bobdina
09-13-2009, 11:35 AM
GI Awarded MoH Decades After Death
September 13, 2009
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
The road to a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, is often a long and difficult process, even for the most deserving of Soldiers.
Just ask the brothers of Army Capt. Humbert "Rocky" Versace, who was taken captive and spent nearly two years in a Viet Cong prison camp with two other Americans, Lt. James N. Rowe and Sgt. Dan Pitzer.
"The military takes the medal very, very seriously," Steve Versace, Rocky's brother, said in an interview last week from his home in Maryland. "They are very careful about awarding the Medal of Honor."
Overwhelming Viet Cong forces captured Rocky Versace on Oct. 29, 1963. He provided cover so allied forces could withdraw, his Medal of Honor citation reads. As a prisoner of war, Versace was kept in a bamboo cage where the Viet Cong tortured him. He "scorned the enemy's exhaustive interrogation and indoctrination efforts, and inspired his fellow prisoners to resist to the best of their ability," according to the citation.
Versace, a West Point graduate from Alexandria, Va., never made it home.
The Viet Cong killed him in September 1965 when he was 28 years old. His body was never recovered. Steve Versace recalls a time-consuming, often politicized process to urge Congress and the president to honor his brother with the Medal of Honor. The Versaces, of Italian and Puerto Rican descent, never considered ethnicity to be a factor in Rocky Versace's case.
Rowe led a first Medal of Honor effort for Versace in
1969. Invited to the White House to talk with President Nixon about Vietnam, Rowe spoke of Versace's bravery and said he deserved the medal. Nixon agreed. So, it appeared, did the Department of Defense. Then the politics of the military stymied those early efforts to recognize Rocky Versace, Steve Versace said.
"It was agonizing. It really was," he said.
The process dragged and Nixon became mired in the Watergate scandal in 1972. It was up to others to make sure that Versace's valor was not forgotten. Rowe in his book, "Five Years to Freedom," recounted the captain's service in Vietnam.
Then Rowe, working for the U.S. government, was assassinated in the Philippines in 1989. The Medal of Honor campaign for Versace seemed to die, too.
But a decade later, an organization called "Friends of Rocky Versace" was formed. The group mobilized after a failed attempt to name an Alexandria elementary school for Versace.
With this group, a campaign for the Medal of Honor was reborn. In 2002, almost 37 years after Rocky Versace was taken prisoner in Vietnam, he posthumously received the Medal of Honor from President George W. Bush.
"In his too-short life, he traveled to a distant land to bring the hope of freedom to the people he never met," Bush said at the White House medal ceremony.
"In his defiance and later his death, he set an example of extraordinary dedication that changed the lives of his fellow Soldiers who saw it firsthand."
September 13, 2009
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
The road to a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, is often a long and difficult process, even for the most deserving of Soldiers.
Just ask the brothers of Army Capt. Humbert "Rocky" Versace, who was taken captive and spent nearly two years in a Viet Cong prison camp with two other Americans, Lt. James N. Rowe and Sgt. Dan Pitzer.
"The military takes the medal very, very seriously," Steve Versace, Rocky's brother, said in an interview last week from his home in Maryland. "They are very careful about awarding the Medal of Honor."
Overwhelming Viet Cong forces captured Rocky Versace on Oct. 29, 1963. He provided cover so allied forces could withdraw, his Medal of Honor citation reads. As a prisoner of war, Versace was kept in a bamboo cage where the Viet Cong tortured him. He "scorned the enemy's exhaustive interrogation and indoctrination efforts, and inspired his fellow prisoners to resist to the best of their ability," according to the citation.
Versace, a West Point graduate from Alexandria, Va., never made it home.
The Viet Cong killed him in September 1965 when he was 28 years old. His body was never recovered. Steve Versace recalls a time-consuming, often politicized process to urge Congress and the president to honor his brother with the Medal of Honor. The Versaces, of Italian and Puerto Rican descent, never considered ethnicity to be a factor in Rocky Versace's case.
Rowe led a first Medal of Honor effort for Versace in
1969. Invited to the White House to talk with President Nixon about Vietnam, Rowe spoke of Versace's bravery and said he deserved the medal. Nixon agreed. So, it appeared, did the Department of Defense. Then the politics of the military stymied those early efforts to recognize Rocky Versace, Steve Versace said.
"It was agonizing. It really was," he said.
The process dragged and Nixon became mired in the Watergate scandal in 1972. It was up to others to make sure that Versace's valor was not forgotten. Rowe in his book, "Five Years to Freedom," recounted the captain's service in Vietnam.
Then Rowe, working for the U.S. government, was assassinated in the Philippines in 1989. The Medal of Honor campaign for Versace seemed to die, too.
But a decade later, an organization called "Friends of Rocky Versace" was formed. The group mobilized after a failed attempt to name an Alexandria elementary school for Versace.
With this group, a campaign for the Medal of Honor was reborn. In 2002, almost 37 years after Rocky Versace was taken prisoner in Vietnam, he posthumously received the Medal of Honor from President George W. Bush.
"In his too-short life, he traveled to a distant land to bring the hope of freedom to the people he never met," Bush said at the White House medal ceremony.
"In his defiance and later his death, he set an example of extraordinary dedication that changed the lives of his fellow Soldiers who saw it firsthand."