Gary Rose was a Green Beret combat medic, and in September 1970 he went on a mission his country would not admit happened for decades. He was part of MACV-SOG, the secret unit that fought across the borders, and Operation Tailwind took him deep into Laos, into country swarming with North Vietnamese, as a diversion to pull enemy forces away from a bigger secret operation. The raiding force was tiny, about 16 Americans and 120 Montagnard tribal fighters, and Gary Rose was the only doctor any of them had.
For four days, from September 11 to 14, that little band was in almost constant combat against a vastly larger enemy, fighting and moving, fighting and moving, deeper into Laos and then back out. And for four days, Gary Rose never stopped working. Every time a man went down, he ran to him through the fire, and there were a lot of men going down. He was wounded himself early on, hit in the leg and foot, and he could barely walk, so he used a stick as a crutch and kept going from casualty to casualty. He shielded wounded men with his own body. He treated them in the open under fire. He never took time to eat, or rest, or tend to his own wounds, for four straight days.
On the way out, the extraction helicopters flew into heavy fire, and one of them was hit and crashed. Rose, wounded and exhausted, pulled men out of the wreckage and kept treating them even then. Over those four days he cared for 60 to 70 wounded men. And here is the number that matters most. Every single one of the 16 Americans on that mission came home alive. Beat up, shot up, but alive, because of the medic who would not quit.
Gary Rose was recommended for the Medal of Honor right away. But because Operation Tailwind had happened in Laos, a country the United States insisted it was not fighting in, the whole thing was classified, and his award was quietly downgraded to keep the secret. For 47 years the real story stayed buried. Finally, in 2017, once it could be told, President Trump placed the Medal of Honor around the neck of Gary Rose. He is alive today, a retired captain who went home to Alabama and worked as an engineer, an ordinary man who spent four days in a country that officially had no Americans in it, keeping sixteen of them alive.
I have undertaken this project to put a face to 9/11 by posting a photo of everyone killed that day. If after everything that happened you can vote for the ideology that brought it about it's as if you are killing them yourself! Pictured below was 44 year old Gregg Atlas who was a lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department and was last heard between the 30th and 40th floors in the North Tower. A 20 year old broker trainee Gregory Warnock from the 39th floor was going down the stairs when he came upon Atlas who was joking about his age and having to climb up so many stories with all that equipment. Warnock helped him carry part of it back up 25 floors and Atlas asked him if he was a firefighter. The trainee said he was a broker and Atlas told him to stick with that since it was better money. In his spare time he was a farmer raising cows and pigs and also raising food which he shared with his family, friends snd neighbors. He was due to turn 45 only 2 weeks after 9/11 and he left behind a wife and two children. To forget even a single one of these people is a blasphemy!
“They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.”
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