HUNTSVILLE, Alabama
Unofficially, in the jungles of Laos in 1970, hundreds of North Vietnamese troops closed in on a small team of US Army commandos. Unofficially, as men were shot down, a medic sprinted through a hail of bullets to help, hefting a man over his shoulder as he fired back with one hand. Unofficially, even when bloodied by a rocket, the medic kept going, not sleeping for days as he cared for 51 wounded soldiers.
Officially, though, US troops were not in Laos. So officially, nothing happened.
The medic, Sgt. Gary Rose, was part of the secret Studies and Observations Group, an elite division of Special Forces. After the assault, the group recommended him for the military’s highest award, the Medal of Honour. But at the time, President Richard Nixon was denying that US troops were even in Laos. The nomination was shelved, an example of what veterans of the group say was a pattern of medals being denied or downgraded to hide their classified exploits.
This summer that decision is poised to be reversed. After more than a decade of lobbying, Congress authorised the medal for Rose, who now lives in Huntsville. His will be the first Medal of Honour to expressly acknowledge the heroics of a soldier on the ground in the “secret war” in Laos.
In the past, medal citations for the unit listed men only as “deep in enemy territory,” said Neil Thorne, a researcher and Army veteran who has drafted a number of medal applications in recent years for the group.
“The Army still doesn’t want to admit it,” Thorne said. “Even to this day, I put in Laos in a citation, the Army takes it out. It’s almost a game, but it’s not really funny. Rose is unique in that they finally left in the truth.”
During the Vietnam War, Laos was neutral and off-limits to foreign troops. But the North Vietnamese used the jungles on the border between Vietnam and Laos to funnel weapons along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The US secretly sent in Special Forces to disrupt the enemy while not arousing protest from allies or the US public.
Since then, veterans of the Studies and Observations Group, which had one of the highest kill rates and highest casualty rates in Vietnam, have worked to gain recognition for men like Rose.
“Because we were where we weren’t supposed to be, a lot of men never got what they deserved,” said Eugene McCarley, a retired lieutenant colonel who was the medic’s commander. “Rose is one of them. He was a damn good medic and the level of gallantry and disregard for his own safety that he showed — I’ve rarely seen anything like it.”
The group operated in Vietnam under the cover story that it was an academic unit evaluating strategy. In fact, its mission was to sow mayhem.
Small teams tapped communication lines, sabotaged convoys, snatched captives and peppered enemy territory with fake documents, counterfeit money and exploding ammunition intended to confuse, demoralise and kill communist troops.
The Special Forces teams paired with indigenous mercenaries who opposed the North Vietnamese. They relied on stealth, many using weapons fitted with silencers. A few even carried hatchets and bows.
“It was a deadly game,” said Fred Dye, a company commander. “A lot of times we got the hell shot out of us. Sometimes teams didn’t come back.”
Dye was recommended for the nation’s third-highest military honour, the Silver Star. He never got it.
To hide US involvement, teams wore Asian uniforms with no rank and often carried foreign-made weapons. Even underwear and rations were from Asian countries. They called it “going in sterile.”
Buried in history
“That’s part of the reason so many awards were never given,” said John L. Plaster, a retired major who was in the group and has written books about its deeds. “We couldn’t really say what was going on.”
Plaster was recommended for the Silver Star. He never got it. On September 11, 1970, the group launched one of its biggest missions of the war, Operation Tailwind. Helicopters dropped 136 men about 70km into Laos to “cause a huge ruckus,” Plaster said, and draw attention away from a CIA operation to the north.
According to interviews and Army documents, North Vietnamese forces hit before the team even landed, piercing the helicopters with bullets. Three were shot before any boots hit the ground.
When the choppers touched down, the team swept into the jungle to escape enemy fire. The lone medic was Rose, a soft-spoken 22 year old from Southern California wearing a floppy jungle hat and camouflage face paint that did not quite hide his nerves. It was his second real combat mission. He had been wounded on his first.
Over the next four days, the company blew up ammunition bunkers and set fire to a supply camp, chased by an ever-increasing enemy force. By the end of the operation, a third of the company was wounded.
When a soldier was shot down in a clearing raked by machine guns, others yelled to stay down until the team could set up cover fire. But Rose ran forward, firing as he went. He shielded the man to treat his wounds, then carried him to safety. “How or why Sgt. Rose was not killed in this action I’ll never know,” one platoon leader wrote in a statement at the time.
A few hours later a rocket-propelled grenade hit the command team, blowing the medic off his feet and punching shards of metal into his hand and foot. Ignoring his own wounds, he patched up the other men, stopping only later to fix his bloody boot.
That evening in the steaming forest, Rose, already exhausted, dug long foxholes so the wounded could lie under cover. “All the night the enemy pounded us,” McCarley recalled. “Rose went from position to position, offering medical help and words of encouragement. I never saw him stop to eat, rest or treat his own wounds.”
McCarley was recommended for the nation’s second-highest military honour, the Distinguished Service Cross. He never received it.
No painkillers
By the third day, Rose was all but out of morphine and bandages. He had rigged litters from bamboo for the worst off and tied the wrists of delirious men to other soldiers so they would not get left behind.
By the fourth day, when helicopters came to extract the team, enemy troops were so close that US planes dropped tear gas on their own men to drive the enemy back. Rose was one of the last on the last helicopter, firing as he hobbled aboard.
A 68-year-old grandfather, the former medic lives in a tidy one-storey brick house, and spends much of his time volunteering with poor and disabled people. On a recent morning, as he gave a tour of his church, he was more eager to talk about the congregation’s fund-raiser than about his role in a top secret commando raid.
“I just try to go through life doing as much good as I can,” he said with a shrug.
Over the decades, he has rarely thought about Operation Tailwind, he said, and is a bit embarrassed about the Medal of Honour.
“I didn’t do anything heroic,” he said. “I was just doing my job like everyone else.”
“It’s all a blur,” he continued. “I was oblivious.”
He paused, then added: “I don’t want to make it sound like I’m brave. The trembling, the throwing up, the fear, that always happened, but only after ... I was just concentrating on what I had to do. I didn’t want to let anyone down.”
—New York Times News Service
