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

Major James Capers, welcome to the show. Good afternoon.
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 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 Silva 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 uh 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 in true american hero You're a pioneer in reconnaissance training,

tactics, and recognized 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 Valor, 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've 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 a 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 old. Do you have any recollection of that? Well, 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, the rural south. And a vehicle showed up, and we ended up in Baltimore.
And I was probably five or six or something like that. Nobody really knows.
There's no records. There's no records of my being born.
I don't have a birth certificate. Wow.
That's the rural south 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? Sure. 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.
You couldn't stay home unless you were six, something like that. I picked a lot of cotton and learned to crop tobacco and slopped the hogs and all the rule 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, my father wasn't there. He was in Baltimore.
It was apparently at 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 know, 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. And there have been a lot of books written on this subject, how African Americans made that transition, but 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 certificates.
Nobody really knew who I was. And the first James Capers Jr.
passed away, so they renamed me James Capers Jr. But there was always some feeling that I was reincarnating my older brother.
But, you know, 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 euphoria.

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 a 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, teachers were blacks, students were black. So it was hard for me coming from the South.
It was certainly different from where I'd been until Baltimore. That street lights 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. I didn't know the language.
It took me a while to learn there were stores on each corner. And 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 of our skin, 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 a 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 he earned 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 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 old 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't know if they don't know about marbles these days, but we did that, and we played all 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 for us 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, everybody carried knives and guns and things, and many days there were firefights. I mean, not like a military firefight, but pistols.
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And we kept away from that. You kept away from that? Yeah.
Did you carry a weapon as a kid?

No.

No?

First 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, I joined in 56. But World War II was over and Korea, we were still digging out of Korea.
That happened in 54. I joined in 56.
And I had learned quite a bit. had television there at 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.
So if you didn't join, somebody 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. I know, I'll go ahead and join in the Marines.
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 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 of boot camp, and 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 going to put up with that.
He was a wartime president. So he sent 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 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 Egyptians had closed the Suez Canal,

and our job was to get it back open again.

Let's pray. We landed in Beirut.
The Egyptians had closed the Suez Canal, and our job was to get it back open again. That was 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 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.
You know, I mean, I was a Marine. It wasn't a problem for me.
We landed, we evacuated the airport, we took the civilians out, you know, 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 Guanacanau and Iwo Jima, coming through as a young man, so that's what we were trained to do. You're going to fight.
And we went up to the mountains with the old M1s, threw a lot of hand grenades. We learned to make parapets and dig foxholes and eat terrible rations.
It was a hard duty for us, but we all got a nice letter from Eisenhower thanking us. Then we got one from our commandant thanking us.
Did a good job. How long was that battle? A few months.
You were there for a few months? A few months. It 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.
Nobody liked us, the Syrians, but they took our money and the things that we brought over there. Now, 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 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.

It 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.

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 I shot and killed both of them. I didn't feel anything.
Nothing. No remorse.
And then when we were hit at night in the mountains, you know, we fought them off. You know, so never lost a battle.

In 20 years of my experience in the 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 a six-month cruise. And after we fought in Lebanon, they put us aboard ships, and they sent us back.
It 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. I 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 wanted to see my wife.
They wasn't my wife, my girlfriend. I had a man in love with Dottie Capers.
Never loved a woman other than Dottie Capers. And we weren't married at that time, but I called on her, and it was a whirlwind type of thing.
And this was 1958, you know, December, so long there. We went into the Caribbean for a while, 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'd shed blood with them. I want 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. First time I saw her, I was in love.
She was walking by, I was with a group of other guys, and I saw she had on a yellow dress. And I looked at her, and I couldn't believe it.
I went home, and I told my mom. I said, Mom, 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.

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.
I re-enlisted, and they paid me a lot of money. Wasn't much.
And today, as we look at it, 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.
Married Donnie. We went to California.
I hooked up with First Force Recon Company. Well, before we get to First Force Recon, 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 first child Gary was born blind in special needs and good child he played the flute the melodica the organ piano but he had other difficult things.

And after we were married,

or when 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.
It 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.

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 wore now,

and I wore cowboy hats.

So she took my cowboy hat and threw it out

and went over and stomped on it.

So I knew that I was in trouble. She let me come back in.
But she was such a sweetheart. I remember when we were a snake bitter, she was out feeding the fish at a fish pond.
She was out there feeding the fish with her hand, a snake come up and bit her on her hand. This takes away from your, what are you talking about there, dog? I was telling you about that time when a snake bit her.
And she didn't panic. She's scared of snakes.
Bit her on her finger. So she come in and said, sweetheart, I've been bit by a snake.
I panicked. But 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 went and killed the snake and 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.
You know, I think I would have, I've been struck close by snakes, never got hit by a poisonous snake, but I've been around, you know, pythons and all this other stuff in Southeast Asia. But I'm just saying about Donnie, she was so brave, got her taken care of.
But we went through 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.

Yeah.

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 in the 70s, 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 a high water line. See, 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 on a 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.

Pardon 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 were Marines. Interesting.
Oh, yeah. I knew a lot of them, 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'd been in for a while, and I was good at it.
I did. Let's go back to 1959.
All right. Where you 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.
I joined up, and to join Force Recon at that time, you had to be almost a Superman. 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 it, and it had a newspaper there. It was the Scout newspaper in California, and it had an article on them.
The guy jumping out of airplanes and swimming and diving. 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 SEAL training got to be pretty good.
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 took the test. I said, you didn't make it.
Come back on Monday and take it again. Okay.
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 windowsill.
I saw it. I'd seen hand grenades before.
And he said something dumb like,

what would you do with this hand grenade?

I said, I had thought out the window.

The window, I was sitting, 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 going to make me run out of this office there.

But that's a little induction type of stuff.

I did three years there.

Went overseas with the Marine Pathfinders.

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 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, you know, that the seals hadn't come on yet.

This was 1961, 1960. So I went to jump school in 1960.
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.
They were tough. We had guys from World War II in there, not many, but they were new guys.
We had some army in there. We had some SEALs, 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 indoctrination, which is the stuff now that jungle warfare

and mine 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 they only took the best guys the toughest guys headed huge guys I really got those guys from I mean really when I saw those guys you know and they could fight we'd fight but a lot of them were overrated I I thought. They came hot dogs, and I came there for a serious Tory 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.

No.

How did they give you a hard time?

Because I was black.

How?

I was in the squad bay, and I laid down this bed, and the guys came by with this cross and put a rebel flag on me. And, you know, this stuff, and they laughed about it, and I saw it.
when I got up, cleaned myself up, let it go. You know, indoctrination.
They thought they were going to scare me. No, you don't scare Jim Capers.
I'd worked too hard, you know, to get there. And by that time, I had a wife and a child.
and of course they paid you 55, when 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.

A lot of racism back in those days. I mean, 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.
And so What did you think

When you got orders to go to Vietnam? I wanted to go. You wanted to go.
Yeah, I was at the—when I come back from First Force, they sent me back to the East Coast to train troops in something we call 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. You know, 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 what they call it,

hardship.

I had a blind child at home.

So the commandant in 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 lists.
I 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 Band 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 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 and airmen home. And one day

I asked Dottie,

she said, I know what you're thinking.

I know what you're thinking.

She 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 your 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 night's over.
Your 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, Ms.
Capers, we just want to let you know that he doesn't have to go. You know, the commandant's got him on a hold.
She said, 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 I joined the Force Recon.
And that was hard. Third Force was made up of First Force and Second Force.
Anybody else we can get, they have the qualifications.

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 jumping.

I went to scuba school again.

Went to Coronado, I think it was, four-week course. It was hard, but I was an honor graduate.
You were the honor graduate? Honor graduate. They worked us hard.
We swam a lot. We did a lot of water work, you know, and I enjoyed it, you know, 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 who was going, we had 19 rings that was in the class. We were all going to Vietnam.
So one of my kids did make the distance swim. Before you graduate, you got to 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 we known each other? He said, Yeah, I know, but he didn't make the time swim, so he can't graduate.
He'd been through everything else. I said, Chief, you 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 were really well 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 100 meters where we needed to be.

My leg cramped up.

I didn't give up.

And at the end, he was tired. 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.
No shit. Went to war, and he survived.
Didn't get a scratch on him. Tom Nicholson.
Tom Nicholson. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses.
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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.

Thank you. 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 have 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 Markasock? 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, I figured you were another candy-ass seal at first. but I found out that you weren't.
You see that sword right there? Yeah. That's, 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 going to be back here. I don't know if he's coming on the show or not, but I'm hoping to have lunch with him at least.
But he sent me that sword that took that off a Japanese soldier in Iwo Jima. 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. He was also a MARSOC Marine, Honor Man.
Honor Man, I think of his sniper class.

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.

Yeah, 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.
Let me interrupt you. 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 finish 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 okay and then we came back to uh 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 when I was commanding officer

with the grunts.

Actually, just two times I went through.

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 threw him out there, and the blood was all over me and all over him. The guy's going, eh, eh, eh.
Motivating. You know, 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 head off and threw him out in the sand. Now, I bit the chicken off, but that was just show for my guys.
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. They took us to—I forget where they took us to know.
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, 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 mission? That was 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.

You, if you, it was, if you killed them, KIA, if you wounded them, you know,

we didn't really know if you wounded them or not.

A lot of them were wounded, and they crawled away to 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.
There was guys there when we came, 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 we launched from a place called Fubai, 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 it 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, and 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. Said, we got to go in and fight the Vietnamese.
The North Vietnamese, there was a border, a 16th parallel, and the NVA came across the 16th parallel, which is 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.

You know, we had to set up ambushes.

We went into their camps, and we ambushed them at night.

There were a lot of individual stories about that.

I ran 50 missions.

All of them wasn't from Fubai.

I went into Khe Sanh.

I went into Fulak.

I went into Da Nang. all my guys, and we lost

guys along the way.

But I 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 or officer's training. How would you set up on the camps? Would you do an L.A.
ambush? Yeah, we did a lot of those. We set up.
How many guys were you with? How many 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. 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.
We brought him back to Kaysom. He got hit real bad, and we had that last mission at Fulak.
All of us fought for four days, day and night. But go ahead.
Go ahead. Yeah, we'll get to full up.
But I just want to talk about your very first mission in Vietnam. Yeah.
What was the briefing? The first mission, we made three combat dives. We came on in a ship, and they wanted 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.
didn't have any uh trousers on we just wore the jackets and had the the oxygen and all of that and we went there's 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 they had something that, I don't know what the hell it was, but fire was coming out of it, and we had to avoid that. 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 to happen.

We got there.

It had pretty air.

No problem with that.

And we got to the end,

and they 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.

And don't feed the sharks or the fish because we're going to be in the water.

We've got divers in the water.

Holy shit.

Well, that didn't work that way.

Somehow, 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, the garbage that the Army had dropped there at the base there.
So I had one man, his buddy line,

all them buddy lines, of course,

and I had 10 men or nine men and myself,

and his buddy line 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 line 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, it 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 do the dive missions.

I did.

We came in. We had to clear the ship.
And we, well, when we 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 out there was over a couple hundred rounds of ammunition down there buried in the mud.
So we brought the kids. It 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, now, we had the Songbo River, and they had not just sharks, but they had the Songbo River was a major river. Oh, where the 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 went to get that boy's body up and we did it. And then we found those rounds, we had to get those up now.
And what to do with it? EOD came in, and they took the rounds. They took the rounds.
I didn't lose any men 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 an officer 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 in the jungles and hunt down the bad guys. And that's the first time they gave us the dogs, gave us the war dogs.
And 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-op.

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

assigned to him and of course I can handle King we all trained with him and he would kill an enemy soldier grab him by the throat groin whatever then he killed two in Fula when. 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 don't want to get separated, especially if you're going to the night.
You know, some of those were probably done, but I didn't want to take my guys in by parachute. And 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... in the jungle, and we stayed out for a while.
Then they'd come and pick us up by helicopter, and we would have the helicopter land maybe two positions because I didn't want the NVA 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'd radio them, so we're going to be here. But sometime we would drop a flare over here.
We did what we could so the enemy would know that we're 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 the first part of it coming in on ground, they put us in with First Force.
They were already there, and we became part of First Force, and we fought with them. And then we did work with them, and then they sent us south, and Colonel Wilder had a battalion there, and he was our first CO.
We were training back in the States. He was CO of Recon Battalion, and so they put us in with him, and they fed us and took care of things like that, and we stayed with them the whole time.
First force stayed with First Recon Battalion the same time, all the time. When was your first firefight in Vietnam?

Seemed like they all came together. Damn.
I mean. Let's talk about the POW rescue mission ordered by President Johnson.
Yeah, he did order it, and the CIA handled it. 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, or 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 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 showed him a picture of my wife. So she sent me pictures, and he would go, he'd smile, you know.
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Rated the number one hiring site based on G2 try zip intro for free it's ziprecruiter.com slash srs again that's ziprecruiter.com slash srs zip intro post jobs today talk to qualified candidates tomorrow and uh one night i was asleep i woke up i knew something was wrong. I looked over and Lapp was gone.
You know, oh shit, so I grabbed my pistol and went looking for him. I saw him, grabbed him, said, Lapp, what the fuck are you doing out here? I need to go to the bathroom.
I said, what? I'm gonna shoot'm going to shoot you right now 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 soldier Because they would try to Infiltrate our bases Or steal stuff You couldn't tell, right? But I grabbed Lap and I brought him back to my tent. And I said, Lap, if you've got to go to the bathroom, I don't care what time it is, if you wake me up, I'll take you there.
Because one of these roving sentries, they'll catch you out there, and they won't know the difference.

But, yeah, 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 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. And, we got it done, and they decided 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 parachutes and all that stuff, which we brought with us.
And then the weather got bad. I said, no, no, we're not going to jump.
So I was going to be the jump master, of course, because I'm a jump master trained and all that. Went in by helicopter, and a big operation.
SEALs, they did some recon somewhere. The CIA didn't do any water work, you know, but we did the water work, check 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, and 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 they had me scheduled to kill the first two guards or the sentry 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 going to find out?

Well, they told us what they thought the POWs was in the tent.

The sentries here, the POWs here, and there was 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.
And then I'm pissed now.

Everything's happening, and no POWs.

So I said, if I could blow it up, we blew the whole base up.

Blew those places where they held American soldiers. Where they held them.

And 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.
Damn it. You know, we had a captain in charge.
You know, I was a lieutenant, I believe. But he was in charge of, he's dead now.
But he was a coward. I hate to say coward.
He didn't belong in recon for what we did. He failed scuba.
You know 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.

He got the Silver Star.

He wrote it up himself.

Oh, man.

Got it through.

When I got hit one time, he'd never come to see me.

He'd never come to see me.

He never asked how I was doing.

He was out for himself. He wanted to be the general's aide.
He didn't get that, so he ended up in force 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. I killed a man up in the—well, one of them I killed.
We were at Kason, 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... 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 to KSON to reinforce whatever they had there, and they 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 NVA looking out that way,

and I got him by his mouth,

and I pushed out my head of mine, ripped him, and I stuck my knife down in my cartridge belt. I killed him.
Blood was all over the place. He wiggled a little bit, but then he down.
I took my 9mm, 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.
I saw the other one look 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're seven or eight men. and you're out in the jungle most of that time.
We used to run those trails at night looking for them. We'd catch them cooking.
You'd 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.

They put out a reward for me.

This is what I was told by Intel.

They said that if you kill me, you would get a cow and you'd get two weeks in Hanoi.

Thank you. They said that if you kill me, you would get a cow and you'd get two weeks in Hanoi.
Then they would come close to killing me. They couldn't do it.
Not a lot of black force reconnaissance Marines out there, huh? No, not in those days, no. 50s, 60s.
Well, a lot of these guys, we all know they come from maybe cities and didn't have swimming pools that these kids could go through. There's a lot of social stuff that goes 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? Oh, it didn't bother me. Folks been looking after me all 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, and I'm waiting, and she come to my room.
She could either capture me or kill me, and 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 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.

When they tried to kill my wife and my son,

we had gotten a three-year tour in Hawaii.

So Dottie and I and Gary, we went to Hawaii.

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 at any rate, 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 a 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.

And 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 why is it something always comes up when you want to tell me something I don't want to hear I said sweetheart I just saw the general and he told me that we're in trouble. And they figured out that you and Gary are going to be shot on Saturday morning at 10 o'clock.
And they were supposed to be there. Who was they? You don't need to know that.
That's a long time ago. Tell me some of your stories, and then 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 know all about that. I know what happened to you in Hong Kong.
And I know about them two people you killed, by the way. I said, no, I didn't kill those people, General.
He said, yes, you did. I know that.
I'm lying, like some bitch to the General. But that was something that happened a long time ago.
It was 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? No.
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 and kicked them in the water.

Kill them all.

They didn't know where they were fucking with.

Yeah, I killed 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?

The British there.

They own the base.

China owns it now.

Yeah. The British with our allies.
Sean, there's so many things. They diagnosed me with 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.
And I killed a lot more. Yeah? And that's what you want to talk about.
But a lot of this stuff, you know, runs together. The timing, that was, I'm 87 years old.
I'm going to be 88 this year. I spent 14 years overseas.
I fought two wars. I have 19 holes that I bled from.
Both my legs have been broken. Right now, I 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 down B-52, correct? Yeah.
That supposedly had a nuclear bomb. It's a B-57.

B-57, 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. I had our stuff

Thank you. 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.
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, might have 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 plane has 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 is enemy territory and team broad-minded so we started, 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 roaming 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. And I got my team together in Lowell, and I, Durosky was a very tall point man, still around today.
I said, Durosky, no, 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 in the last part of it.

They opened fire, but that was all right.

Not going to 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 going to really attack us.
And the truck showed up and picked us up and went home. And 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 debriefing.

I'm sure you've been in a lot of those.

But they debriefed me, and I told them what I knew. I didn't find any bodies on the aircraft.
And then the 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. I couldn't get my eyes open.
I was moving my head I 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. He come in, said Lieutenant Lieutenant, I got your mail for you.
No, 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 everybody knows you don't do that. But I had to learn to be a human being again.

I had 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.
that was I had experience as I was making this you know from a peacetime

marine mm-hmm Those type of things that I had experience as 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.
Than 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 doc 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 know 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, and then when we come back, we'll just pick up right here.

All right, do you want to water or anything? we'll just, we'll pick up right here.

Alright, do you want a water or anything?

No. You okay?

How's it going, Dad?

No, I'm alright.

Alright.

Where have I been? I guess I took me back to Vietnam, huh?

Damn.

Took a little bit of trip there, huh?

Yeah. I'm alright.

All good? Yeah. Yeah.
I'm all right. All good?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm all right.

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Alright Major, you ready to kick it off again?

We are a 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, um, so we're getting ready to get into Fulak. 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, and you'd come out at Ulcer.

I applied for that, but I passed all of the

tests. But they sent me a letter that said,

consider it, but not select it. 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 during that time. We had very few officers in the Marine Corps, so they had an enlisted 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 basic school.

I had a 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 after I joined the Marines, like I mentioned, I did good,

and then they decided to commission me. It 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 did because the commanding officer of my unit, when they were looking at this Medal of Honor for me, he said he'd rather die than go to hell before I would get to Melivana. Why is that? He was a racist.
He's gone. He was with my unit.
He was the captain in the unit. But he went to the POW camp with us.
Didn't fight. He was a coward.
Failed scuba 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.

And his goal was to be the general's aide. You know...
You talked about him earlier. Hmm? You talked about him earlier.
Yeah. Wasn't a good man.
And he didn't... didn't like me.

And, you know, I went through that as a NCO and as an officer,

but, you know, I was okay with it because I was serving the 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.

I've got almost 23 years.

I was up for lieutenant colonel, which I'm sure I would have made

because of my background, my war background and the 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.

You know, 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 was going to recommend me for lieutenant colonel, which had 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. I said, oh, man.
I said, what's up? 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 going to work.

I went down to the school. I was 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 more angry I got, I'm going to settle this. You're not going to assault my child.
Demons that come home. Should have thought better.
But that light never changed.

That one 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 were 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 CO of a force recon company.
Wow. And had a big retirement for me on the 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.
Dottie was there. Gary was not there.
But the idea that all these people had come to see me retire, good friends, what I'd known since I was a teenager, and 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 Capers is going home now. The legendary Major Capers who gave it all.
Then I brought up my XO, young man, he's gone now. He made Major General, but he's dead now.
I introduced him as my relief.

Then I waited around.

I couldn't leave the battlefield.

Well, not the battlefield, but the parade field.

Because I went 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.

Thank you. 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, 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 in my shed.

But those are the memories from

beginning as a teenager

Thank you. I have it in a sea bag somewhere in my shed.

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 Foulock.
Foulock? Yeah. All right.
Not a pleasant thing to do, but let's go back to Foulock. You ready for that? Yeah.
What was going on there?

What was the mission?

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, ten months, almost a year.

But we did a lot of work with the Navy, you know,

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 swam back 1,500 meters.

But full lock was a different situation. I was asked to go in there and the Vietnamese had a base on the reverse side of Longtop Hill.

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, of the unit.
You know, I was a platoon commander as a 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,

wasn't qualified.

They wanted the experience of being there,

but, you know, that's not a place you go to get experience

in the areas that we were in.

But in Fuloc, I got to Fuloc, and damn, going into Fuloc, 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 and we got shot out. I mean, just blessed the little place.
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 they had these grenades.
If you land in that area, the chopper would pull little pins on the grenades, and they would blow from each side. So it was booby-trapped, the whole landing zone.
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,

and 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,

differently from where we were with those boogie 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 go home but. But most of them are gone.
It was a hard, hard tour. I was an enlisted man, now I'm in command.
Jordan, who was in 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 know, you can't leave me behind. I said, no, Ski, you know, Doruroski was his name.
I said, you've done a good job.

He's been with me all the way. You fought a good war.
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 keep in touch? Yeah, still alive. I talked to him the other day.
Came to my wife's funeral, my son's funeral. They were both buried together.
My wife and my son. But Ski was there.
He was always there. And I got hospitalized a couple of years ago in Wilmington and I woke up one morning and guess who was standing there? Duraski.
I said, hey, sir, I'm here. He was my point man.
Point man. Loyal.
It broke my heart to leave him behind in full-off. I made the right decision because the guy that took over a guy named You all right, yeah, okay Nick degree I I replaced Dvor Okay.
Nick the Greek.

I replaced Derovsky with Nick the Greek, 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 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 King, was killed.
How was your war dog, King, killed? Hmm?

How was the war dog, King, killed? He was killed when explosions went off. It was one of them things that he killed two enemy soldiers.
He's a big dog, trained to kill. We had to keep him in a cage.
you know only I

and the dog can 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.

Crapol lost a leg.

Is this Fulak? Fulak. 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 full lock.
No? No. Everybody survived except 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 Stanley, he was my point man with the Roski.
But he got shot and killed at Kason. Your team was ambushed in Fula, correct? Well, he was with another team, and they went out on a mission, and they got hit, and a grenade came in, from what I'm told.
A 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.
So I went to see his mother, and I apologized to her. She accepted it.
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 by his father and 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 Scanna'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's dead and They saved a lot of lives. Those M26s that we carried, you know, would kill at least two or three people.
And we knew his sternum was crushed. So we knew that this grenade was under him.
So, now that wasn't at Fuloc, that was at Kason.

You were talking about Fuloc, right?

Yeah.

A lot of firefights.

Boy, that's a long part there.

How do I simplify it?

You don't have to simplify it.

Thank you.

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? Thugs. You know, they knew that American Marines and soldiers was coming there for, I forget what the hell it was called now.
R&R. R&R, yeah.
And they had gang things set up. up you know we'd go to the clubs and sometime you 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 Scanlon was killed. Yeah, yeah, we had breakfast one morning, the colonel told me, he asked me, had I heard about the case? No, the Sergeant Major asked me had I heard about Kason? 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 after the war, he was coming to live with me for a while.
So it was kind of personal when Scandah got killed. Now, they sent me to Kaysom.
I got there, and I'm going back to Kaysom, I guess it is, and ran some long-range missions. I mean, and walking, and we came home with a python snake, about 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 the 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. We put the snake in an excavation, and he was lying there.
And I think Sergeant Yehrman 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.

Duck's in there quacking.

I said, you know, that duck looks tight, looks tough.

He's going to kick the ass out of that snake in there. So everybody's laughing.
And the mall that's beating up with feathers in it, and the snake will eat that duck. So everybody's coming by to bet, and, you know, troops bet on any damn thing.
You know, who's going to 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 crooked, perking around.

Yeah, the ducks pecked that snake to death, and everybody was laughing. And 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 is the Montagnard tribe used to help us with intel in the mountains there an older tribe called Montagnards and for them helping, I gave them some of the meat from the snake.
And we gave them the skin, some of them, and we cut the skin off, and they made belts. And some of the troops made belts out of the skin from the snake.
But they named him Gorma Powell,

which was a popular TV program during that period of time.

So they named the snake Gorma 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're 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.
Have 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 Fool Lock. Yeah, we're talking about Fool Lock.
Yeah, Fool Lock. 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 them? Hmm? Was it quiet? Were you in 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 out wiggling their wings.

They'd come in again, just 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, but we had to fight our way there. And Fuloc, no, that wasn't Fuloc.
That was another mission. But Fulak, 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, 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 deadly you know we went around the rice paddies and we went through I got to a graveyard and a lot of firing was going on everybody was shooting with you see you could see the tracers, tracers going. So I didn't want to walk into that.
So I put my guys in a graveyard. I had those cement things there.
So we stayed there and watched the battle. So no, we're not going to walk into that.
So we spent the night there, a 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 four to born.
Team brought them 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 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, and then we had seven damn firefights in those four days.
Jeez. Bloody.
We run 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 kills some.
I know how many I kill. You can't count it up, but they still want to know how many WIAs that you kill.
And nobody thought about that. You know, you're on full automatic.
You got your M60. You got your 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 run us. We were war wounded.
And we had killed most of them. And now it's 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 on the sides 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 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, the 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 light 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.

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 a broken leg. I was standing.
But this is a battle. Your personal injuries don't count.
He grabbed me again. Pulled me on board.
Now, I don't know. My coma had given me morph morphine so I don't know if he went up another time or if we just went out of there but he did take off turn around and I 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 in one of them firefights at Kason.

So I picked the child up and run toward the aid station.

The time I got there, the child had died in my arms,

and I laid the child down when her arms was hold on to my arms. I couldn't hardly lay her down, but I laid her down and she was dead.
I went back to where I needed to be, and I saw my coma. I said, Doc, come here.
He said, yes, sir.

I said, I'm going to need you now.

I figured they'd be coming back in.

We had this barbed wire, this caisson's barbed wire.

And we had it because they would come in at night. They'd throw grenades through that barbed 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. I 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.

Died on his post.

Damn. That's what I said damn.
He didn't tell me he was wounded in 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.
And 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.
But then for me,

the demons come home.

Now you've got to deal

with Jim Capers, the warrior.

I looked up in the sky

that night

and I prayed to God.

I 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.
And 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 answered my prayer.
He didn't ask it when I was on my knees praying, but God answers prayers when he needs to answer. 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.
May not be a day tomorrow. You may jump up and pull a hand grenade.
I'm all out of hand grenades. It wouldn't go off.
Go off. God's got me.
Kept me alive all this time. This summer I'll be 88 years old.
Well, where did God show up? Was it in Fulak? Where did God show up? God showed up in... Fulak.
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 Fulak. 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 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, was flying in, and it started going down.

I don't know if it had been out of fuel.

It was going down.

It was kind of a nasty night.

It was that 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 I 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 the helicopter flying. Everybody on that helicopter lives.
Those are stories that are real. Because all the men on board saw the same thing.
We were going down. High in the hell, there's 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 some place it'd 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 about to turn 88, 78, 88.
87. I'm 87 now, I'll turn 88 this year.
What a blessing.

What a blessing. I'll turn 88 this year.

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 dyed 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 I don't know if they had prayed like I prayed but when I was in Kha'Zan 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 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 shouldn't 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.

Thank you. 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.

No, I'm all right.

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. Because I can't get around very well anymore.

I don't drive.

No.

I've had problems.

Obviously sleeping,

the demons comes home. 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 the lower legs and in my thighs.
I had a heart attack. I've had surgery and you know the doctors 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 melibana. Won't bring my men back.
You got a silver star for Bullock. Yeah.

Sounds like it's... 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're telling me. You know, there's a list of 47 senators and congressmen who sent the letter to the president and asking 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 and after full lock and kiss 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 but that he had planned to give me the Melavonna or recommend me.
Congress gives that or the president gives that. He got killed in a helicopter crash.
So I, you know, left and went home and did the family thing and didn't think about it much until a young general named General James Williams. He used to be one of my platoon sergeants, platoon commanders rather.
He was now a two-star general. And he'd heard all these stories at my reunions, talked to guys that said, well, Major Capers did this.

Major Capers did that.

It wasn't simple, but they were there.

And 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'd run out of ammunition.

I was on an explosion, hit me and hit him,

and I would lean up back against a tree or something,

and I reached around.

I was holding Stanton, and I reached around to take the dog tags off of another Marine that I was holding. Well, Stanton I was holding, yeah.
I was holding Stanton. I reached around to take 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 hitting, lost a kidney, his blood all over the place.

He's bleeding out of his mouth,

some out of his nose.

He 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 said just hand me a rifle sir I can still fight that's a man that's a patriot that's a still fight. And I said, I'm gonna get you out of here, son.
And everything just 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? Mm-hmm. I called him to tell him that it looked like they want to give me the Melivana.
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 signatures of the congressman.

I didn't know most of those guys.

But Bull and the team, they've been pulling the strings,

General Williams and all of the ones.

I'm proud.

I never thought about the marijuana.

I thought about my troops. When they gave me a silver star, I figured, oh, gee, that's somebody'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.
Joroski's still alive, but he wasn't on the Fulak mission. He had a hernia, and I sent him back to the aid station.
He pissed about it. He wanted to go.
I put Nick in at Ski's place. Nick lost a leg.
Nick was a big man. 19-inch arms, 50-inch chest.
He carried that M60 like nothing. When he got hit, I heard him screaming.
Part of my language, you MFs, he was just firing with his MFs, which is a large weapon. But he 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. Grapeau is gone now, you know.
Sergeant Y Yerman 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 know, after Vietnam, you profess 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 CIA thing there in Vietnam.
And I'd help them. When I was, this is not Vietnam, but when I was Civil Force 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 Masters course or Repelling course, whatever it was.
I'd do that for them. And, of course, in Vietnam I did that thing.
And 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. You know, I got a young man now.
He retired as a 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're 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.
And the FBI, I tried to help out there. I put them through a jump program and 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 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. Look at 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.

It might have been Tampa.

I don't know.

They 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 it.
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.
He couldn't do what I'm doing now as far as hold 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.

And one night

he knocked on my door,

out door.

He said,

Dad,

I got a headache.

He said,

I had a stomach ache.

I said,

okay, son. So 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 stomachache. 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 a table and he died right there.
They let my son die. Now 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. The 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 car, and she came to see our child.
Then we walked down this hall together, and we'd been walking down that hall together for a long time. The reason I 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 was going to help me blow up the gas station as a decoy. Policeman and pharma would be there, and when a doctor come out of the hospital, 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.
I'm sure you're not going to do that stuff. I'm going to, the police force, 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 probably mentioned that kind of stuff too much in your interview, but God stepped in, and I came home. Well, I was home, and my pastor came over to the house.
It was about 3 o'clock in the morning. Dottie wasn't crying.

I didn't know why, but Dottie wasn't crying.

I was crying.

But I think Dottie had to be tough for me.

She believed in God, too.

We always went to church.

You know, 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 someplace.
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, but we enjoyed that so much. And some of the guys who had been in trouble, and 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 to that in the Bible terms. But years later, I went back to that area.
I went to see if that church was still, it was a little, about this size, I guess it is, room. I went back there and I parked my car and I looked around.
I said, well, I think it was over here. I started walking over there and the young Marine came out and just came over and said, hey, sir, are you all right? I said, yes, son, 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.

Dottie 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. You know? I have guys come to see me.
As a 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 he's probably going to be the commandant of 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'd 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. 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 going to be all over the place.
You established the Gary and Dottie Capers Foundation. Yeah, I did.
To help kids with special needs. Both 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, to raise money.

Well, Donnie was there.

We started for Gary, but Donnie was still alive.

And we started this thing,

and we'd bring people in, friends in,

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've got to feed them.

And we did that.

We moved some to my home.

We brought the homeless in, and Dottie 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 young man that came with me.
He happens to be the president of the organization. Well, I'll tell you what.
We'll put the link to the website in the description of this interview,

so if anybody wants to donate, they can do it.

I knew you had a good heart.

I knew you just weren't a mean guy.

I knew that.

It would help us because when the virus hit us, 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 it 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 have 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've had, we have a young lady named Ashley Casado.
She did the documentary for us. I don't know if you've ever seen that, the 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, you know, 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 did that happen? 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 get are gonna give a damn about this one so you know a little tough for the old man and a.
And 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. and he has so many people listening to him.

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 Dottie 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. NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court.
You get a chance to dig into my 14-year career in the NBA and also get the input from the people that will be joining. Charles Barkley.
I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor.
Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner. Nixon.
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