The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”

GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.

The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.

This contributed to the increased backlog of deferred maintenance needs. Even though in 2014 an Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics memorandum was issued to establish a goal of funding regular maintenance at 90% or higher of the amount estimated by the Facilities Sustainment Model, the GAO continues to find that the services are not meeting that goal.

Instead, the Army, Navy and Air Force requested about 80% for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. The Marine Corps requested funding decreased from 80% to 40% over the past five fiscal years, opting to fund more facility restoration and modernization projects in exchange for reduced sustainment funding, the report says.

Maintenance and improvement projects’ backlogs can contribute to service members’ quality of life and negatively affect installations’ missions.

“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report says.

In past reports, the GAO has found that barracks maintenance were “chronically neglected” and resulted in poor conditions of enlisted service members that affected their quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in substandard barracks, with some hosting potentially serious health and safety risks, a 2023 report found.

Of the 31 recommendations issued in 2023, the department implemented 19 as of April 2026. But many remain unaddressed, such as establishing an oversight structure for barracks, the report says.

The GAO found that challenges in hiring and retaining key maintenance workers are seen in remote and isolated locations and other obstacles include private sector employment competition as well as federal hiring, pay and work eligibility practices.

Military departments have not fully identified the extent of maintenance workforce shortages or created plans to address the hurdles.

The GAO also found that installations rely on maintenance work order data systems to respond to needs, but the tracking is limited and the data is generally unreliable for determining the effectiveness of maintenance performed across the services.

In the report, the GAO made 13 recommendations, including strengthening departmental oversight, determining risks associated with funding maintenance below levels proposed and improving maintenance data reliability.

The department fully or partially concurred with 12 recommendations and did not concur with one.

Matilda 1, a specialized stern landing vessel that can transport troops from ship to shore or from beachhead to beachhead, is notable for its shallow draft, allowing it to navigate littoral waters the way few other vessels its size can. But it’s also different in how the Marine Corps acquired it for use.

The 240-foot boat was designed by the Australian firm Seatransport and constructed by Indonesian builder Karimun Anugrah Sejati. It became operational earlier this year and was made available to the Marine Corps via a three-year charter agreement with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, managed by the firm MariGuard LLC.

The charter agreement, the second of its kind undertaken by the Warfighting Lab since 2021, allows the service to experiment with its stand-in forces concept that envisions more Marines island-hopping in the Pacific and operating from remote and austere beaches. And the Corps is able to do so without having to invest heavily in in-house shipbuilding or even make an outright purchase of a commercial vessel.

The charter agreement “allows us to move a lot quicker,” Maj. Brandon Griffith, who leads Logistics, Science and Technology at the Warfighting Lab, told Marine Corps Times. “That’s part of what we’re looking at, is the viability of that approach.”

Matilda 1 will “bridge the gap” as the Navy develops its Medium Landing Ship (LSM) program, a ship class intended to move Marines and their equipment to remote beaches. The LSM has already been christened the McClung class, after Marine Maj. Megan McClung, who was killed during a deployment to Iraq. Ultimately, between 18 and 35 ships are planned for the class. But while the first ship has been ordered, construction has yet to begin.

According to Warfighting Lab releases, the Matilda 1 is named in honor of the partnership between the Marines and the Australian Army dating to World War II.

“After the pivotal Battle of Guadalcanal, the 1st Marine Division adopted the Australian folk song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as an unofficial anthem,” lab officials said. “The name MATILDA 1 pays tribute to this shared legacy of mutual defense in the Pacific.”

The chartering of Matilda 1 follows a similar charter agreement with the HOS Resolution, an offshore supply vessel that helped shape LSM concepts and design in the Pacific between 2021 and 2024. Griffith noted that the older converted vessel — with ramps added for onload and offload — wasn’t designed for the mission the way Matilda 1 was.

“It was kind of our first, you know, dip in the toe in the water of this type of craft,” Griffith said.

And it’s likely these kinds of charter arrangements will continue as the Corps presses forward with experimentation and shaping its future maritime mission.

“This is a Pacific-focused charter now, but it’s a concept that we’re definitely looking to expand across the globe, across all the component commands,” Griffith said. “A lot of what we try to do, experimentation-wise, may focus on one theater, but that doesn’t mean the lessons learned aren’t applicable across the board.”

While Matilda’s lease period only started in June, it has already proven several key capabilities. In collaboration with the Australian military, it’s been operating in and out of Darwin, Australia, demonstrating an ability to land on a 1:40 beach gradient, classified as a moderate to gentle slope — a shallow beach that most larger vessels struggle to land on.

It will soon travel to Okinawa for exercises with III Marine Expeditionary Force, where its capacity, range and stability will be use-tested, among other things.

The vessel has a stated range of 4,000 nautical miles, a capacity of 84 shipping containers and the ability to handle relatively rough sea states thanks to its V-shaped hull.

“Almost all amphibious vessel designs are incapable of long-distance offshore voyages,” Stuart Ballantyne, CEO of Seatransport, told the news outlet Baird Maritime in March. “This vessel can achieve 85% of her designed speed in head sea state five and predominant waves in standard tradewind areas.”

Amid the Navy’s continuing efforts to invest in the landing vessels, the performance of Matilda 1 has been encouraging as the Corps grapples with a cost it finds acceptable.

“It’s kind of the best of both worlds, if you will, and has proven out pretty well so far,” Griffith said.

Inside an office building in West Los Angeles, retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr. stood tall and strong in his signature spit-shined black cowboy boots. Under the shadow of a red Force Recon Association hat and tinted glasses, Capers’ eyes wore a hardened look that made no effort to hide the darkness and despair that gripped him at that moment.

It was the fall of 2009, and Capers had come in search of a new mission. As the enlisted chief of the Marine Corps’ Hollywood liaison office, I’d been advised that Capers had been recommended for the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam 42 years earlier, and he would likely soon become the first Black Marine officer to receive the nation’s highest award for battlefield valor. Our job was to support the major as he made the move from North Carolina to California, where he planned to complete his memoir and share his story in Hollywood.

I expected to meet a larger-than-life warrior. Instead, I met a soft-spoken, humble man who was grief-stricken over the recent loss of his wife to cancer. His eyes told the story of a wounded soul. At the time, I had no idea I was meeting him in the middle of what would become one of the longest Medal of Honor fights in American history.

That fight finally ended in June at the White House after President Donald Trump clasped a powder blue ribbon around Capers’ neck and straightened the gold, star-shaped medal over his chest. The ceremony concluded a nearly 20-year struggle that profoundly shaped the latter decades of Caper’s life — a trial marked by devastating grief, institutional rejection, deteriorating health, and extraordinary perseverance.

“Jim, the nation kept you waiting far too long,” Trump said at the ceremony. “So I say to you, congratulations. You made it.”

The moment was the culmination of a push to recognize Capers that began in 2007 after a general at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, initiated an investigation to determine if Capers and others who served in Vietnam with 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company in 1966 and 1967 should be considered for valor awards or upgrades to medals they had already received. The elite special operations detachment, which fought in the rice paddies and triple-canopy jungles of Southeast Asia, had come to be known as “the lost detachment” because administrative records of their exploits were lost for years. After reviewing detailed records and accounts of Capers’ bravery and combat leadership in Vietnam, the general, James L. Williams, believed Capers’ actions were worthy of the Medal of Honor.

‘I had to make sure I kept my troops alive’

Capers is a legend of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Reconnaissance community. In his first enlistment in the infantry, Capers stormed a beach south of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1958, with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. After that deployment, he tried out and was selected for duty with the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company.

In 1965, he volunteered for duty in Vietnam with the newly formed 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company and was placed in charge of an all-white platoon of 20 men. Walter J. Doroski, who served as Capers’ point man in Vietnam, recalled the day he met his new platoon sergeant.

“He stood with confidence and an ominous charisma,” Doroski said in a statement. “In a deep, clear, but not loud voice, he said, ‘Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. I am Staff Sgt. Capers, and we will be the absolute best platoon in this company, which will make us the best platoon of Marines in the world.’ … For the next 18 months, I never knew of anyone who questioned his authority or leadership.”

From August 1966 to early April 1967, Capers led dozens of long-range reconnaissance patrols deep behind enemy lines.

In his first missions in Vietnam, Capers led combat diver teams in shark-infested waters, searching the hull of the USS Boxer for enemy mines and saboteurs while it was docked at ports in Nha Trang and Qui Nhon.

In August and September, Capers and his men endured intense combat during Operations Deckhouse III and IV. When an infantry unit was trapped and isolated by the enemy, Capers led a rescue mission to get the Marines out of the kill zone under fire. He also assumed command of another reconnaissance platoon after its commander was killed in action.

“I wasn’t afraid because I had a job to do, and my job was to lead and to look out for my guys,” Capers said later of the Deckhouse operations.

Then, in late November 1966, Capers and his team were tasked with locating and assessing the wreckage of a downed aircraft. After they gathered critical intelligence from the crash site of the B-57 Canberra bomber, torrential rains prevented the team’s helicopter extraction, leaving the lightly armed patrol isolated with limited food and ammunition. When extraction proved impossible, Capers gathered his men.

“We can’t stay here,” he told them. “If we do, we’ll die. … Saddle up. We’re walking off of this damn mountain.”

As the downpour continued for several days, Capers led his Marines on a grueling 9-kilometer hike through rugged mountains, flooded rivers, triple-canopy jungle, and two minefields, consistently outmaneuvering enemy forces to make it safely back to friendly lines.

Capers was still exhausted from the mission when he learned he would no longer be the platoon sergeant. On Nov. 30, 1966, he received a battlefield commission — a rare honor given to only 63 enlisted men in Vietnam — and was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant.

Still, Capers understood that any failure could reinforce racist beliefs about whether Black Marines should become officers.

“Had I drowned on a dive mission, or had I made the wrong decision, then it would have given the naysayers fodder for saying, ‘We knew we shouldn’t commission those guys.’ So I couldn’t fail,” Capers said. “I had to succeed. … I had to make sure I kept my troops alive.”

Capers earned a Bronze Star with “V” for his actions in January 1967 while serving as assistant patrol leader for a top-secret mission to locate and liberate prisoners of war from a Viet Cong prison camp more than 20 miles behind enemy lines.

After completing that mission, he was sent to Khe Sanh, where he and his Marines patrolled the jungle around the combat outpost, moving like ghosts and killing dozens of enemy soldiers in a near-constant rotation of patrols that Capers coordinated, oversaw, and frequently led.

On one mission, Capers and his team — named Team Broadminded for their tactical efficiency — killed around 15 enemy soldiers. On the chopper back to Khe Sanh, the team was subdued.

“There was no backslapping,” Capers recalled. “For us, death and killing had become business as usual.”

It was just one of many patrols through the jungle that ended in savage close combat.

“You play God,” Capers said in 2009. “And you cover it up by saying, ‘In the interest of national defense — kill him before he kills me.’”

The last patrol

By March 1967, the Marines of 3rd Force Recon in Vietnam had likely killed or wounded hundreds of enemy soldiers, but many of the 39 Marines who originally deployed in April 1966 had become casualties themselves. The survivors were battle-fatigued, short-handed, and waiting to be relieved by another force reconnaissance unit when Capers was given orders to locate a suspected North Vietnamese regimental base camp near Phu Loc.

He gathered Broadminded’s core members — Ron Yerman, Capers’ trusted assistant team leader and first radio operator; Sgt. Richard Crepeau, another seasoned sergeant and the team’s second radio operator; and Billy Ray “Doc” Smith, the team’s medical corpsman.

“He asked us if we would volunteer to go on our last combat patrol into an almost impossible situation,” Crepeau recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve been ordered to go, but you don’t have to.’”

The sergeants and the corpsman looked at each other. There was no question.

“Where you go, we go,” Crepeau said.

Over the four days the patrol lasted, Broadminded got into several firefights. During one engagement, Capers called for fire on an enemy position, which stopped an attack on the unit they were supporting — M Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment.

The team found four booby-trapped trails — likely ambush sites — which Capers reported to the M Company commander, who then ordered Capers to take his team back through the sites. Capers and his men knew the commander was essentially using their reconnaissance team as bait to flush out the enemy forces so the regular infantry could swoop in for the kind of large battle the big-brass strategy demanded at the time.

On the last day of the patrol, April 3, Capers and his nine-man team maneuvered slowly and carefully, identifying and withdrawing from three ambush sites. As the team was about to withdraw from a fourth, the team’s war dog, King, alerted. Then the claymore mines detonated.

A massive, nightmarish explosion swallowed the team in a shockwave of steel balls that punched through limbs and torsos. More than a dozen North Vietnamese soldiers opened fire from two directions with rifles, machine guns, and grenades, wounding every member of the team. The initial blast killed King and knocked Capers against a tree, leaving his body punctured in 14 places and right leg broken.

As the whole team fought for their lives, Yerman, one of the only Marines with relatively minor wounds, crawled over to Capers.

“We’re all down, sir!” Yerman yelled. “But we can still fight!”

Capers ordered Yerman to redistribute the team’s ammo and pull the injured men into a tight perimeter. Smith, bleeding from his neck and face, sprinted from man to man, treating and dressing their wounds. Capers kept firing his rifle and throwing grenades as he shouted orders.

Smith gave Capers a shot of morphine and then darted away to treat the other Marines. As Yerman called for help from the grunts and worked on getting medical evacuation helicopters inbound, Capers ordered Crepeau to call in mortars dangerously close to the Marines’ position — a risky gamble that silenced the enemy guns.

“We’re not going to die on this trail,” Capers told his men. “We’re going home, and we’re going home like Marines.”

With help from the line grunts, Team Broadminded hobbled down a winding, rain-swept trail toward the helicopter landing zone. Capers used his rifle like a cane and limped along, blood sloshing in his jungle boots. At the landing zone, with bullets whipping and cracking around them, Capers — barely clinging to consciousness — refused to board the helicopter until every last man, and his dog’s body, was aboard. When the aircraft struggled to take off under the weight of its load, Capers yelled to the crew chief, “It’s no good,” and tried to sacrifice himself by exiting the aircraft so it could get into the air. The crew chief pulled him back inside — twice — before the pilot managed to gain some speed and lift off.

As the Marines lay recovering in the field hospital later, 3rd Marine Division Commander Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth visited Capers and his men. Hochmuth knelt down beside Capers’ bed and patted his head.

“You did a good job, son,” Capers remembered him saying. “You guys did a real good job out there, and you’ll be hearing from us.” Seven months later, Hochmuth was killed in a helicopter crash.

In the dozens of combat patrols Capers had led, he’d never been caught in an ambush. His record was a point of pride. Perfection was the standard.

“After Phu Loc, the thought never occurred to me that I might deserve a medal, because I felt like I had failed,” Capers said.

A hero’s odyssey

In 2007, the administrative staff at 2nd Marine Division began a years-long process of gathering witness statements, officer endorsements, and other official documents before sending medal recommendations to the Marine Corps Awards Branch on behalf of Capers and several other “lost detachment” Marines.

Lt. Col. Gary Wilder, Capers’ battalion commander in Vietnam until February 1967, recommended Capers for the Medal of Honor for his actions during the last patrol at Phu Loc between March 31 and April 3.

The Marine Corps kicked back the award recommendation in March 2008, citing procedural errors, including the fact that Wilder and Capt. Ken Jordan, who served as Capers’ detachment commander until three days before the Phu Loc patrol, were technically ineligible to initiate the recommendation for Capers’ medal. The four-day timeframe also overlapped with the Bronze Star with “V” that Capers received as an “end of tour” award covering his entire Vietnam deployment — though that award summary did not capture most of the details of the Phu Loc patrol.

The team at 2nd Marine Division regrouped and revised their recommendation, tracking down the correct officers from Capers’ chain of command, obtaining their signed recommendations for Capers’ actions at Phu Loc, and addressing other discrepancies.

As Capers endured a whirlwind of intense scrutiny during that time, he was forced to confront painful memories and long-dormant demons.

“I was stripped down, and all my scars were measured. I answered many questions from investigators,” Capers said. “[They] asked me about the battle of Phu Loc and all the various missions I was involved in.”

“I resented those guys questioning my integrity or my battlefield competence when they had never shed blood as I had.”

When he got fed up with what he perceived as a callous approach by the doctors and investigators, Capers thought about two things. The first was his men. He focused on the effort to get them medals and upgrades for their actions in Vietnam.

The other thing that kept Capers going was his wife, Dottie.

“Dottie was the only woman I ever loved from the time I was 15 years old,” he says. “She was my rock.”

But in June 2009, in the midst of the whole ordeal, Capers lost his rock. A week after their 50th wedding anniversary, he said goodbye to Dottie in a hospital room in North Carolina after a battle with cancer. He slipped her wedding ring gently off her finger and whispered through tears, “I kept my word.”

Dottie was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to Capers and Dottie’s only son, Gary, who was born blind and mentally handicapped and died at 44 in 2003. With his family gone, Capers was lost in grief, and his friends and loved ones could see it.

“I loved her so much. … I was the luckiest man in the world,” Capers said in November 2009. “But now I’m a widower. And my life, as I knew it, has ended, basically. ”

After Dottie passed, Williams, who served with Capers in the 1970s and remains close to him, connected Capers with a manager in Los Angeles and urged him to publish his memoir and pursue a documentary or feature film about his extraordinary life. The general had been inspired to join the Marine Corps, in part, after seeing Capers on a recruiting poster in his dress blues with a chest full of medals. So Capers, still deep in grief and in need of a new focus, left the small military town of Jacksonville, North Carolina, and settled in Santa Monica, California. It was practically the other side of the universe for him.

As he met with producers and writers, nearly everyone placed this measurement on Capers’ life story: With the Medal of Honor approved, Capers was Hollywood gold. Without it, he was unmarketable.

In 2010, Capers said he received a letter from the Pentagon telling him he would be awarded the Silver Star Medal — a downgrade of two levels for which no explanation was given. The processes that led to that decision remain a mystery.

“We may never be able to piece together how that decision was made,” Dwight Mears, a historian who has spent decades investigating and writing about Medal of Honor standards, told The War Horse. “It’s a system that’s very mercurial. It’s not very transparent. You’re basically asking an organization to be transparent about something that may not make it look good.”

Capers was awarded the Silver Star on Oct. 27, 2010, during a ceremony at the officer’s club on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Yerman, Crepeau, Smith, and John Moran, the dog handler on the Phu Loc patrol, also received the Bronze Star that day for their valor during the ambush.

“In the description for the Medal of Honor, it says that your deed has to be so significant that you don’t consider your own life,” Yerman, who accompanied Capers on more patrols in Vietnam than any other man, said in 2010. “He didn’t ever consider his own life when he was out there. … His whole life was dedicated to Marines.”

At the ceremony, Maj. Gen. Paul E. Lefebvre, then commander of Marine Forces Special Operations Command, called Capers “the spiritual founder of Marine Corps special operations.”

Hours before the Silver Star ceremony, Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, inducted Capers into SOCOM’s Commando Hall of Honor, enshrining Capers’ legacy as a leader, innovator, and hero in the Marine special operations community.

Capers accepted the Silver Star with grace and humility. But when he returned to Los Angeles, he struggled. His health began to fail. After a long stay in the hospital, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Bailey, a close friend and commanding general of 1st Marine Division, had Capers moved to Oceanside, where he slowly got better.

He moved into an apartment and reconnected with James Dixon III, the corporal who worked obsessively for more than a year helping to prepare awards packages for Capers and his men. Dixon moved in with Capers and helped him with his memoir while trying to reignite the effort to award him the Medal of Honor. But Dixon died tragically in 2012. Alone and reeling from another loss, Capers moved back to Jacksonville.

“I’d lost everything important to me,” Capers said of that time. “I guess I bought into the idea that the award was bigger than me because I needed to.”

‘A very subjective award’

For years, supporters tried unsuccessfully to persuade the military to reconsider Capers’ Silver Star. From 2010 to 2019, retired Marine Col. Phil Smith led efforts through the Force Recon Association to reopen the case. None succeeded.

The Pentagon had shown that old valor awards could be reconsidered. In 2014, President Barack Obama presented the Medal of Honor to 24 soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam whose heroism had been overlooked because of racial discrimination. The award upgrades followed a congressionally mandated review that took 12 years. No Marine medals were upgraded.

“The Medal of Honor is a very subjective award that depends very much on how well we tell the story,” Doug Sterner, an archivist and expert on military valor awards, told me in 2015.

Capers’ story gradually reached a wider audience. In 2015, I published an investigative feature about him in Maxim magazine, and Capers published his memoir, “Faith Through the Storm: Memoirs of Major James Capers Jr.” in 2018. A documentary about Team Broadminded followed later.

In 2021, Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Greg Murphy of North Carolina called for a review of an updated recommendation supported by new witness statements. Both lawmakers represented places closely tied to Capers: Norman’s district includes Bishopville, where Capers was born into a sharecropping family in 1937, and Murphy represented Jacksonville, where Capers lives.

But then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro denied the recommendation, citing regulations that “preclude reconsideration of any previously approved personal decoration for upgrade to the Medal of Honor unless new, substantive, and relevant material evidence is presented.” Norman then introduced legislation in 2022 and again in 2023 that would have authorized the president to award Capers the medal. Neither effort advanced. By then, supporters had concluded that another appeal through normal military channels was unlikely to succeed.

In 2024, retired Marine Lt. Col. David “Bull” Gurfein, who now serves as a senior Defense Department advisor, took over the campaign with board support from his nonprofit United American Patriots. After Gurfein learned of Capers’ story, he offered to lead a new strategic campaign that combined historical research, congressional lobbying, public pressure, and endorsements from senior military leaders.

“Many senior military leaders believed Capers deserved the Medal of Honor, but few believed he would ever receive it,” Gurfein told The War Horse. “We refused to accept that as a rational conclusion.”

Gurfein led a coalition that expanded upon research begun by Williams, gathering original records and examining why earlier efforts had failed. The coalition worked to push Capers’ story into public view. They circulated petitions urging President Trump to award Capers the medal while he was still alive. The major’s heroism was touted in news reports, opinion pieces, podcasts, and on social media. A 2025 interview with Capers on the Shawn Ryan Show garnered more than 1.7 million views on YouTube.

“We were able to finally get this done through a combination of getting the right people in the right place and having the influence to constantly keep Maj. Capers’ name trending,” said Ruben Ayala, co-founder of BLK-OPS Foundation, which supported the campaign. “As people saw all of the injustices throughout the years of not being able to get this right, they joined the fight.”

Another key victory came after retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Bryan Battaglia, a former senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, organized a letter to Trump supporting Capers that was signed by 133 retired senior enlisted leaders. A second letter was sent to the Commandant of the Marine Corps with signatures from four former sergeants major of the Marine Corps.

In February 2025, Norman secured a similar letter to Trump signed by 47 members of Congress, including six senators. Norman then introduced legislation waiving the five-year deadline that ordinarily limits consideration of Medal of Honor recommendations. The bill passed both chambers by unanimous consent.

Williams credited Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as a key supporter of the legislation who helped push it across the finish line.

“Sen. Graham was absolutely a great supporter and a champion in this process,” Williams said after Graham’s unexpected death on July 11. “He did what he normally does: He strong-armed everybody on Capitol Hill.”

The campaign gained additional support inside the administration. During an August 2025 White House dinner honoring Purple Heart recipients, Capers met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and spoke with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. Collins later endorsed the effort in a letter to Hegseth’s senior staff. The effort seemed to reach a critical mass of support after Hegseth presented Capers with Fox Nation’s Salute to Service Award in front of a large national audience in November.

President Trump signed Norman’s bill into law on March 26. On June 18, 59 years after his actions at Phu Loc, Capers became the first Black Marine officer to receive the Medal of Honor.

‘Destiny’

On a hot June afternoon in Washington, two Marines helped the 88-year-old warrior rise and navigate a couple steps onto a stage at the White House, where President Trump hooked his right arm around Capers’ left and helped him stand tall. Then a military member spoke the words that Capers, and all who had advocated for him, had waited decades to hear: “The President of the United States, in the name of the Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to 2nd Lt. James Capers Jr., United States Marine Corps.”

After securing the medal around Capers’ neck, the president put his arm around him, pulling him close and smiling to the gathered guests, who erupted in applause and cheers. Capers stood there, beaming along with the president, flooded with the joy and validation of the moment.

“He has always been an unwavering example of strength, courage and grace,” Renee White, Capers’ niece and one of his only living relatives, said in a statement. “While my heart aches that his beloved wife, my Aunt Dottie, and their son, my cousin Gary, are not here to share in this historic day, I know they, along with his parents and siblings, are looking down with immense love and pride.”

After the ceremony, Capers attended a nearby reception. As he rolled into the venue, a huge crowd of friends, family members, and supporters gave him a long overdue hero’s welcome, showering him with love and admiration.

“The award represented the culmination of decades of patience by Capers and years of disciplined research, principled advocacy, and broad-based collaboration by hundreds of individuals committed to ensuring that the historical record was finally set right,” Gurfein said.

The following day — on Juneteenth — Capers was inducted into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes along with Marine Col. John Ripley, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor the day before.

“Your applause reminds me of some dark days — of some brave men who are not here today. So I’ll speak for them,” Capers said at the ceremony. “This is the greatest country in the world. I fought for that flag. I believed in it.”

In 1943, Capers’ family fled the Jim Crow South to Baltimore, Maryland. Four of his seven brothers and sisters died before age 10. When Capers enlisted in the Marines in 1956, his father drove him to the train station and explained that he would always have to perform better than his peers if he wanted to succeed.

“The Marine Corps did not welcome individuals like me,” Capers said. “But the hierarchy thought, ‘If he’s got the skills, at least give [him] the chance to try.’ That’s all I really wanted.”

Capers rolled in his wheelchair alongside close friends and family members down a long Pentagon hallway as hundreds of friends, supporters, and distinguished guests gave a long overdue hero’s reception. As he stared up with a proud smile at a sea of applauding admirers, he reached out to shake hands and expressed his thanks with a sharp salute.

When he reached the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, Capers located his name, newly printed on the wall.

Afterward, Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter expressed how it felt to see Capers awarded with America’s highest honor and what his legacy means.

“There would be no three-star African-American generals in the Marine Corps if it wasn’t for the leadership and contributions from men like [Maj. Capers],” said Carter, who currently serves as an advisor to the director of national intelligence. “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and our reconnaissance community certainly wouldn’t be as far as it is today without Maj. Capers. … We’re honored [and] pleased that he’s here today with us.”

Theodore Roosevelt Britton Jr., a 100-year-old Montford Point Marine and former American ambassador to Grenada and Barbados, was elated to witness his good friend’s induction into the Hall of Heroes.

“Maj. Capers epitomizes everything that we [Montford Point Marines] could have aspired to. … To see how far we have come is really wonderful,” Britton said afterward.

For Capers, it was a proud and cathartic experience that was somewhat bittersweet.

“I’m a little bit sad because there are a lot of my troops that are not here, but I’m here because of them,” he said in Washington the day he received the Medal of Honor.

Yerman and Crepeau, who both testified to Capers’ unparalleled combat prowess and leadership in Vietnam, never lived to see their former platoon leader receive the medal they believed he deserved.

“Had they not been along with me, I wouldn’t have made it.”

When I asked Capers what finally receiving the medal means to him, he thought for a second and calmly breathed out one word.

“Destiny,” he said, pausing for a moment. “It took a long time to get here. … It means a lot.”

This War Horse article was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by June Strange and Paul Szoldra, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

But he feels helpless now to aid his brother, who worked for the U.S. government during the war in Afghanistan and has been stuck for nearly two years at a holding camp in Qatar, waiting for a visa to the United States.

Jamshidi’s brother is one of roughly 150 family members of U.S. troops and veterans stranded at Camp As Sayliyah, according to the aid organization AfghanEvac. The camp is currently slated to close Sept. 30. And while organization leaders aren’t confident the U.S. government will follow through on that closure timeline, nothing has been formally communicated, they say, to camp residents who are waiting in limbo.

Jamshidi was born in Afghanistan, but he came to the U.S. with his family around age five. He opted to enlist in the Marine Corps, he said, because he had a deep appreciation for the freedoms America offered, having experienced life without those guarantees in Afghanistan.

“My mother, her dying wish is to see her son before she goes … so we’re trying to keep her healthy until my brother gets there,” Jamshidi said. “I want to continue shining a light on this crisis so the American people can hear these stories and demand change … This is not a partisan issue; it’s an American obligation.”

AfghanEvac leaders say some 3,000 U.S. military family members in all are affected by a hard stop in visa distribution to Afghans that took effect late last year.

They say many, like Jamshidi’s brother, have received consulate Chief of Mission approval and completed the required interviews to come to the U.S.; all they lack is the final paperwork.

As the U.S. marks the fifth anniversary of the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan that ended the war but left thousands of allies stranded, a coalition of refugee assistance and resettlement groups is calling on Congress to pass the Afghanistan TPS Act, which would create temporary protected status for Afghan refugees and allow visa processing to begin again.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force brigadier general and a cosponsor of the bipartisan bill, said in a call with reporters this week that he supports a discharge petition, a measure that would force the bill out of committee and onto the House floor for a vote.

“Most Americans want a decent, I would call it a Christian policy here, and that’s not what we’re getting,” said Bacon, who describes himself as an “old Ronald Reagan-type Republican.”

“We have a moral obligation to those we serve with in Afghanistan, who served by our side, helping us out.”

Camp As Sayliyah, which began to be used as an indefinite waypoint for Afghans who’d been evacuated by the U.S. government in 2021, has received over 1,000 refugees. In addition to the limited freedoms and constrained conditions of life at the camp, residents are now contending with post-traumatic stress and other mental health crises from missiles flying overhead due to the Iranian conflict, Jamshidi said.

“There’s missile fragments falling on people’s homes; there’s loud noises and uncertainty,” he said.

One White House proposal has been to send the refugees in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to figure out life for themselves from there. Jamshidi said he served at the U.S. Embassy in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, in 2018, and the thought troubles him.

“I know the conditions there, and it’s even worse than some areas in Afghanistan,” he said.

Bacon and another member of Congress, Texas Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson, said there wasn’t a clear timeline for filing a discharge petition on the Afghanistan TPS Act, but emphasized it would happen “soon.” They both stressed that the ultimate goal was to create a pathway for permanent resettlement in the U.S. for eligible Afghan allies.

Jamshidi said he was part of a chat group with other troops and veterans with family at Camp As Sayliyah. The chat, he said, has largely gone silent as members have gradually lost hope in a policy solution. Jamshidi said he’s working to hang onto that hope.

“As a Marine, I understand what it means to keep your promise and to stand by our coalition, our partners who served us and who supported us, who sacrificed their life for us, and how important that is,” he said. “So I’m going to continue fighting for that.”

But the services have been unable to complete those requirements because they are hampered by a lack of resources, including a shortage of staff and the technology needed to conduct such assessments, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

In 2024, after extensive reporting by The New York Times on the impact routine weapons training can have on the brain, including traumatic brain injury, the Pentagon issued several policies to protect troops from blast overpressure.

The policies included restrictions on the proximity trainers should have to weapons at firing ranges. They also called for increasing the use of simulators in training, conducting cognitive assessments of all troops and monitoring exposure.

The policies also required new recruits to receive cognitive assessments by the end of 2024. Screening for all active-duty personnel in “high-risk” specialties — such as those who handle howitzers, mortars, M 107 and MK 15 sniper rifles, breaching charges and other weapons — was supposed to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.

The GAO found that nearly 200,000 recruits were screened in fiscal 2025 and 86% of personnel in occupations at increased risk received assessments, with 87% of Army personnel, 81% of Air Force members and 59% of Navy sailors screened.

But service officials told GAO analysts that they faced challenges fully meeting their obligations and evaluating personnel because of the tight timeline set in memos. They said they did not receive the resources or staff to conduct the assessments and relied on existing resources to meet requirements.

In terms of monitoring service members at regular intervals following their initial assessments, the Defense Health Agency said it did not have enough specialists to meet requirements.

Officials in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness told the GAO that insufficient industrial hygienists were the “primary barrier to DOD achieving its targets for exposure tracking.”

The Pentagon announced in April that it will begin a one-year pilot program to test a new cognitive assessment tool, an app that service members can use to complete assessments. DoD officials said the app will be less “resource intensive” than current assessments and will help improve the services’ ability to track exposures.

GAO officials also said the Pentagon has taken several steps to educate service members and ensure they receive care if they show symptoms.

According to the GAO, the DoD now distributes informational material to service members on blast exposure, instructs leaders to schedule training breaks and encourages troops to seek treatment. The department is working to improve access to specialty care while also educating military doctors on blast exposure.

“DOD has taken critical steps to prevent and mitigate service members’ exposures to blast overpressure, steps intended to help protect their brain health and the readiness of our country’s military forces,” the report stated.

GAO made two recommendations, saying the department should complete an assessment of the resources needed to implement the policies and take steps to ensure the services have adequate industrial hygiene staff support.

In response, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Keith Bass said the department is on its way to completing the resource assessment and has taken steps to meet the industrial hygiene staff requirements.

“DOD estimates it will complete the actions for both recommendations by December 2026,” Bass wrote.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Keith Bass’s correct title.

The change in the drills comes as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visits South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday for regional security talks expected to cover developments on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, late on Wednesday dismissed the move, saying the nature of the exercises remained provocative and aggressive even if the scale and duration had been reduced, according to a statement published by state media KCNA.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Aug. 17, will now run through Aug. 21, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Pentagon official said, instead of the original end date of Aug. 27.

South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the drills’ second phase, media said, adding that it had been expected to involve counterattack operations after an initial defensive phase.

At the suggestion of the United States, the countries agreed on partial adjustments to the duration and scope of the drills, the JCS said. Some combined field manoeuvre training would also be scaled back, although details were still being discussed.

A Department of Defense official said the department had substantially reduced the exercise and associated live-training events, with some cancelled or switched to simulations.

The changes would preserve essential readiness and training aims, with no degradation to U.S. training objectives, the official added.

The changes follow Trump’s order on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the U.S. role in the drills, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On Monday, Trump added that Kim had responded to his steps, without giving any details.

Trump’s objectives in the order appeared to be to pressure Seoul over the pace of its promised U.S. investments under a trade deal, shift attention away from U.S. challenges in Iran and reopen diplomacy with Pyongyang, one analyst said.

“Trump is trying to catch three birds with one stone here,” said Ellen Kim, senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Kim Yo Jong said she was unaware of recent communication between the two but added that Kim Jong Un held fond personal memories and feelings towards Trump.

“The relationship between the two leaders remain excellent,” KCNA quoted her as saying.

North Korea denounces drills

North Korea had earlier on Wednesday denounced the drills and said it would continue exercising its right to self-defense against what it called military threats from Washington and Seoul, KCNA said.

In a commentary, it called the United States and South Korea “warmongers” raising tension on the Korean Peninsula, but stopped short of mentioning Trump, his order or the scaling back.

North Korea’s decision to issue the commentary, rather than a statement by a senior official or a military show of force, may signal an effort to leave room for diplomacy, said Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

Trump has pushed aides to arrange an in-person meeting with Kim as soon as this autumn, the Wall Street Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

He has discussed holding talks during a possible November trip to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, the paper added.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its approach to North Korea or the military exercises.

Pyongyang routinely condemns joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises as rehearsals for invasion, while Washington and Seoul say they are defensive and necessary to ensure readiness against North Korea’s military threats.

Neither South Korean nor U.S. officials knew in advance about Trump’s order, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, President Lee Jae Myung said the Ulchi exercises were defensive and Seoul had no intention of using them to attack North Korea or heighten tension on the peninsula.

China, North Korea’s only formal treaty ally, has not commented directly on Trump’s remarks, but Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Seoul that Washington should change its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap reported.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, criticized the order that led to the release of the woman, Melissa Farris, 41, who was taken ​into custody last week and charged with two felony counts.

Court documents showed Farris agreed to conditions of her release, including surrendering her passport and not leaving the continental U.S. unless approved by court.

The Justice Department urged a reconsideration of Monday’s order and said the woman was “a risk of flight.”

The World War II Memorial was vandalized with bubbly soap and graffiti on Thursday. The fountain bubbled over with suds and the words “Clean ​hands Dirty $” were painted on one surface, splattering the area with red and green paint.

In earlier videos posted to her Facebook ​account, Farris recorded herself spray painting the memorial. She described ⁠herself on social media as a “pirate captain” who is “panhandling for America.”

In Facebook posts, Farris had said she was planning the Aug. 13 action to draw attention to U.S. tax dollars not being spent on ordinary Americans and ​to what she alleged were corporate ​racketeering, embezzlement and slave labor ⁠practices, among other issues.

A preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 3.

Pirro ​has recently drawn ⁠President Donald Trump’s anger for dropping charges against four people the Justice Department had accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool after Trump oversaw renovations of the pool.

The pool’s condition soon deteriorated, with a peeling liner and algae blooms. When dropping the vandalism charges, Pirro blamed the deterioration on faulty installation. Trump said she ​had “folded like an umbrella.”​

Hours before exercises were scheduled to begin, Trump said on his Truth Social site he was “not happy” that the U.S. had agreed to participate and highlighted his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong Un, the leader of nuclear-armed and heavily sanctioned North Korea.

“These exercises are not only costly… but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Trump wrote.

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises are scheduled to run until August 27, with about 18,000 South Korean military personnel participating.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told Reuters the drills started on Monday as scheduled.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s post and “hopes that the friendly relationship between the U.S. and North Korean leaders will lead to meaningful dialogue between the two countries, opening discussions aimed at advancing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” it said.

The allies would continue coordinating on their combined defense posture and military exercises, it said.

Responding to Trump’s claim that President Lee Jae Myung had refused to join U.S. efforts to denuclearise Iran, it said Seoul was discussing potential military contributions, while considering its defense readiness on the Korean Peninsula and domestic legal procedures.

A Pentagon spokesperson referred questions on the matter to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for details.

Up and down relationship

Trump has long sought to end or curtail military exercises with South Korea while clashing with Seoul over sharing the costs of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea and their role in securing the broader region.

North Korea, still technically at war with the South, routinely denounces the U.S.-South Korean exercises as preparations for an invasion. Pyongyang last week fired a ballistic missile from its eastern coast towards the Sea of Japan, days after a similar North Korean short-range ballistic missile launch.

“This decision may be part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity with Pyongyang, as Trump has consistently wanted since coming back to office, although the haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang,” Jenny Town, head of the Stimson Center think tank’s 38 North program, said in an email.

The relationship between Trump and Kim has been a roller coaster for years.

Trump once mocked the North Korean leader as “little rocket man” and threatened Pyongyang with “fire and fury,” while Kim boasted that he would “tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.”

Yet they also took part in three summits, with Trump declaring, “we fell in love” after exchanging letters with Kim. None of these efforts led to changes in North Korea’s nuclear weapons or ballistic missile development.

Even as Trump on Sunday spoke warmly of North Korea, he pointed to South Korea’s stance on the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran.

“While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” Trump wrote.

Exercises shift to simulations

It’s unclear how the drills could be cut back, but in recent years, they have shifted away from live-fire exercises to computer-simulated missile and cyberattacks.

Victor Cha, head of the Korea program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Trump may be seeking greater influence over North Korea as Pyongyang has been heavily engaged in support of Russia in Ukraine.

“The other way to look at this is that Trump wants to engage Kim as a way to impede the Russia-NK ties,” said Cha.

U.S. military officials have said North Korean troops, who have fought alongside Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, have gained experience from the conflict, while Ukraine said last week that North Korean-made missiles were used in a Russian ballistic missile attack on a steel plant in Zaporizhzhia.

A high-ranking U.S. Northern Command official, Lieutenant General Joseph Jarrard, last week warned that North Korea had successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles with “enough boost to deliver a nuclear payload anywhere in North America.”

Economic factors

While Trump has repeatedly called for South Korea to shoulder a bigger burden of defense costs, a U.S. official this year called Seoul a “model ally” committed to increasing defense spending in line with U.S. regional strategy.

There are also broader economic tensions.

A former U.S. official who worked in the first Trump administration told Reuters he believed Trump is “frustrated with the intransigence” of the South Korean administration in addressing economic issues.

“The Lee government has repeatedly pursued policies antagonistic to American companies and shown little interest in following through on the historic investment deal with the United States,” the official said.

The countries signed a trade deal last year to lower Trump’s auto tariffs in exchange for Seoul’s commitment to invest $350 billion. South Korea has not announced details of its investment plan.

The allies have been at odds over a dispute involving U.S.-listed e-commerce company Coupang, which is being investigated by Seoul over a massive data leak.

Last October, CNN interviewed a former advisor to ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad who told the outlet that Tice, a veteran Marine Corps captain and freelance reporter, had died in 2013. Debra Tice describes the event as a “crash” that sent her health into a tailspin. She became unable to eat, losing weight and becoming so weak she couldn’t leave the house, she said. Gastroenterologists and other physicians, she said, ultimately concluded that her symptoms were based in trauma, not disease.

Beyond the reports that her son was dead, Tice said she was blindsided by a wave of condolence cards and messages, not only to her, but also to her other six children.

“It was the first time that they had all kind of been pinged, and a lot of it was kindness,” Tice told Military Times on Aug. 14, the day after the anniversary. “But, this mom was like, ‘Don’t touch my children.’”

Tice rejects the account of Assad’s advisor, Bassam Al-Hassan, noting that he failed an FBI polygraph. No physical proof exists that Austin Tice is no longer alive.

The Tice family has in recent months called for an investigation of the possibility that Austin was moved from Syria to Iran under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has managed some secret detention facilities in Syria. They’ve emphasized that they want the U.S. to reach out to Iran amid negotiations over the ongoing conflict to ask for full information sharing on Austin’s case.

“Our government needs to be asking what they know about Austin every time they’re with them [at the negotiating table],” she said.

For Debra Tice, the next objective is clear: meet in person with Jay Clayton, the newly confirmed director of National Intelligence, who was sworn in earlier this month.

“I really don’t know anything about him, but I just wanted to share with him how important his role is in getting Austin out,” she said.

Recently departed DNI Tulsi Gabbard had taken the unprecedented step of allowing the Tice family to review all the information the government had collected on Austin – eight four-inch binders covering the period from his abduction to October 2024, she said. In addition to various documented medical issues and times Austin had been moved, Tice said, she saw what she believes is evidence that he could have been recovered by the State Department shortly after he was first abducted.

To date, Tice said, she has only ever met with one Secretary of State: Antony Blinken, who in 2024 offered a $10 million bounty for information about Austin’s whereabouts. Debra Tice maintains that decision was unhelpful because it tends to flood channels with bad info.

She’d like Clayton, the new DNI, to open the binders again and show the family anything learned since October 2024. She’s also hoping to make international trips: she’d like to connect with Israel’s office of the national coordinator for hostages and the missing, an office parallel to the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. She also hopes to make a second trip to Syria, she said, as well as a new journey to the Vatican to meet with Pope Leo XIV.

“I’m just getting everything warmed up again,” Tice said, “And reminding people that, you know, I’m still trying to find my son.”