Medal of Honor Monday: Major Nicholas Dockery

Editor’s Note: Today’s Medal of Honor Monday highlights Major Nicholas Dockery, whose Silver Star for actions in Afghanistan in 2012 was recently authorized by Congress for upgrade to the Medal of Honor. This piece by military historian and long-time SOFREP contributor Warren Gray recounts the battle and the actions that led to that recognition. – GDM

“(That day) was a very harrowing event. For several years, I thought about it every single day…I was the fortunate recipient of some higher-level recognition (the Silver Star medal for heroism), but those things are done with teams…In every humbling moment leading America’s finest warriors, I’ve perpetually felt the challenge of living up to the standards they so rightfully deserve.” – Major Nicholas Dockery, 2017 and 2023.

Major Nicholas Dockery, age 41, a West Point graduate, is a U.S. Army Special Forces officer, currently assigned to the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) office at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

On October 2, 2012, he was a young lieutenant, serving as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Light), in the Kapisa Province of Afghanistan, when his unit was ambushed by heavily-armed Taliban forces with rocket launchers, grenades, and machine guns at the provincial governor’s compound.

Dockery counterattacked with half of his available troops, but the Taliban insurgents pressed their attack, and Staff Sergeant Eric Mitchell, his weapons squad leader, was wounded. Meanwhile, Dockery risked his life on open ground to dart back and forth multiple times as his soldiers engaged the enemy, killing one enemy combatant and helping to rally his men and reinforce their Afghan Army allies.

Lieutenant Dockery then gathered four soldiers inside the governor’s courtyard, worked on a counterattack action, used his own body to shield another soldier from the blast of an enemy grenade, and all four soldiers in the group were wounded in the fierce attack. At this point, Dockery realized that Sergeant Jack Hansboro was missing, being dragged through a nearby alley by two Taliban fighters. Dockery charged them and killed them both, and then rendered life-saving first aid and CPR to Hansboro.

As the battle continued, Dockery climbed to the open roof of the compound to signal with smoke grenades to the helicopter gunships that would ultimately lay down suppressive fire and save the soldiers.

Lieutenant Dockery was awarded the Silver Star medal for heroism and the Purple Heart medal for his wounds as a result of the ferocious gunfight. He went on to complete Special Forces training later, and deployed to Afghanistan again, this time with the 7th Special Forces Group, incredibly earning a second Silver Star for a savage fight involving 250 Taliban insurgents, where his decisive actions as a captain ended the attack, and killed 110 enemy combatants.

He subsequently deployed to Costa Rica and Colombia, serving as aide-de-camp to the leader of the 1st Special Forces Command, and earning Colombian Army military free-fall parachute wings in the process.

Today, Major Nicholas Dockery is the only U.S. Army officer awarded two Silver Stars for valor in the post-9/11 era, and the only living military officer to have done so. He was also awarded two Purple Hearts for his combat wounds. Dockery went on to earn an exclusive White House fellowship, the Douglas MacArthur Leadership award in 2020 for top company-grade officers, and was recognized as Military Times’ Soldier of the Year in 2022. More recently, he completed Yale University’s global affairs graduate program as part of the competitive Downing Scholars program.

A very recent Congressional authorization on March 3, 2026, introduced by Senator Joni Ernst (R) of Iowa, and unanimously approved in the Senate, upgrades Major Dockery’s first Silver Star to the Medal of Honor, authorizing President Trump to present Dockery with the prestigious medal in the very near future.