Rank, duty position and unit at time of action:
Lieutenant, US Navy, Chaplain, 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division
War:
Vietnam War
Place and date of action:
Quang Tin Province, Republic of Vietnam, 4 September 1967
Portrayed by:
In the film:
Called and Chosen: Father Vincent R. Capodanno was a
low-profile, understated film biography produced for the Roman
Catholic Church's Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of Father Capodanno's death.
This is a mixed-format film with dramatizations of Father
Capodanno's life (with his also being portrayed as a child in
Staten Island, New York City by Damien Ferreira) intermixed with
interviews and commentary from relatives, seminary classmates
and other clergy with whom he worked, and Marine and Navy
veterans who served with him. (This film does not fall under the
same category as The Conscientious Objector, a straight
documentary about Medal of Honor recipient Desmond
T. Doss, which was a forerunner to the dramatic film Hacksaw Ridge; prior to the
filming of Hacksaw Ridge, a visitor to this website
attempted to take the authors to task because we "failed to
mention Desmond Doss", to which we replied, "We don't do
straight documentaries!") The film covers Father Capodanno's
birth into an Italian immigrant family, the death of his father
in a workplace accident and being raised from the age of ten
onward by a single mother, his calling to the Priesthood while a
high school student, attending the Maryknoll Missionary
Seminary, and his Ordination to become a missionary to the Far
East, first in Taiwan and then in Hong Kong in the late 1950s to
mid 1960s.
It was while in Hong Kong that Father Capodanno got his first
substantial exposure to the US Navy, visiting several ships
making port calls while enroute to and from Vietnam in the early
days of the war and being invited by their chaplains to
celebrate Mass on board. His growing familiarity with the Navy
gave him a new calling to apply not just for a Chaplain's
commission in the Navy at the end of his Missionary assignment,
but to specifically request assignment to a Marine Corps
infantry unit in Vietnam. His request was granted both by the
Catholic Church and the Navy, and after training he was assigned
in April 1966 as the battalion chaplain to 1st Battalion 7th
Marine Regiment in April 1966 (coincidentally the same battalion
with which John Basilone earned his
Medal of Honor at Guadalcanal in World War II). His insistence
on accompanying the line companies and platoons into combat
rather than staying in the Battalion Headquarters area quickly
earned him the nickname "The Grunt Padre" ("Grunt" being the
popular slang in both the Marine Corps and the Army for an
infantryman), and he found himself not just popular with the
Catholic members of the units, but with many non-Catholics
attending his Masses both in the field and in the Battalion
Area. After completing his first tour of duty, he volunteered
for an extension and was granted one, following a month's leave
during which he found to his dismay that a number of his
relatives and Seminary classmates no longer supported the war.
His response to them was that it was not a question about
whether he was for or against the war, but where he was needed.
Father Capodanno's assignment for his second tour in Vietnam was with the 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment. On the morning of 4 September 1967, the 3rd Battalion received word that elements of the 1st Battalion were nearly surrounded and under attack by a much larger North Vietnamese Army force, and the 3rd Battalion was ordered to reinforce 1st Battalion with two companies. Continuing his practice of accompanying the lead units in his battalion, Father Capodanno went with Company M, which soon found itself also under heavy attack. As with most of the films on this website, little more needs to be said beyond the above citation, after Father Capodanno learned that the 2nd Platoon of Company M had suffered severe casualties and was about to be overrun. Even though EWTN ran a Viewers' Discretion advisory before each airing of the film, the action for which Father Capodanno received his posthumous Medal of Honor was appropriately and dramatically depicted with much less blood and gore than that of today's typical war movies.
Father Capodanno is currently designated a Servant of God by
the Catholic Church, following the opening of his Cause for
Canonization in 2002, the first step toward Sainthood in the
Church.