so tired. I couldn't hardly reach my face

It was a hard physical Trip for us and finally I got my eyes open Then this young kid was standing there you come in say, said, Lieutenant, I got your mail for you. And I was the staff sergeant. Said, I got your mail for you. First different voice I've heard, because I knew my guy's voices. And he was different.

And he shouldn't have been in my tent, because that buddy knows you don't do that. But I had to learn to be a human being again. I'd been in the jungle for so long, I was almost turning into that person. I could eat anything, fight anything, sleep in the water, those type of things. I had experience as I was making this I was making this from a peacetime marine

and being totally involved in this jungle thing. Did you feel more at home in the jungle? I did. Then you did. Yeah. When my time come to go out, I had about two and a half days in the rear You get some regular child See the doc and all that but I had a dog with me

It was uncomfortable I felt better when I'm out there At watch when I got my knife. I got my pistol. I got my rifle at the ready, and I knew I can kill anything. I wasn't afraid. I had gotten past that stage. I was only afraid for my men. Well, Major, let's take a quick break. Then when we come back, we'll just, we'll pick up right here. All right, do you want to water anything?

No. You okay? How's it going, Dad? No, I'm all right. All right. Where have I been? I guess I took me back to Vietnam, I'm all right. Damn. Took a little bit of trip there, huh?

Yeah, I'm all right. All good? Yeah. Okay. I'm alright. Dang. Took a little bit of trip there, huh? Yeah. I'm alright. All good? Yeah. Okay. I'm alright. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses. That's right, more than 40 free online courses. Learn about the works of C.S. Lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the

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She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two if we release two shows. The only other thing thing that's gonna be in there besides the Intel brief is if we have a new

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footage before each interview, early access to kick it off again? We are TV audience. I wear these boots because I've got metal in my legs and it helps me out with stability. Yeah. It's pretty sharp looking kicks. Thank you. You're welcome. But so we're getting ready to get into

Fulock. Okay. But, before we do, we didn't cover the, the Battlefield Commission from Sergeant to Second Lieutenant. So I wanted to ask you how that went. Yeah, well, before Vietnam, I'd applied for a commission. They had a program that you could apply for and you'd go to OCS and basic school, you come out in awesome. I applied for that but I passed all the tests but they sent

me a letter said consider it consider it but not selected. So I didn't get to go. The next year, my officers said, try again. So I did again, and I didn't get selected. It was hard on African American Marines at doing that time. We had very few officers in the Marine Corps. So they had enlisted the commissioning program. So I tried out, but I didn't make it. But then I guess later on when they considered me for a battlefield commission,

I mean, they just gave it to me. All the officers were dead. So they gave me the commission. I had never gone to OCS or Basin School. I had high school education. I'd had some college, but I was proud of that. For my family, nobody in my family had ever graduated high school. And so this was good for them, proved that we could be good citizens.

My parents insisted on that. And you had to behave yourself. And I did all those things. And then after I joined the Marines, like I mentioned, I did good. And then they decided to commission me. Took five minutes. Colonel called me in his office.

And I signed the documents, raised my right hand, and come out a second lieutenant. You know, it sounds like the bureaucrats maybe got in the way of your advancement, but the men that you're actually fighting with on the ground had a tremendous amount of respect for you. Is that fair to say? Most of them. I can't say all of them dead because the commanding officer of my unit, when they were looking at this Medal of Honor for me, he said he'd rather die and go to hell before I would get to Melovana. Why is that?

He was a racist. He's gone. He was with me in my unit. He was the captain in the unit. But he, uh, went to the POW camp with us. Didn't fight. He was a coward. Failed school by school. I never saw him make a parachute jump. I don't even know whether he even went to jump school or not, because I came in as a sergeant, then I made staff sergeant there, then I made officer there. But Ken Jordan was his name,

there, then I made officer there. But Ken Jordan was his name, and his goal was to be the general's aide. He talked about him earlier. Hmm? He talked about him earlier. Yeah. Wasn't a good man, and he didn't like me. And, you know, I went through that as an NCO and as an officer, but, you know, I was okay with it because I was serving in Marine Corps and I figured I'm good enough to get through. I'm good enough to do a good job. I didn't make a lot of rank, you know.

I made it up to major. I probably could have gone further, but I chose to retire. That was almost 23 years. I was up for lieutenant colonel, which I'm sure would have made, because of my background, my war background and other stuff I'd done. But when I retired, I bought a home in Jacksonville and my son was doing okay, my wife was doing all right. But I think my son had a big part of it too. I couldn't find a school for him and those types of things.

And of course, he's blind, special needs. And so I had to deal with that. And the general told me that he would recommend me for a Lieutenant Colonel, which has been pretty good for me. I come in as a snuffy. And then I come home from work one day, just before I retired, and my wife, Dottie, was crying. So, oh man.

Said, what's up, sweetheart? She said, Gary got assaulted in school. My son was blind, special needs. And the demons came home. So I had weapons in my trunk of my car. I was authorized to do that, so I said, well, this isn't gonna work. I went down to the school, driving down to the school.

There was a golf course on the left and some housing on the right. I was driving down, I hit a light, and I waited and waited. And the angrier, the more angry I got, I'm gonna settle this, you're not gonna assault my child. Demons that come home should have thought better. But that light never changed.

It didn't change. So I turned around and come back home. God once again protected me. They have no idea what I have done. Had I got there and some kid's parents was there. But anyway, God saved me again. And Gary was okay. I retired.

The general came there that day. He tried to talk me out of it, but I think it was time. I was hurting all over, and I was CEO of a forced recon company. Wow. And had a big retirement from my honor, parade field. Everybody come to see me, the Navy come to see me and everybody was there. And I was a major coming from a cornfield and cotton fields. Donnie was there. Gary was not there.

But it was the idea that all these people had come to see me retire. Good friends. What I'd known since I was a teenager. They gave me a couple medals. I don't know which one they gave me at that time. And the band was there and they played the music and the marching band was there and the general gave me a medal and everybody applauded that Major Capus is going home now. The legendary Major Capus who gave it all. Then I brought up my ex-o, young man, he's gone now, he's a major general, but he's dead now.

I introduced him as my relief. Then I waited around. I couldn't leave the battlefield, or not the battlefield, but the parade field, because I wanted to see all my guys. I told Dottie, I said, well, you know, maybe somebody else will come. The general had gone, the admiral had gone.

And I was waiting for somebody to come up, one of my troops that I would say goodbye to. Nobody showed, so Dottie said, you know, sweetheart, maybe it's time for us to go home. I said, well, let's wait another minute or two. And nobody else came. I said, okay. She drove me home and took off my uniform

and I never put it back on again. I have it in a sea bag somewhere I shared. But those are the memories from beginning as a teenager, from the cotton fields to being awarded on a parade field with hundreds, probably thousands, because the divisions had their bands and said goodbye to me. Let's go back to Fulock. Fulock? Yeah. All right. Not a pleasant thing to do but let's go back to Fulock. You ready for that? Yeah. What was going on there? What was the mission?

You know, that's sort of confusion, Sean, because nobody really figured it out, except that was my last mission. That was the last one? Last mission. How much time had you spent in Vietnam until then? Nine months, 10 months, almost a year. But we did a lot of work with the Navy, doing the ship bottom searches and the diving

and the swimming and all that. One night I made a swim of 1,500 meters in enemy territory to do some recon on the beaches and swim back 1,500 meters. But Phu Loc was a different situation. I was asked to go in there and the Vietnamese had a base on the reverse side of the Long Top Hill.

And okay, my last mission, because my time was up pretty much, and I was going to use the last month, I guess, it was doing some work for somebody helping the new guys coming in. But I wasn't commanding officer, you know, or the unit. I was a platoon commander as lieutenant, but I commanded most of the unit because I'd been around for a while and I was a little older.

You know, some of the young officers that would come in, uh, weren't qualified. They wanted the experience of being there, but, you know, that's not a place you go to get experience. And the areas that we were in. But in Fulock, I got to Fulock, and damn, going into Fulock, we stopped off at a place

where we had some guys that lived in the villages with the South Vietnamese. And they would be in the camps with them and they spoke Vietnamese and they would help the Vietnamese fight against the North Vietnamese. I forget what they call those guys but they were good so I joined up with them and well actually I didn't get up there first I went into one place we got shot out I mean just blessed a lot of place I chopper got hit so we pulled out of there we didn't land I don't know how the hell they knew we were there coming in that place, landing zone.

And the next one we got to, we weren't going to quit, we were going in there. And they had these pieces of, had grenades on long poles that was set up with wire around them and had these grenades With if you land in those in that area The chopper would pull those pins on the grenades and they would blow from each side So it was booby trap the whole landing zone. Yeah So Yeah. So, figured that out. We got the hell out of there. How did you guys see that in a helicopter?

Training, I guess. We spent so much time in the damn jungles. And we saw it. And then the chopper went up. He just kept going up. Then all of a sudden he just dropped down with auto rotation they called it. And he just turned it loose, come on down like that. Then restarted about 200 feet off the ground.

Different than where we were with those booby traps. And we got to where we needed to be and we started operating. We're angry. This is supposed to be our last mission now. I'm taking whatever I have left to go home. But most of them are gone. It was a hard, hard tour. I was enlisted man, now I'm in command.

Jordan, who was command at first, he got out of there. So, Lieutenant Capers now gets the hard duties of taking the guys with me. I left one man back because he had a hernia, but he didn't want to stay back. He came to my tent and said, Lieutenant, I got to go. You can't leave me behind. I said, no, Ski. Doroski was his name. He said, you've done a good job.

He'd been with me all the way. You fought a good war. Now you go home now and you have a happy life. Well, he was the only survivor that didn't get killed. And I loved him. He's still alive. You guys kept in touch? Yeah, still alive.

I talked to him the other day. Came to my wife's funeral, my son's funeral. We were both buried together. Wife and my son, but Skye was there, he was always there. And I got hospitalized a couple years ago in Wilmington and I woke up one morning and guess who was standing there? Taroski.

He says, hey sir, I'm here. He was my point man. Point man. Loyal. It broke my heart to leave him behind in a full lock. But I made the right decision. Because the guy that took over, a guy named, uh... You all right?

Yeah. Okay. Nick DeGreek. You all right? Yeah. OK. Nick DeGreek, I replaced Dorosky with Nick DeGreek. And I gave him M60 machine gun. And it got down to the fact that when we used that M60, he blew up everything. He lost a leg. Nick the Greek did, the big man had 19 inch arms

and he used that M60 like it was nothing. Tough kid, but since the Roski wasn't there, he came to me and he said, Lieutenant, let me, let me be point man. I can do it. I said, you know, Nick, tough job. I'm going to be up front. He said, yeah, but I can cover you. Somewhere along the line, I let Nick be the point man

with the M60s. And leading into that, a lot of things, of course, happened. Leading into that conversation with Nick, a war dog, King, was killed. How was the war dog, King, killed? How was the war dog King killed? He was killed when explosions went off. There's one of them things that you did. He killed two enemy soldiers. He's a big dog, trained to kill. We had to keep him in a cage. Only I and the dog handler could hold him. And Miller got hit. Everybody was wounded. Krapow lost a leg.

Is this Fulock? Fulock. What happened first? What happened first there? Sounds like there were three really bad firefights where he lost one Marine. Is that correct? We lost a Marine.

Didn't lose a man in Fulock. No? No. We lost a brain. Didn't lose a man in full-on. No? No. Everybody survives at the dog. But we had other missions where we lost somebody. Okay. All of us experienced that.

All the platoons and teams. We killed a bunch of people, and some of ours was wounded. Young Stalin, he was my point man, with Doroski. But he got shot and killed at Quezon. Your team was ambushed in Fulau, correct? He was with another team and they went out on a mission and they got hit and a grenade came in, what I'm told, grenade came in and he rolled on it and the grenade blew him up.

Everybody was wounded on that mission. But he was a KIA young guy. I went to see his mother after the war. Of course, I wrote the usual letters, you know, today your son was killed, I'm sorry, and this and that. That was hard to do. I went to see his mother and I apologized to her. She accepted it, was okay.

Then a few years later, his brother called me, but his brother, his mother and his brother had divorced and he was raised by his father. My brother had divorced and he was raised by his father. So he wasn't there, but he did call me some years later to thank me, you know, and he never come to see me. But I did go see Scanner's mother. He was hit bad and at the time, what I was told, I was not in that area, that he jumped on a grenade so I put him in for the marijuana.

That was the right thing to do. And Jordan refused to send it forward. The kid is dead and he saved a lot of lives. Those M26s that we carried, you know, would kill at least two or three people. But he jumped and we knew that his sternum was crushed. So we knew that the grenade was under him. So, now that wasn't that

Fulock, that was a Kaysong. You were talking about Fulock, right? Yeah. Lot of firefights. Boy, that's a long part there. How do I simplify it? You don't have to simplify it. Thank you.

Um... After the... POW raid, I went to Hong Kong for four days. They tried to kill my ass in Hong Kong. Yeah, you had mentioned that. So I come back. Do you know who tried to kill you?

In Hong Kong? Bugs. You know, they knew that American Marines and soldiers was coming there for PIA, for, forget what the hell it was called now. R&R. R&R, yeah. And they had gang, you know, gang things set up. You know, we'd go to the clubs and sometime you'd find a dead Marine and the MPs, which is run by the British, would look into it.

But we had a water fight. We were still fighting in Vietnam. And I come back and I heard Scammer was killed. Yeah, yeah, we had breakfast one morning and the colonel told me, he asked me had I heard about the case. I knew the sergeant he asked me, uh, had I heard about the case on, no, the sergeant major asked me had I heard about the case on, I said, no sergeant major. He said, we had a lot of trouble up there.

And he said, Scanlon was killed. And everybody knew I loved Scanlon, He was like a son to me. Hard, freckled face, red hair, always smiling. And he was, after the war, he was coming to live with me for a while. So it was kind of personal when the Scantling got killed. Now they sent me to Kaysan. I got there and I'm going back to Kaysan, I guess it is, and ran some long-range missions. I mean, and walking, and we came home with a python snake, 20 foot long, weighed almost 200 pounds.

We put him in a big sack, brought him back, and we didn't cross the river with him because it was too heavy. So we left him on the side of the river and we swam across the river and went up the mountain where our base was. We left the snake there. We got back and I told the pilots about the snake we had caught. He said, ah, he ain't no snake that long. I said, well, give us a ride with your helicopter. We'll go down and get him. So we rode down with the helicopter. One of my swimmers jumped out. He landed on a big rock there.

Swimmers jumped out, went on and got the snake. He was loose. And we brought him back to the base. And some of this stuff you've already read, I'm sure. But you've done your homework. But we put the snake in an excavation, and he was lying there. And I think Sergeant Yermann said, well, we've got to get him something to eat. So he drove down to town and come back with a damn duck and he tied the duck one leg and put the duck in the hole there with the snake. Snakes lying in there hadn't really moved.

Ducks in there quacking. I said you know that duck looks tight, looks tough. said, you know, that duck looks tight, looks tough. He's gonna kick the ass out of that snake in there. So everybody's laughing and all that's beating up with feathers in it and the snake gonna eat that duck. So everybody's coming by to bet and you know, troops bet on any damn thing, you know, who's gonna win this fight. The next day, we look in this hole

and the snake was dead as a doornail. No shit. Laying out this, and the duck is crooking, perking around. Oh yeah, the ducks pecked that snake to death, and everybody laughing, and they believed it for a while that the duck had pecked the snake, and it was unbelievable story they believed it for a while that the duck had pecked the snake and

it was unbelievable story but it was fun and we took the snake and we gave it to the Montagnards which was the Montagnard tribe used to help us with intel in the mountains there an older tribe called Montagnards and for them helping us, I gave them some of the meat from a snake. And we gave them a skin, some of them, and we cut the skin off and they made belts. Some of the troops made belts out of the skin from the snake. But they named them Goma Pile, which was a popular TV program during that period of

time. So they named the snake Goma Powell. So they had fun with that name and the death of the snake. Okay, time to go back killing people. Kill them all this time. But we had the 324th B Division that had come across the 16th parallel and they were going south. They were going to chase the Americans out. But you know, Sean, you don't

chase Marines out of anything. It just don't happen that way. Even Iwo Jima and Okinawa, all those places that we fought in. And we always had corpsmen with us. There's some wonderful stories we had with the corpsmen. Lost, I got a seal corpsman, Doc Burwell, he's still alive. He was a corpsman, good man, tough guy. And he used to hold a deep sea diving record. If you ever heard of Doc Burwell, but he served with us well. Good man, tough guy.

I don't want to get you out of your sequence there, but we were talking about Fulock. Yeah, we're talking about Fulock. Yeah, Fulock. That was my last mission. And we got into, we were supposed to destroy the base camp. The NVA had set up a base camp on the reverse side of the mountain. So I had to get in there to see how I can blow the hell out of that base camp. I run in some of the guards along the way and kill them. Finally saw, got to the top.

How did you kill him? Hmm? Was it quiet? Were you in a firefight? It was a firefight. It was a firefight? It was a firefight. All firefights. So trying to get in there, we didn't go in by helicopter.

We walked in, fought our way in, because I had to see what's on the other side of that mountain, and I did blow it. I called in the Phantoms, and they came in and blew the hell out of it. And they came on, wiggling their wings, then they'd come in again, this blew the hell out of it, dropping all kinds of ammunition. And then the helicopters helped us out,

attack helicopters. We accomplished the mission. That base didn't operate anymore team broad-minded, you know, we had a fight our way there and Full lock No, that wasn't Fulock. That was another mission. But Fulock, we all got wounded. We actually walked in.

We couldn't get the flight in because, like I said, they had booby traps and all that, so we actually walked in. And we linked up with a group that lived with them, and a group of Marines that lived with them. No kidding. And we stayed with them for the evening. Then we left that night and we walked in enemy territory. We're deadly.

You know, we went around the rice paddies and we went through, got to a graveyard and a lot of firing was going on. Everybody was shooting with, you could see the You could see the tracers going. So I didn't want to walk into that. So I put my guys in a graveyard. I had cement things there. So we stayed there and watched the battle. So no, we're not gonna walk into that.

So we spent the night there, good bit of the night. And then when I thought I could get in to where I needed to go, I took off about maybe before the born. Team brought my dad and our dog, we took off. And looking back on it, and our dog we took off. And looking back on it, we linked up with some of the Marines that was already out there, linked up with them, and they'd had a hard time, and they were going to have a hard time. I knew we were going to have a hard time. I think it was 1-3 or something like that, but they had a hard time.

And we'd just come in there and we started to, you know, we got into firefights. I think we had seven damn firefights in those four days. Geez. Bloody. We ran out of ammunition the second day. And the chopper came in and brought some ammunition and grenades to us. On the last day I think I threw 19 grenades. They hit us hard, we hit them hard.

My dog killed some, I know how many I killed. You can't count it up, but they used to want to know how many WIAs that you kill. And nobody thought about that. You're on full automatic. You got your M60, you got the M79, everything you got, you're putting it out there. Because if you didn't, you could get overrun. But there was no chance they would overrun us.

We were all wounded. And we had killed most of them. And that's the sixth time. And we had killed most of them. And last decision time, what do I do now? I thought, well, we knew that the choppers or the phantoms that blew up on the other side, they'd take care of that on the other side. So I don't know that I really want to do that because they might reinforcements from somewhere.

This is their damn country and they weren't very loyal. But we're loyal. We'll fight with the army, we'll fight with the Navy, but we're not going to fight with the Vietnamese because we don't trust them, number one. Never did. But explosions was going off and I started firing and kept firing. I kept throwing hand grenades and sometimes they would hit a tree or something like that and bounce back on the ground and you'd have to make sure that if that thing went off you were covered.

So we finally had to make a decision to get out of there. And both my legs were broken. I was bleeding all over the place. We weren't going to quit. We weren't going to give up. We weren't going to be captured. So we finally got down to the helicopter and landed. There was two of them. One was circulating around, and the other one landed.

I think you know that story, but I'll tell it for your audience. The helicopter landed, and I brought all my men in, and I was being helped by one of the troops. My dog's body, we brought the dog's body in, King. And then, I had a problem getting everybody on that 34, H-34, a small helicopter.

Got all the bodies on, King's body on. But it was, I had nine men and a dog, and the chopper, it was too late of a chopper to get me on board. So I told the crew chief, get my men out of here. I'll make it. Find a way. He said, no, come on board. He grabbed me, and there was noises going on. He grabbed me by my harness, pulled me on the helicopter, and the helicopter went up by 10 feet and crashed. Bam, I fell off, bleeding all over the place.

But I could stand. I had broken leg, I was standing. But this is battle, your personal injuries don't count. He grabbed me again, pulled me on board. I don't know, my corpsman had given me morphine, so I don't know if he went up another time or if he just went out of there. But he did take off, turned around, and then kept going. And one of the co-pilot was shot. And the pilot started going home.

Then it started to rain, lightning, and the chopper was wobbling a little bit. We were talking about God. Up in Quezon, I was on my knees one night. After a young child was injured and one of them firefights a caisson. So I picked the child up and ran toward the aid station. By the time I got there, the child had died in my arms. I laid the child down when her arm was hold on to my arms. I couldn't hardly lay her down, but I got to lay her down. She was dead.

I went back to where I needed to be, and I saw my cormorant. I said, Doc, come here. He said, yes, sir. I said, uh, I'm gonna need you now. They'll be, I figured they'd be coming back in. We had this barbed wire, this, I'm talking about the case arms, barbed wire. And we had it, uh, because they would come in at night, they'd throw grenades, throw that bottom wire. And so I told the corpsman, you stay with me. And the corpsman said, yes, sir, And he came around and stood by my right.

I was standing. And he said, Lieutenant, I'm a little tired, you know? He said, can I sit for a minute? I said, yeah, Doc, we got a few minutes. And then we heard those bugles. America and you die and all this other foolishness. Doc sat down. I said, Doc, they're coming now. Doc fell over dead down on his post.

Damn. That's what I said, damn. He didn't tell me he was wounded. A hole in his chest. I didn't see it. Should have. But, I said, Doc, I called him over. I didn't know he'd been wounded. But it's my fault.

Over the years, I grieved about that. Still grieve about it. The boy sat down there and said, I'm just a little tired, sir. I'll be okay. Damn it. I'll be okay. Brave.

Where do you get such men from? Where do we get them from? A young sailor. I never knew his name. At least I don't remember his name. Sat down, and when I said it's time to fight, he was gone. He would have fought. He had fought. I always thought about Doc, what he might have been, what he might become. He might have cured cancer. He might have done something for all of us.

something for all of us. But then for me, the demons come home. Now you gotta deal with Jim Capers, the warrior. I looked up in the sky that night, and I prayed to God. Said, God, I need help tonight. I need help. The little girl I tried to save was gone. The warrior corpsman was gone.

And I was on my knees. I'm looking up in the sky. I said, God, I need you. Please help me. I'm praying. God didn't say, it's going to be okay, son. But when I needed it, God saved my life at another part, which I'll tell you later on, which confirms my belief in God.

I wouldn't be here today if God hadn't asked me to pray. He didn't ask it when I was on my knees praying, but God answers prayers when He needs to answer them. He'll talk to you then. He doesn't do things when you want them done. He does things when He wants them done. I've been through the God thing. Trust me, I know what God is.

And I'll see him again. I'll see my wife and my son. I believe that. I'll see him again. Me too. May not be a day tomorrow. Hell, you may jump up and pull a hand grenade. I'm on a out of hand grenades.

It wouldn't go off. Go off. God's got me. Kept me alive all this, this time. This summer I'll be 88 years old. Well, where did God show up? Was it in Fulock? Where did God show up? Was it in Fulock? Where did God show up?

God showed up in... Fulock. He always showed up when he went to show up. Maybe not for me, but other men that would have died and artillery came in that I didn't know was coming. But God showed up when I was coming out of Fulock. God showed up when I was coming out of Fulock. When the chopper was flying us back to Amed,

it was raining, it was a rough night. We'd been out there, and it started to go down. I was sitting in the doorway and my wounded guys were holding on to me and the guys in the background were lying down. They were crying and you know moaning and because they had been wounded pretty seriously, you know, Nick lost a leg and you know the whole bit. And I'm standing in the chopper. I'm standing in the chopper, was flying in,

and they started going down. I don't know if it'd been out of fuel, it was going down, it was kind of a nasty night. It was at night, and all of a sudden, the hand of God reached out and snapped it, caught that helicopter, and kept it flying. I'm told it had no fuel, not enough fuel, but when I asked God, God said, now I'll show you that I am God. I'll give you my hand.

And he kept that helicopter flying. Everybody on that helicopter lived. Those are stories that are real because all the men on board saw the same thing. We were going down. Behind the helm is a helicopter going down. All of a sudden, God grabbed it and kept it flying. Then when they took it to the maintenance folks, they said it had no gas.

They said it shouldn't have flown. And I'm told they took it to someplace, it never flown again. God can do amazing things. That particular night, when we were crashing, and all those lives would have been lost. And I would not have been a 77-year-old man by the turn of 88.

87. I'm 87 now. I'll turn 88 this year. What a blessing. What a blessing. What a blessing. Oh, I know about God. I also prayed when my son was dying in the hospital. I was standing by his side

and he closed his eyes. I couldn't save him. I prayed to God. I wanted a miracle. He died my arms. Here's what I had to finally see, that my son is not blind. God has him now. He's in the bosom of God. My wife does not have cancer now. God has healed both of them. They're happy. They're sitting at the right hand of God and they're waiting on me. And I don't know if God will allow a guy like me, who hadn't been a nice guy, but I want to believe that he'll forgive me. Well, I think he must feel pretty fondly of you if you saved that helicopter. He didn't just save the helicopter, he saved all of us.

There were human beings on the helicopter, he saved all of us. There were human beings on the helicopter. I don't know if they had prayed like I prayed, but when I was in Kaysan, I asked God to, you know, show me a miracle. Hit me with a bolt of lightning. But he didn't. But when that chopper was going down, like I said,

God reached out with His mighty hand and kept it flying. In spite of the rain and light and everything else that was going on, I knew it was going down because I saw the blood all over the place. It was full of blood. Was everybody been wounded? I mean, it doesn't sound like the helicopter should have even been able to take off because the first time it couldn't.

You're right. They took it out of service and they said it should have been flown that night. I don't know, but I can only say that God saved us when we needed to be saved. I've had other cases when I prayed. I prayed for my son. It didn't work, but then God has him now. And my wife died of cancer after 50 years of marriage. I'll see her again.

Do you think about dying? Do I think about dying? No, not really. Because I got friends like you that keep me going. I'm alright. I have serious PTSD, so they tell me. I have nightmares. The battlefields come back to me. I live alone in my home, but I have friends that come to see me. The government provides a nurse to see me, and old friends come over and help me. I can't get around very well anymore.

I don't drive and... No. I've had problems, obviously sleeping, the demons comes home, and I don't know if you know what PTSD is, but I'm not a doctor, but I know that I've had trouble with it. And it takes a lot of people to give me a hand these days. I still got a piece of wire in this leg

and metal in my lower legs and in my thighs. I had a heart attack. I've had surgery and you know, the doctor's doing what they can to keep an older guy alive. They give me purple hearts and now I understand they're trying to give me the melabana. Won't bring my men back.

You got a silver star for Bullock. Yeah? Sounds like it's a good possibility it's going to get upgraded to Medal of Honor. What'd you say? It sounds like there's a good possibility that's going to get upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Well, that's what they of 47 senators and congressmen who sent the letter to the president and asked him to give me the Medal of Honor.

Now, he's a busy man president, so I don't know whether he'll get around to that or even if he wants to get around to it. I got nominated in 67 when my general come to see me after Fulock and kissed me on the head, forehead. And there were folks who, I was full of morphine, I don't really know what happened there, but what folks told me, that he had planned to to give me the Medal of Honor, or recommend me, Congress gives that or the president gives that, he got killed in a helicopter crash.

So I left and went home and did the family thing and didn't think about it much. Until the young general named General James Williams used to be one of my platoon sergeants, platoon commanders rather. He was now a two-star general. And he heard all these stories from at my reunions, talked to the guys that said, well, Major Capers did this, Major Capers did that. Wasn't simple, they, but they were there.

Williams, as he come through, I'm a young man, he decided to call me back to duty. And that's what he did. And he recommended me. How many of those men that were on that helicopter with you are still alive today? One man that I know of, his name was Henry Stanton. Huge young man. Black kid. He was my m79 man

He run out ammunition. I was on a explosion hit me and hit him and I'll lean up back against a Tree or something and I reached around I was holding Stanton and I reached around and take the dog tags off of Another marine that I was holding Stanton and I reached around and took the dog tags off of another Marine that I was holding. Well, it was Stanton I was holding, yeah. I was holding Stanton and I reached around and took his dog tags off and he looked up to me and he said, Lieutenant, I don't think we're going to make it this time.

You know, he'd been hit and lost a kidney and his blood all over the place. He's bleeding out of his mouth, some out of his nose. Said, no, we're going to make it. You hold on, son, you hold on. One of the bravest things I ever heard, he said, hand me a rifle. I can still fight. After all this explosion and whatever, he said, just hand me a rifle, sir. I can still fight.

That's a man. That's a patriot. That's a Marine. I can still fight. And, I said, I'm gonna get you out of here, son. And everything just, you know, went to hell, but he lives. He's still alive. Do you keep in touch with him? Hmm?

Do you keep in touch with him? Hmm? I called him and told him that it looked like they want to give me the Melovano. He said, Oh, hell, sir, they should have done that 50 years ago. I said, I understand, but this is what they're telling me now. And I got sent the letter that had all that if you saw that or not the signatures all the sentences and congressman I didn't know most of those guys but Bull and the team they've been pulling the strings General Williams and

all the ones that I'm proud I ever thought about the Malawana. I thought about my troops. When they gave me a Silver Star, I figured, oh, gee, that's somebody that's pulling strings. I never thought I did anything. I did my job. Like I did when that shock was going to eat the hell out of one of my team members. That's what you do.

You've done it or you're trained to do it. Dorosky is still alive but he wasn't on the full-op mission. He had a hernia and I sent him back to the aid station. He pissed about he wanted to go. I put Nick in a skis place. Nick lost a leg. Nick was a big man. 19 inch arms, 50 inch chest. He carried an M60 like nothing. When he got hit, I heard him screaming. Part of my language, UMFs.

I don't know, you know, he was just firing. With his M60, which is a large weapon. But they got hit and he kept fighting. Stanton kept fighting, they all kept fighting. There was no quitting team, broad-minded. Just my dog. Miller is gone now. Crapo is gone now. Sergeant Yermen is gone now. Crapo is gone now.

Sergeant Yermen is gone now. And a few years ago, they put me in a hospital. Didn't look good for me. But God knows. I don't worry about it. You know, after, after Vietnam, you provis- you, you were involved with the CIA in the Cold War. Well, there was nothing to that. No? No, not really.

What were you doing? They tried to get me on full-time. I had done this stuff in Vietnam. I did the CI thing there in Vietnam. And I'd help them. When I was... This was not Vietnam, but when I was COF recon, some of the guys that were about to deploy, I'd bring them down to Camp Lejeune so they could go to the

jump master's course or repelling or whatever it was. I'd do that for them. And of course in Vietnam I did that thing and in Europe. But they're a good group. They were a lot of young guys. I did the FBI stuff. The FBI gave me two Thompson-Salt Machine Guns when I retired. I got a young man now. He retired two-star in the CIA. I trained a lot of those guys. No, but as far as operating, my operating operations were not very good.

And that's not what I'm just supposed to say. There's a lot of stuff that I was involved in. Yeah, and you've sure, you probably have done the same things. Not me. Because of what I look like, number one, and the way they're set up to operate. Now the FBI, I try to help out there.

I put them to a jump program, a jump master program, and martial arts. I used to run the martial arts program for a long time. You know, for different folks that want to... ...to kill people. What did it feel like when you got inducted into the U.S. Special Operations Hall of Honor? I didn't know about it. You didn't know about it?

No, I had lost my wife, my son. I was living in California, and the general called me, I'll get his name now, and told me they were coming up with a program, and they were looking for names to submit. And he said, everybody kind of feel like maybe you would be the first one. And I said, well, I don't know much about it,

but they flew me from California, where I was living, to I think I was in, flew me to Tampa. Might've been Tampa, I don't know. Flew me to Tampa. And Admiral Olson was a SEAL one time. And he's still a SEAL. Like he's still a Marine. He's a nice guy.

And he picked me to give me the first one. I didn't get the medal at first. They had to make this. Then they sent it to me in the mail. Then the Marines, this is the Vietnam medal right here. And this is the commando medal, the Raider medal. So that's the stuff all presented to me. And sometimes I forget to wear, I don't wear it all the time but I thought I'd wear it for your show.

Thank you. I wish my wife was here to see this, to see me sitting there with a famous guy like you. I'm sure she's watching. Yeah, yeah, she probably is. And your son too. Yeah, he was a musician, you know, he played the piano, the flute, the melodica, the organ.

Did he really? Oh yeah, all that. Yeah, he played in church. But he had other disabilities, Did he really oh yeah all that yeah, he played in church We had Other disabilities he couldn't he couldn't do what I'm doing now as far as whole the conversation wonderful child Wonderful child we used to sit and hug each other before he went to bed and

You know a lovable child. One night he knocked on my door, our door. He said, Dad, I got a headache. He said, I had a stomach ache. That's okay, son. So, went to the hospital. Doctor says, well, there's not a whole lot we can do, so I brought him back the first night.

And then the second night, it got worse, so I took him back to the hospital. And they said, well, you know, we don't see much we can do with a stomach ache. Damn. So I took him back home. Then I took him back the third night. Then for me now, I'm having a problem. And they had him laid down on the table, and he died right there. They let my son die.

You see, I'm not a bad guy. But I was angry. My son is gone now. They had me in a little chapel there. Pastor come in. My wife was sick and she wasn't there. So I'm standing there and I don't know what to do. On one way, I'm feeling one way, I'm angry.

My child's lying there dead. And they're telling me they're sorry. You know, the demons did come home that night. I told them all, you need to leave me alone now. My wife is coming. I'll be all right, just leave me alone now. And then everybody tried to tell me this, that. And it got to the point where I, you know,

didn't lose control, but they didn't know who they were dealing with. I got to kill them all. I thought about that, but God stepped in. He says, no, you don't. No, you don't. My wife finally showed up, and I met her at the car

and she came to see our child. Then we walked down this hall together and we've been walking down that hall together for a long time. We never remarried. I can appreciate a pretty girl, but Dottie was special. A military wife. But we got through that.

Seemed like the next day, Dottie dies of cancer. Now I'm thinking, how do I pull this off now? The human being, I'm sure you had stress, but now I'm in a place where I don't need to be. I made a plan to kill the doctor. I called one of my friends in Arizona, and he I called one of my friends in Arizona, and he was gonna help me blow up the gas station as a decoy. Policeman and farmer would be there, and when a doctor come out of the hospital, they're gonna kill him with my knife. I was gonna kill him with my knife. I was gonna kill him with my knife.

What stopped you? God stopped me. How? I'm not good enough to tell you how God works. I don't, I'm not that good. But I know that I pulled off the operation. My men was ready to go. They were volunteers. Team from Arizona were here in Jacksonville.

We were going to blow a couple of gas stations. And you know, that's the easiest stuff to them. Sure, you and I do that stuff. I got to. I got to divert the police force there, you know, the fire department. Then when the doctor come out of his office, I was going to be parked. I was going to grab him. I was going to cut his throat. That's what I do.

But I'll probably mention that kind of stuff too much in your interview, but God stepped in. And I came home. Well, I was home and I had to see my pastor came over to the house. It was about three o'clock in the morning. Donnie wasn't crying. It's about three o'clock in the morning now. Donnie wasn't crying. I didn't know why, but Donnie wasn't crying. I was crying.

But I think Donnie had to be tough for me. She believed in God too. We always went to church. We built the church one time. My troops and I built the church from the ground up. Stole the wood. I hate to say it that way, but we got to some place, we stole some old wood, got it built. Dottie was the first lady. And I had a chaplain that wasn't too far. He was helping with it.

And my son played the piano in church. Dottie was the first lady. And we sang every Sunday. And my chaplain prayed. And it wasn't a big church church but we enjoyed that so much and some of the guys who had been in trouble and they were back in those days we had some serious issues and they'd come every Sunday and they enjoyed it so much some sort of a relief I guess by the commanding officer sitting with him in

church and his wife is singing and his son is playing the piano and my buddy the chaplain. It was such a wonderful thing to see nothing to do with, you know, with anything else but the human spirit. We want the art of God, and we want to build a place. And I'm sure you can relate that in the Bible terms, but years later, I went back in that area. I went to see if that church was still, it was a little, about this size, I guess it is, around. I went back there and I parked my car and I looked around

and I said, well, I think it was over here. I started walking over there and a young Marine came out and just came over and says, hey, sir, are you all right? I said, yes, and there used to be a church about this area over here. He said, no, sir, not that I know of, but I'll help you look. So he's walking along with me.

He said, where you come from, sir? I said, well, I live in the area, but I used to be stationed here. And there was a church over here that we built. And I just thought I would visit it. He said, no, sir, there's no church here. And I've been here for a while and I've never seen or heard of a church.

You wouldn't be lying to me, would you son? He said, no sir, Marines never lie. Yeah, okay. I got in my car and I drove home. Daddy and Gary were still alive at the time. Sometimes it's hard for me to differentiate the timing because we were blessed with good years and I've been blessed with good years

but my memory is not all that good which you'll probably see with this interview. I don't remember everything like I should, but then again, I offer the excuse of being 87 years old now. You're doing just fine. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Appreciate that.

Well, I live by myself and I don't talk to a lot of people. I know, I have guys come to see me. Matter of fact, on the way up here, a friend of mine, a three-star general, he come to the house to see me. And then back on the way up here, a friend of mine, a three-star general, he come to the house to see me. And he's probably gonna be the commoner at the Marine Corps one day, nice young man.

I was his guest speaker at a Marine Corps ball one time. So they called me out when they need me. I put my tuxedo on and tried to hold my stomach in. I saw him the other day. But now we're passing the torch. You know, young people like yourself and the others, they give me a chance to say some things. And I appreciate that.

I don't know if I can tell you in sequence because you never ask an 87 year old man to say something in sequence because I'm gonna be all over the place. You established the Gary and Dottie Capers Foundation. Yeah, I did. To help kids with special needs. All of them are gone now, and I thought I'd honor them by establishing a nonprofit organization.

And I had some volunteers. Nobody's paid to do certain things or to raise money Well Donnie was there We started for Gary, but that he was still alive And we started this thing and we bring People in friends and raise money for a nonprofit, you know, there were a lot of homeless people in, friends in, raise money for a nonprofit. You know, there were a lot of homeless people in our town, too many homeless people.

So now we gotta feed them. And we did that, we moved some to my home. We brought the homeless in and Donnie cooked for them, washed their clothes, trying to help, just like I had been helped. But you don't forget those things. When that white family took me in and washed my clothes and gave me clothes and fed me, put me down at night so I could sleep and stood watch over me as a black man. You don't forget those things.

It's a noble example of what America is, what it should be and what it is, not the way it always is. Where do people donate to that foundation? Their time. Sometimes they donated money. If somebody wanted to donate money, where would they donate?

We have a website, and Kenyatta happens to be the president of it. He's the old man that came with me. He happens to be the president of the organization. Well, I'll tell you what, we'll put the, the link to the website in the description of this interview so if anybody wants to donate bless your heart they could do it I knew you had a good heart I knew you just want a mean guy I knew that it would help us because it when the virus hit us you know folks lost jobs and McDonald's closed.

And I remember when a couple of my guys came to my house and said, Major, we lost a McDonald's here. I said, well, yeah, that's okay, but I don't eat at McDonald's anyway, but... They told me that one of the ladies there, who had a couple of children, didn't have a job, and her rent was due, she was going to get evicted. Oh, man, they brought her to the house.

Nice young lady. I says, how much do you need? She said, well, I need about $2,000. I didn't discuss it. Gave her $2,000 on the spot. I had been homeless. Not intentionally. My folks didn't want to give me away,

but they thought it would be better with this family, and they took me in. But at any rate, the foundation has done good. We have a young lady named Ashley Casado. She did the documentary for us. I don't know if you've ever seen that documentary. And other folks have jumped in to try to help to raise money for the homeless, not for me. The government gives me a check every month. They pay me a lot of money for the Purple

Hearts. I have a lot, but I have five Purple Hearts. I can only get three here. I got so many down times when I got to the hospital, they found holes that I hadn't been, they hadn't told me about. Back of my legs. And I said, what the hell that happened? But there's so many firefights and you're wounded, but you don't go to the hospital, the corpsman patches you up.

You know, you're not going to... Yeah. You need to be there with your troops. Always with your troops. I did that. I'm an 87-year-old man and I'm telling stories that happened years ago. Nobody gives a damn anymore. Only 2% of our country joins the military. Oh, I think a lot of people are gonna give a damn about this one. You know, it's been a little tough for the old man. Been a little tough.

He told me I was coming on your show. I kept calling you Ryan Shaw. They said, no, no, no. Remember now, you know, he's important. There's so many people listening to him. Now, don't screw it up. I'm not important. I'm just a guy doing what I like to do. I'm happy for you. Thank you.

I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here, too. And I'm happy you're here. And on that note, Major Capers, I just want to say once again, it's an honor to interview you and to get your story out. And God bless Donnie and Gary. God bless you. And I really hope your Silver Star gets upgraded to a Medal of Honor. Be nice.

Are we done? We're done. You told me you'd be here till 6 o'clock. Thank you. Thank you. Expert entrepreneur Ed Milet is on a mission to max out your life. I exist here weekly so that you can make your dreams come true, become the man or woman you're capable of, and then pay it forward. It's time to get laser focused on peak performance.

Clarity equals focus and focus equals success. That's what I'm here to do every week with you. Max out. The Ed Mylett Show. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.