{"id":24752,"date":"2017-09-20T19:31:01","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T19:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/09\/20\/former-sf-medic-to-receive-medal-of-honor-for-mission-long-kept-secret\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T02:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T02:09:19","slug":"former-sf-medic-to-receive-medal-of-honor-for-mission-long-kept-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2017\/09\/20\/former-sf-medic-to-receive-medal-of-honor-for-mission-long-kept-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Special Forces medic to receive Medal of Honor for mission long kept secret"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If he hadn\u2019t wanted to avoid the Marine Corps so badly, retired Capt. Gary Michael \u201dMike\u201d Rose might never have been on the secret 1970 operation that earned him the military\u2019s highest award for valor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sept. 11, 1970, a few minutes into the helicopter ride from his southeastern Vietnam base, then-Spc. Rose knew that they weren\u2019t in Vietnam anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou get on a helicopter and you fly for 45 minutes, an hour west \u2014 when you know by helicopter the border\u2019s only five minutes away \u2014 you know you\u2019re in Laos,\u201d Rose told Army Times in an Aug. 28 phone interview. \u201dIt doesn\u2019t take a genius to figure that out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What followed was Operation Tailwind, a four-day battle in support of the Royal Lao Army, creating a diversion aimed at North Vietnamese Army troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Rose didn\u2019t know that at the time, he said, because the mission was classified, and it would remain that way until the late \u201890s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of what he knows about those days, he added, he learned after 1998, when a joint report by CNN and Time magazine \u2014 which was later discredited \u2014 discussed the operation publicly for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, almost 50 years after the battle and nearly a decade since his unit\u2019s actions were brought out of the dark, the White House announced Wednesday that Rose would receive the Medal of Honor in an Oct. 23 ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Need to know\u2019<\/b>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southern California native Rose, then 20, walked into an Army recruiter\u2019s office in early 1967, he said, with a particular goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The draft board had been pulling numbers left and right in the Los Angeles area, sending pretty much all of those young men to the sea services, he recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was in the North Hollywood draft board region,\u201d he said.  \u201dI knew that they were drafting into the Marine Corps and the Navy, and those were not my two choices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His father had been drafted into the Marines during World War II, he said, and \u201dhe suggested that you don\u2019t want to be a draftee in the Marine Corps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than roll the dice, Rose decided to volunteer for the Army and head off to Fort Ord, California, to learn how to be a grunt.  Thanks to high aptitude test scores, jump school and Special Forces training followed, and by October 1968, he was a Special Forces medic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Pvt. 1st Class Gary M. Rose at Fort Benning, Georgia, in September 1967. (Photo courtesy Gary M. Rose)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He re-enlisted for the chance to pick where he wanted to go, settling on supporting the 46th Special Forces Company in Thailand, where they were training local soldiers and border police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Thailand, that sounds like a pretty good, exotic place to go.\u2019 Which, in my mind now, as I look back, was really good experience,\u201d he said. \u201cIt made me better prepared for when I went to Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a year, he called up his assignment coordinator \u2014 a woman known as Mrs. Alexander \u2014 and told her he was ready for Vietnam. She placed him with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam \u2013 Studies and Observations Group, 5th Special Forces Group, based in Kontum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose earned his first Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with \u201dV\u201d device during a June 1970 mission, but in general spent his time tending to local Vietnamese and providing back-up for others\u2019 missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sgt. Gary Michael Rose in Kontum, Vietnam, 1970. (Photo courtesy Gary M. Rose)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In mid-September, he got a second mission briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn those days \u2014 and I\u2019m sure it\u2019s true today \u2014 you\u2019re only told what you need to know to be able to prepare and go out and do your job on that mission,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I was told that we were going to an area to create a diversion for another operation that was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What he did realize, though, was that it was going to be ugly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI noted that all the guys that I was going with, including [allied fighters from the indigenous Vietnamese] Montagnards, were loading up with a lot more ammunition than they normally did,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m fairly intelligent, and I deduced that if you normally go in with 200 rounds and you\u2019re going in with four, something\u2019s probably going to be up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once they crossed the border, he said, he can vividly remember the popcorn-popping sound of rounds hitting the helicopter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the battle narrative, Rose and a company-sized element were dropped 70 kilometers into NVA-controlled Laos. Casualties came quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the wounded was trapped outside the company defensive perimeter,\u201d the narrative reads. \u201cSgt. Rose, engaging the enemy, rushed to get the wounded Soldier. Sgt. Rose rendered expert medical treatment and stabilized the wounded Soldier, and carried the man through the heavy gunfire back to the company defensive area.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company pushed deeper into Laos, and Rose treated each casualty along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fire becoming so intense, Sgt. Rose had to crawl from position to position to treat the wounded,\u201d according to the narrative. \u201dAs he moved, Sgt. Rose gave words of encouragement and directed the fires of the inexperienced and terrified Vietnamese and Montagnard troops.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was first wounded on Sept. 12, day two. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded as he was dragging a wounded soldier, spraying shrapnel into his back and leg and crippling his foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He used a stick as a crutch for the next two days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI suspect what was going through my head was trying to take care of the wounded,\u201d Rose said. \u201cWe were just busy. I had two that were split from the hip to the knee, down to the femur. I made sure they were breathing, no shock, then stop the bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point, a medevac tried to land to take away the wounded, but enemy fire was so intense that it had to back off. But it quickly succumbed to damage, crashing a few miles away, where the crew were safely recovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t frantic,\u201d Rose said. \u201cBy the time I got there, I\u2019d been three years in the Army, and I\u2019d been trained, trained, trained, trained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With over half of the company wounded, Rose lashed together bamboo to make litters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDespite his own painful and debilitating wounds, Sgt. Rose never took time to eat, rest, or care for his own wounds while caring for his fellow Soldiers,\u201d the narrative said.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the last night, with the company surrounded, Rose dug trenches and moved from casualty to casualty to treat wounds. The next morning, they learned that 500 North Vietnamese were closing in on their position, and helicopters were on the way to extract them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe NVA, close on the heels of the company at the landing zone, causing even more casualties among the allied personnel,\u201d the narrative reads. \u201cSgt. Rose moved under the intense enemy fire of the assaulting NVA, completely exposing himself, to retrieve the allied dead and wounded, and return them to the company defensive perimeter.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He boarded the last helicopter out, but before settling in for the trip home, treated the wounds of the helicopter\u2019s Marine door gunner, who had taken fire during the extraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minutes later, the helicopter crashed, smoking and leaking fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSgt. Rose, knowing the helicopter could explode at any moment, worked quickly while ignoring his own injuries, to pull wounded and unconscious men from the wreckage, saving lives,\u201d according to the narrative. \u201dMoving the wounded and unconscious men a safe distance away from the smoldering wreckage, Sgt. Rose continued to professionally administer medical treatment to the injured personnel.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second helicopter came to retrieve them, but Rose doesn\u2019t remember getting on it, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you sit down and you start talking about these things, you cause people to have little memories, vignettes, little visions,\u201d Rose said. \u201cThe one thing that we\u2019re all agreed upon is that starting with the crash, none of us were operating on all cylinders. It\u2019s such a blur.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All told, according to the battle narrative, only three men died during the four-day onslaught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to work<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose\u2019s memory picks up again back at Doc To, he said, where he grabbed a shower and a change of clothes before seeing a surgeon to get the shrapnel removed from his foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he had some chow and a couple beers, took a picture for posterity, and debriefed with the group\u2019s intelligence shop before sacking out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got up the next morning, put my uniform on and went back to the dispensary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after, he was meant to go to the field, but his platoon leader held him back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Why, sir?\u201d Rose recalled. \u201cAnd he said, because you\u2019re being put in for an award and we don\u2019t want you in the field right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t know at the time, but he had been nominated for the Medal of Honor. It was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross<\/a>, which he received in January 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sgt. Gary M. Rose (third from left) and members of Operation Tailwind, Sept. 15, 1970, the morning after the operation. (Photo courtesy Gary M. Rose)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Three months later, he was back home and at the Army\u2019s Spanish language school in Washington, D.C., preparing for a tour with 8th Special Forces Group in Panama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at that point, he said, that he decided to go to Officer Candidate School, because extending his contract with the Army would allow him to bring his new wife, Margaret, with him to Central America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose became an artillery officer in December 1972, where he spent the last 15 of his 20 years in the Army. After retiring in 1987, he moved on to the manufacturing industry, where he wrote manuals and designed training programs, settling in Huntsville, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, his time in Laos, which had been dubbed Operation Tailwind, became front page news. In 1998, a joint venture by CNN and Time described the mission as a raid on a Laotian village to kill American defectors holed up there, and alleged U.S. troops used sarin gas on civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Defense Department pushed back on the claims and CNN retracted the story. But in the aftermath, soldiers who had been a part of the now-declassified mission began pushing for recognition of their brothers\u2019 heroism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2013, he said, Rose got a call from retired Col. Eugene McCarley, who\u2019d been company commander back in 1971. He said a guy named Neil Thorne, who worked with veterans of the MACV-SOG, wanted to put in a packet to upgrade his DSC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe worked on it for over four years,\u201d Rose said. \u201cEvery time he would call for information, I would give it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter approved the award, and Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, wrote Rose\u2019s name into the National Defense Authorization Act, waiving the requirement that the Medal of Honor be awarded within five years of the designated action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the same piece of legislation that opened the door to the Medal of Honor for former Spc. Jim McCloughan, who received his award on July 31, more than 48 years after the fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\t