 Today, we are honored by the presence of retired U.S. Army Captain Gary Michael Mike Rose who is joined by a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Eugene McCarly. They will discuss the events surrounding Captain Rose's military acts of heroism while serving as a combat medic with the 5th Special Forces Group Airborne from September 11th through the 14th in 1970. While his unit was engaged with a numerically superior force deep in enemy controlled territory, Captain Rose exposed himself to enemy fire numerous times to provide medical aid to his comrades using his own body to shield a wounded American from harm. On the final day of the mission, although severely wounded himself, Captain Rose volunteered to board the last extraction helicopter. Shortly after liftoff, the helicopter was hit by enemy anti-aircraft. Captain Rose rendered life-saving medical treatment to save a wounded Marine before the helicopter crashed. Ignoring his own injuries, Captain Rose pulled the people from the burning helicopter and provided medical aid until help arrived. Captain Rose is credited with treating more than 60 wounded personnel and saving many lives. For his conspicuous gallantry, the President will present the Medal of Honor to Captain Rose in a White House ceremony on Monday, October 23rd, and then he will be inducted to the Pentagon Hall of Heroes on October 24th. Captain Rose's name will be added to the distinguished roster in the Defense Department's Hall of Heroes, the permanent display of record for all recipients of the Medal of Honor. Now, Captain Rose will provide an opening statement, followed by brief introductions and statements from Lieutenant Colonel McCarley. Well, thank you all for coming this morning. I would like to start off by saying that, coupled with the Presidential Unit citation that Max Augg received about 15 years ago and this medal which I consider a collective medal for all of us that fought both on the ground and the Air Force and the Marines. On Operation Tailwind, in a greater sense it also honors the men of 5th Special Forces that fought during that time frame and Max Augg as a whole during the time frame that that unit was in active duty. And in a greater sense I think it points to the valor and the courage of the men and women who served during Vietnam and they served with honor and pride. And they also, the ones that I know personally, all returned home and continued on to serve this country in various capacities such as the ministry, religious ministries, police officers, nurses, doctors, so on. And I consider it a privilege to be counted amongst them. Thank you, Colonel. Thank you for coming this morning. It's indeed a great pleasure to sit here next to Mike. I can't think of an individual more deserving of this award, but it's also a pleasure for me to have served with Mike and the other 15 guys with me on Operation Tailwind. I'm proud of them and because of my association with them I feel like I'm a much better man on a citizen today. I'm proud of our service, I'm proud of what we did and we did it for the love of our country and for patriotism. And again, thank you for being here and I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. Thank you. Hi, Mike, I'm Megan Myers from Army Times. Nice to talk to you again. So, since, between the time that this, the story went public, you know, over a decade ago and the time that happened, how many times would you say that you had told that story to anybody? Was that something that you ever talked about? Zero. And never with anybody that you, you know, kept up within those years or? Ma'am, when we left MaxAug, which was a top secret organization, basically the unit did not exist and it was not acknowledged for some almost 30 years. So, when you left MaxAug, you signed all these paperwork that, you know, you read this thing, they put it in front of you, some intel officer and, you know, it says that under penalty of 500 years in prison and $40 million fine and so on and so forth, they're going to bury you under 40 feet of concrete if you even divulge anything. So, I just determined, well, if anybody asked me, I was going to be a male clerk during the Vietnam War, so keep myself out of trouble. But the other thing is, the mentality of the way people in the Fifth or Special Forces are is you do a mission like that. The next day you get debrief, you have the afternoon off, you get up the next morning and I went back to working in a dispensary like business as usual. Anything to add to that, Kirk? I think Mike pretty well summed it up. After the operation and I came home, I forgot about it and nothing really surfaced until about 1998. It became more and more in the news and popular. But as far as discussing it, even among the individuals, and I've remained real close with the guys that served with me on end table. And we never really discussed it other than just laugh about some of the things that happened. My follow-up is for you. What made you want to get involved and take on this upgrade for him? This metal upgrade. Well, I had the honor to serve with about five or six of the other Medal of Honor recipients in Special Forces. Mike is going to be the 19th. I've been fortunate enough to know and be friends with about ten of them. And like I say, I actually served with five or six of them. They even went on operations with me. And the actions that Mike performed on Operation Tailwind, you just can't imagine it. You can't put it in the words. You can't describe it. But I can't think of anyone any more deserving than Mike to receive this award. It's an effort that we pushed and we fought for for many, many years. And finally it looks like it's coming to pass. Yes, ma'am. After living in such secrecy for so long, how does it feel to have it be so public? Well, I'll be honest with you. I think the colonel will agree. In some respects, I wish it was still secret. Well, I'm not used to notoriety. My thing after I retired from working is I'm involved with a lot of great people. And most of them, I might say, are veterans, both men and women. And I'm involved with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and Purple Heart and the Knights of Columbus. And we try to, we have an attitude that we can't fix the nation, we can't fix the state. We can't even fix our city, but we can fix our neighborhood, our community. And so we can actually go out and go out and do something that day. And at the end of the day, we can actually see something physically that we've accomplished that just a little bit made that portion of our city a little better. So you're used to being that quiet warrior who works in the background, and that's sort of how it was in 1970 when this happened. You married your wife the next year. Was she someone you knew when this happened? Tell us about your life at that juncture. Well, I can tell you how I met my wife, if you're that interested. I got back on a Saturday and about Sunday, my mother started on my case about calling this young lady a friend of hers. It was a friend of my mother's who lived upstairs and her best friend had a sister. So about Wednesday, just to get my mother off my back, if you would. And I don't know if your mother's, and you have an adult child, mothers never seem to think of you in terms of not being your mother. And so they know best. I guess mother knows best. So I called her and I talked to her. I thought, okay, 10 minutes, I'm out of here. Well, the conversation lasted about an hour. I asked her on a date, and 89 days later we were married and we've been married for going on 47 years. And I might add that Margaret Mary Cotsman Rose is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Yes, ma'am. Can you talk about Claudio Starr's insurance? Can you talk about the emotions that you're feeling ahead of this ceremony on Monday? What's going through your mind? Well, actually, what I'm kind of, there are, you know, two things, I guess. One, man, it's not every day a person gets to meet the President of the United States. I mean, that in itself is to be in the same room with that person is just an incredible honor and privilege. But the other thing too is I get to see people that I don't get to see very often and in some cases we haven't seen in decades. I've stayed in communication with them, but because of the distances between where we live and the country, it's very difficult. So, and they're all coming here by Sunday. And my wife and I are going to have the privilege of being able to see these friends that date back some 40, 50 years. So that's the great, the two great things about it. A follow-up, what's been the reaction among your family and friends as you're getting reunited with these folks? My wife's excited about, Margaret is very excited about seeing some of the friends we haven't seen in a while. My, for my children, I get the idea that they're kind of pretty proud of their dad. And my grandson, he's just so excited about being able to meet Mr. Trump. Can you describe in your recount of what happened, the gunner who was ahead of the injury that should have been more of his throat? Is he someone who you will be reconnecting with this week? The Army traced him down and unfortunately the gentleman passed away in 2012. But the thing I take great pride in is the fact that if you had seen him on that day, you would have not thought that he would have made it. I mean, the whole front of his neck was just, he was a bloody mess and he was in bad shape, really bad shape. And the fact that he lived all the way to 2012, that just gives me a really great sense of accomplishment that I give credit to the people that trained me that I was able to do something to, in spite of his injuries, to keep him so he could go home. I'd like to add something to that. Mike saved this guy's life. The man should have died in that helicopter. But I had the opportunity and I think it was in 1973 or 1974, a few years after Mike worked on him. And I had the opportunity to meet him at a Marine base with some of his other friends who participated in the operation with us and had a couple of drinks with him and the only visible signs, or the only signs that you could tell he had ever been shot, he had two scars under each earlobe about the size of a half a dollar. It had not affected any movement or anything in his neck, any speech or anything. It was if it had never happened, it was more like a tattoo than a scar, but he had very distinctive scars, like I say, about a half a dollar. So, Mike did a miraculous job. I don't know how any licensed doctor could have done any more or done a better job than Mike did. Hi, Louie Martinez with ABC News. You spoke about your training as a medic. Can you describe how it was that you chose that career path or was it chosen for you? And knowing that this was a conflict, a major conflict area, did you have any concerns when you went into this field, knowing that because you're going to be treating a lot of wounded that you might be exposing yourself to a lot of fire in certain cases? Well, what happens is that during that time frame they had Special Forces recruiters at most training bases and I don't know if you take these tests at the beginning. So, these recruiters would get ahold of your scores and they'd go through them. And you get called out of a formation and you get talked to about this or that or whatever. I got sent down with about three other guys from my AIT infantry at Fort Gordon, talked to this guy, somebody, I don't know, a guy walks in with a green beret. I didn't know nothing about green berets or Special Forces. And he talked to us and he says, we're going to have you guys take a test to see if you're qualified to go on to further training. And you have to understand back in those days, when you are a private in the Army, you never saw NCOs or officers unless something really bad or really good happened. A spec four was gone. If he told you to jump on the way up, you asked how high. So this is some, I believe he was a master sergeant. So if a master sergeant tells you you're going to take a test, you're going to take a test. And you better do the best how you can. So I took the test and when I got toward the end of AIT infantry, I had orders for jump school in Fort Bragg to go to Special Forces training. I get to Fort Bragg, you take another battery test and they said, well, we think you'd be best suited to be a medic. And you say, okay, so you do it. This is the 60s, you know. So as far as the interpretation about going into combat or that, which I guess you alluded to, that probably never entered my head. And I suspect that for most of us, even if you were trained for infantry or whatever, it probably doesn't enter your head until that point in time frame where you actually have to step up into a helicopter and you're going into a hot landing zone. It's probably the first time in your life that you, oh, this might be serious. Or there could be some catastrophic consequences. Any other feelings on that? Pretty well covered. Given that you have such a long experience there, how would you rate this incident actually with others that you had? Were there others of similar intensity that were not being recognized, of course, but I mean, are there other situations that... Well, I had been on operations before and after, but that one I knew something was up because the first sergeant there came by and said, make sure you pack extra this and that, and then you watch the guys with you. Even though you don't know what's really going on, because you're only told what you need to know to do your job. So when you guys see guys doubling up on their ammunition, you know something's up. So we never carried that much ammunition before or afterwards, but boy, we were carrying heavy loads of ammunition, extra machine gun, extra grenades, God, everything else. So I knew something was going up. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. To add to that, we were going into an area that the American troops had never been in before. There was absolutely no intelligence. So we didn't know what we were going to encounter. So we, like Mike said, we went extra heavy. We carried a lot of extra ammunition, a lot of extra demolitions, and fortunately Mike carried a lot of extra medical supplies because he put them to good use, and I think he used just about everything he had. I know we used all of our ammunition and everything we had. Hadn't we not come out the day we were extracted? And we probably would have never left the area. It was that serious. I think when I got to that marine, I was down to shirt sleeves and bandanas. I think this young lady here. Three Jacks, what's next on broadcasting? Now you talked about being in that high intensity situation, and from the best of your luck, you can recall. Can you just describe how you handled that, how you remained calm and were able to administer help to others? The way you maintained calmness in that situation is the fact that what the military does is put you through extensive training, and you train, and you train, and you train, and you train. Now this was not my first go-around. I had been in a mission that with the Colonel and Lieutenant Brown, I think. Yeah, yeah, Brown. And earlier, and I got through that one, and then so I had been under fire at this, but you focus on what your job is. It's the same way with the other guys. I wasn't concerned with what the NBA were doing, because that wasn't my focus. I knew that the other guys were going to take care of the perimeter. My job was to focus on the individuals that were hurt. And when you focus in those kind of circumstances, you don't concern yourself about getting hurt or killed, because if you dwell on that or think about that, you're not going to be able to focus on what you're supposed to be doing, and you probably will get hurt or killed. So you just got to do your job and just keep on moving down the road. And now you got to understand, that's a 70-year-old man looking at what I think a 21-year-old did 50 years ago. If you'd asked me back then, my answer would be, I have no clue. Anyone else? When Operation Tailwind was declassified, what was the conversation like with friends and family when they found out that you had been involved? A lot of people were surprised. At the time, you just told people what the report had been reported, that it didn't happen, and that was it. So you just said to them, what was in that, what you saw on TV, that's not really what happened? That's basically it. And then as details came out and you were able to talk about it, what did you say to your wife, what did you say to your kids? Well, Margaret will actually tell you that until we went to the Special Forces Association and we're sitting down with the colonel here, Bernie Bright, and first Sergeant Adair, she will tell you until last June, she'd never even really heard me talk about it. So we might... I mean, it just wasn't something we talked about. She was an Army wife for a long time. She knew better than to ask you lots of questions. I don't know if you'd have to ask that question, because I can tell you right now, I'm not answering for Margaret Mary Rose. I am not answering for that lady, no. Another question. So you retired from the Army eventually. You had a whole other career after this as an artillery officer. How did that experience in the Army compare to this really intense beginning of your career? And what was it like carrying that around and being around other Vietnam veterans all the time or being able to talk about it? Well, if you're not supposed to talk about something, you gave your word that you would not talk about it. So you don't. So you don't think about it. So it's not an issue. I just can't give you a better answer than that. You kind of... We're professional soldiers, right, sir? That's right. And they said, this is what you're going to do and this is what you're not going to do. And so you've raised your hand and you took an oath. And that's what you do. It's called service to your country and following the orders and those appointed above you. It was something that we just didn't talk about. I mean, to us, as professionals, it was a job. And even among the Special Forces friends, we didn't really discuss that and go into details because they were out doing things just as crazy and just as dangerous, just as exciting if you want to phrase it like that. And I don't... I didn't try to forget it, but I just never really talked about it. When I came back, it wasn't until 30 years later that my children didn't actually know what went on. They knew something went on and knew that I was in combat and I'd been shot a couple of times. But as far as any details on the operation, it was something we just never talked about. How did that experience of being... not just this, but being a Special Forces medic in Vietnam, how did that inform your career as an officer for all those years afterward? Well, it's different because you're field artillery, so you're dealing with stuff that weighs a lot. I might add that I would say today, I think if you were to ask a young person or a senior officer like Colonel here about... and I don't mean to pull you into this, ma'am, but what I'm trying to say is if you were to ask somebody the same question today that's on active duty, they would probably just give you the same answer we did. If they were involved... I know if this Colonel was involved in something that was classified and was told not to talk about, she's never going to bring it up to her husband or her children or her mother or father because she's a professional soldier and that's what she's taken an oath to do. And it's called service to your country and service to your country means you abide by the rules. We are a country of the rule of law and that's what you should be doing. Just a quick question. What is it like for the two of you to be sitting side by side now, almost 50 years later? Happy? We're alive? Well, Mike and I, we've remained friends for a lot of years so sitting next to him is nothing new. It's an honor and a privilege to be here with him today knowing he is going to be the recipient of the Medal of Honor. I would also like to say that this gentleman, he's been giving me a lot of credit, but this guy here during those four days, he was controlling fighter aircraft, trying to bring in heavy-lift marine helicopters and cobras. He's also directing the ground operations at the same time and he would still come by along periodically with the first sergeant just to check on every one of us to see how we're doing. I mean, come by and just say, hey, how's things going? And probably, regardless of what the answer we gave him, we probably knew there wasn't much he could really do to help us because the way the resources were, but just the fact that the man came by and you knew he was coming by just to boost your morale a little bit, that's the kind of man he was, and he is. And I consider it a privilege, a great privilege, to count myself amongst one of his friends. Did you know at the time that he was going to receive the Distinguished Service Cross and that his nomination had been downgraded and what was your reaction to that? I think that's your question. Yeah, that is your question. I was terribly disappointed to be honest, but that's just the way the system works and we accepted it as it was and just tried to live with it as best we could. And when did you get the idea that, ooh, maybe now we can go back and try to rectify this? Well, we've been fighting for it for 47 years. I mean, the fight never stopped. We would lose ground and then we'd gain ground and it was just a constant fight through all the years and fortunately we had contact and had a lot of help from Senator Sessions and other high-ranking VIPs that helped us and showed us the ropes. I mean, we were sort of stumbling around in the dark. We didn't know who to go to so we got an awful lot of help from Senator Sessions and some of the others. I can't name names and I don't want to leave anybody out. I'm really thankful for all of the help we got and we certainly got a lot of excellent help in pushing this award through. Representative Brooks in the House. And I also would like to, I think it's Behoogs, both of us, too. Unfortunately, the one man who was really pushing for this passed away about four years ago and that was Colonel Sadler, was the Mack Saw commander at the time and he called in a lot of Chip to get us out because I've found out recently that on that fourth day on that extraction point that they were only, excuse me, they were only going to take out the wounded and fortunately the Colonel here was talking to the A1E Spad pilot, Tom Stump and Stump told him, if you don't get them out all now, they're not getting out. We weren't supposed to come out. We didn't know that but we weren't given much chance for survival and real definite plans to extract us were never in the making until Colonel Sadler stepped in and said, these men have got to come out and I need your helicopters. So you're continuing to learn details of your mission even up till now. Is that the case? I didn't hear you. You're still continuing to learn details of Operation Tailwind. They're still coming out even for you who are part of it. I can't speak to everybody but I can tell you that every time I have a conversation and we start, you know, talking to people and some of the people have done extensive research and gone through all of the stuff. Yes, that is very true. There are a lot of things that I have learned almost constantly about it that I didn't know before. I think this gentleman has a question. I'm back with WVTM 13 in Birmingham, Alabama. I brought out Jeff Sessions and Mo Brooks. They're from Alabama. How, again, describe their role in this process and how crucial they were to helping you achieve this recognition? Actually, the gentleman that you really should be asking that question would be Mr. Neil Thorn who is a gentleman who has... How many? I'm not God. He has gotten recognition for some 70 individuals or helped God from the Korean War and Vietnam and even currently with some of the fellas over the last 15 years. Maybe the current... Neil has become an expert on awards and decorations and he is, like Mike said, he is very instrumental in getting individuals awards upgraded that went through them for whatever reasons their citations were never awarded. The citations they were submitted for were downgraded to a lesser level just like Mike was downgraded from the Distinguished Service Cross. He received the Service Cross in lieu of the Medal of Honor that was downgraded. Neil has taken it upon himself to help some of these individuals and he is very, very instrumental and he was the one that contacted some sessions and these brooks and some of these others. Neil is the man that deserves the credit and he can give you any information you need as far as what took place in how he did it. He was a real workhorse in making this a successful endeavor. And I might add that Neil is a National Guardsman or was and he is... I think he currently... He works for FEMA and so I don't know where he might be in Puerto Rico, he might be in Texas but he's up to his neck in FEMA operations right now. Yeah, he's a... But there are a lot of people that have been involved in that and so I even suspect that there's a lot of people that we don't even know their names that have pushed this along over the years in the background. So it's been a... What's great about it is there's a lot of people in the Department of Defense and other agencies have, I guess like Congress I guess, that have seen that people this country needs to recognize these veterans for the service that they did and the recognition didn't come at the time and unfortunately as time marches on some of this recognition comes... It comes too late for the individual but it does come to the family so that's... We cannot forget these men and women who have served this country so loyally and very quietly and have continued to just get out of the service and become and were and are good citizens and they do all they can to make the world a little better place every morning, every day. Any other questions? This is easier than I thought. I'll ask you for some of the battle buddies that are going to be at the White House with you on Monday. Can we not use it? There are 16 of us involved on Tailwind two have since passed away two have passed away two we cannot locate and haven't had any contact with them since about 2000 but there's 12 still alive and I managed to run them down and contact them in all 12 and in those 12 that's Mike and myself said the other 10 will be with us sometime between now and Monday that's from the ones that were on the ground with us and in addition to that we have Air Force pilots and Marine pilots who support us and all we're going to have about 25 individuals here who participated in Tailwind one way or another. You said 12 were going to be there on Monday? Yes. Including the two of you. Those two, yes. And don't forget that those Air Force pilots like Tom Stump he was I don't know how close to the ground he came when he came in on that one of that final run to break up that charge that we were facing because there were only 35 of us left on the ground and we were probably down to about maybe 50 rounds between the two of us at that time he came in so close I would when he turned his head and I looked up I could actually I couldn't read his name but I could see the lettering on his helmet that's how low he was when he was coming in You could almost tell whether he shaved that morning he came in right on top of us and the ground fire from the anti-aircraft was just horrendous at that time the Marines were taking a pounding there and I was told later the green-brown crews weren't telling the pilots but when the cobers were returning to refuel and refit and go back out the ground crews were covering the holes up with 100-mile-hour tape and spray-painting the tape so the pilots when they got back in they didn't see all the holes in their ship I'd like to tell you a little story about Tom we were at and I don't remember what day but we were really getting pounded heavy and I was communicating by radio with Tom who was in there flying over us and calling in ordinance and I kept saying bring it in closer bring it in closer bringing in 10 meters and Tom said that's getting mighty close and I said you still got to come in closer I said put it in my hip pocket and he says I'm coming in hot which pocket, right or left and I I didn't hear that conversation but I can tell you when he came over I don't know if you know how in A1 dispenses its brass but that brass just fell all around us I don't know how no one got hurt but at first I thought he had messed and was strafing us but it was the brass from the 50 caliber was falling in on us you know that's pretty good side stuff and probably a couple hundred miles an hour it probably would hurt it's red hot also when you hit you if it was night you could probably see it hit the ground it would be glowing have either of you returned to Southeast Asia since your deployments no I haven't what was that question have you been back to Vietnam? no I would like to go back but the way the political situation is I could not go into I worked with the mountain yards for three years and I would like to go out into the areas where the mountain yards were and since then the mountain yards haven't been moved into Cambodia there's probably very few mountain yards remaining in Vietnam I would love to go back but now my legs would not allow me to go before we close gentlemen thank you for sharing your story any final thoughts? I would just like to repeat what I said initially that the Vietnam Air veteran I think with this medal and the Presidential Unit Citation regardless of what capacity you served in and what service you were in it honors what they have done because they did a great job they were asked to do a very difficult thing and they did it and they fought hard and unfortunately didn't come home and I think we this is a way to honor all their memories is by honoring those of us that are left so we kind of stand up for them and be a focal point on that honor tailing to me was it was just one of many assignments I had doing my three years in Vietnam the guys that went with them we were proud professionals a member of our brotherhood and I think we served our country well we did it for the love of our country because we believe in America and and I'm saying that in all honesty for all of the 15 men who were with me we all believed in what we were fighting for and serving our country and I don't know any better way to put it we were just proud professionals doing what we were supposed to do we weren't out seeking medals nobody thought about medals we just thought about accomplishing what we had been asked to do once again gentlemen thank you for sharing your story this ends our media round table stand by while our guests exit