Retired Army Capt. Gary Michael Rose speaks Friday at the Athens Rotary Club. Rose was presented the Medal of Honor from President Donald Trump at a White House ceremony Oct. 23, 2017.

Retired Army Capt. Gary Michael Rose wore his Medal of Honor with pride Friday as he addressed the Athens Rotary Club.

The Watertown, New York, native and Huntsville resident received the honor from President Donald Trump in October 2017. During that presentation, Trump lavished praise on the Vietnam veteran who valiantly rescued his comrades on Sept. 11, 1970.

Rose could have retold the story Friday, but he had other things on his mind. His most pressing concern is caring for those soldiers who are now coming home and may be exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rose’s family has a tragic personal connection to the mental illness.

“I lost my son-in-law almost three years ago to PTSD,” he said, adding his son-in-law was an active-duty staff sergeant in the Marine Corps. “One of the things I have learned is that there is a tsunami of distress and heartache that affects the children, spouse, parents and the law.”

Rose urged those in attendance to encourage service members suffering PTSD to seek professional help at all costs.

“I guarantee you would rather have someone mad at you than think you didn’t push hard enough and the person ended up taking their life or wasted it through drugs or alcohol,” he said.

Rose, a member of the Knights of Columbus in Huntsville, explained he and the organization have been proactive about bringing awareness to PTSD and moral injury, another form of PTSD. He explained a mother was interviewed about her son, who was stationed in Fallujah, Iraq. The soldier kicked open a door to find a member of the Taliban, who lowered his weapon to fire.

“Her son beat him to the trigger and took the man out,” Rose said. “The Taliban was using a 12-year-old girl as a shield. Her son not only killed the Taliban, but he also killed the girl.”

He explained the young soldier, traumatized by the incident, spent the next eight or nine years in and out of drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

PTSD isn’t common to only those serving in battle, however. Rose said soldiers serving in stressful positions in remote areas may also be affected.

“That is the kind of thing we’re dealing with these young people,” Rose said. “With moral injury and PTSD, no two people are alike. There’s no common thread, and that’s one of the difficulties we have (in diagnosing it).”

Talking Vietnam

Rose wasn’t the only Vietnam veteran in attendance at Friday’s Rotary Club meeting. There were at least three others.

“To all the Vietnam veterans, I want to say welcome home, brothers. Welcome home,” Rose told them.

And while he didn’t discuss his acts of heroism or the tragedies he witnessed, he did share a funny anecdote or two about his time in Vietnam.

Rose recalled the time a colonel came to him about a rat problem in a bunker.

“There were no cats because I think the rats ate them all,” he said.

In an effort to eradicate the rats, Rose purchased 50 to 60 pythons, believing they would take care of the rats. That compounded the problem, Rose said, because his fellow special forces troops only feared two things — rats and snakes.

A group of soldiers who did love the rats, however, were the Montagnards, a group of Vietnamese soldiers who fought alongside U.S. special forces and Green Berets. Rose said they would have a “rat fry” every Friday.

“I love those folks, but I wasn’t thrilled by their culinary culture,” he said.

Rose eventually purchased a number of traps, which resulted in dozens of rats being caught the first night. He set the traps again the next morning, but the traps soon went missing.

“I couldn’t find them anywhere. I also didn’t find any snakes or rats,” Rose said. “Once the (Montagnards) found out they worked so well, they were placing them everywhere on the compound. … But the amount of available stew. Not only could you have firsts, but you could also have seconds and thirds.”

Another Vietnam anecdote Rose shared was more recent. He said he was talking to a group of fourth- and fifth-grade students when one of them raised his hand to ask a question.

“The young boy looked at me, serious as a heart attack and said, ‘I have an ancestor who was in the Vietnam War,’” said Rose, who still laughed about being likened to someone born hundreds of years ago. “For the life of me, I can’t remember what his question was.”

Medal of Honor

Rose, a member of the 5th Special Forces Group, was the only medic for 136 men who embarked on a mission designed to keep the North Vietnamese from funneling weapons along the Ho Chi Minh trail to use against American troops.

Throughout the four-day mission, Rose rescued men in distress, including in one instance by using his body to shield a wounded soldier from the rat-tat-tat of machine gunfire while treating the man and then carrying him to safety.

A helicopter sent to extract the men, including Rose, was downed by enemy fire after takeoff. Before the chopper crashed, however, Rose rushed to the aid of a Marine gunner who was shot in the throat. Rose was thrown from the helicopter before it hit the ground, but raced back to the crash site to rescue the survivors. Another helicopter rescued them. Rose, covered in blood by the time he reached the base, refused treatment until all of his men had received care.

During the Oct. 23, 2017, ceremony at which President Trump presented the honor to Rose, Trump seemed to marvel at how Rose now lives his life following two decades in the Army and a post-military career as an industrial designer.

Rose volunteers with groups like the American Legion as well as a local soup kitchen, fixes broken appliances for his elderly and disabled neighbors, donates his hair for people with cancer, makes lunches for children who don’t have enough to eat and organizes community gatherings “to bring people together, which is something we need all over the world and certainly in our country,” Trump said.

Rose has been married to his wife Margaret since 1971. They have three adult children and two grandchildren. To read a more detailed account of Rose’s actions in Vietnam and his background, visit www.army.mil/medalofhonor/rose.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.