On May 12, 1970, Ardie Copas and fellow U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division soldiers were ambushed by enemy forces bearing down on them with rocket-propelled grenades and a shower of bullets. A round from a recoilless rifle struck Copas’ armored car, knocking him to the ground and wounding four nearby soldiers.
Ignoring his wounds, Copas got back on the now-burning vehicle. Copas was a machine gunner, and it was his job to provide covering fire for his comrades in battle. Enemy fighters continued opening fire on Copas with bullets and bombs, but Copas continued returning fire while American troops were evacuating their wounded comrades to safety.
Copas continued fighting until another round hit the vehicle, mortally wounding him. His comrades remembered him as a hero and he was posthumously awarded a bronze star, but the Army was hesitant to talk about what happened that day.
Though Copas had shipped out to fight in Vietnam, his last stand took place in Cambodia — a country where American troops officially weren’t fighting. As a result, much of his service file was largely redacted and his family spent decades knowing little about what had actually happened.
But in 2014, Copas was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. On Wednesday the 25th Infantry Division held a ceremony renaming a building at Schofield Barracks in his honor with members of his family, including his widow and daughter, in attendance.
Lt. Col. Kenton Barber, head of the division’s headquarters battalion, planned and gave remarks at the ceremony. He reflected on conversations he had with men who served with Copas and his own connection to the conflict. His Cambodian-born wife spent part of her childhood in a Khmer Rouge reeducation camp and came to America as a refugee.
“Almost seven years ago, I traveled to Vietnam and multiple times for Cambodia. While there, I walked the same ground Ardie and his colleagues fought upon,” Barber told attendees. “Although I could not have known back then that I’d be standing here today, this is certainly my privilege to honor Ardie and spend time with the Copas family this week.”
Copas was 19 years old when he joined the Army in 1969. Born in Tennessee and raised in the swamps of Florida, Copas married his childhood friend, Betsy, who was pregnant when he went to Vietnam. He died before his 20th birthday. His daughter, Shyrell Copas, would never meet him.
“Words are hard to find to explain the way that me and my mom feel,” Shyrell Copas said. “This happening … so many years later after his death, this very emotional (moment) brings up a lot of past feelings.”
She said that growing up her mother often found it too difficult to talk to her about her dad. “When she lost him it was very, very hard. And she could not hardly tell me anything about my dad my whole life,” she said.
Other members of her family occasionally told her stories of a larger-than-life figure who hunted alligators in the Everglades with her mom as a teenager and died a war hero saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. She found those stories hard to believe.
“I’m thinking, ‘Sure he did.’ Then why don’t I see a letter from the president?” Shyrell Copas said. It wasn’t until years later that one of her aunts gave her his medals and award citations. The parts she could read began to fill in the blanks.
The Army revisited his actions after Congress passed legislation calling on the military to review the awards of Jewish and Hispanic American service members to find any who may have been granted lesser recognition for their actions in combat as a result of prejudice from the service. Copas’ case was among them.
In March 2014, then-President Barack Obama awarded Copas the Medal of Honor and presented it to Shyrell Copas on his behalf in a ceremony at the White House.
“Since receiving the medal on his behalf, I have learned so much about him, and what he did, and I get to learn all kinds of things that … I probably would have never gotten to know,” she said.
Shyrell Copas and her mother have since gotten to meet several men her father served with, including those who were with him the day he died. It was the proof she always needed for the stories she heard. She said seeing the Army now officially recognize her father is “humbling.”
“You know, history is the good, the bad and sometimes very ugly. We can’t hide it. We’ve got to tell the truth about it,” Shyrell Copas said.
“Get those medals out of the attic, tell your kids what their family did to earn that,” she added. “Because if we don’t tell our kids, they won’t ever know.”
