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WASHINGTON (AP) --
President Bush presented a posthumous Medal of Honor Monday
to Army Capt. Rocky Versace, a Green Beret who defied his Viet
Cong captors and was executed in 1965.
 "He was
fluent in English, French and Vietnamese and would tell his guards
to go to hell in all three," Bush told a group of about
200 in the East Room of the White House. The audience included
Versace's friends and family members, including three brothers.
The president gave the framed medal to
the captain's brother Steve, who was applauded as he held it
over his head and turned slowly to display it to the crowd.
Versace would have been 65 last Tuesday.
He grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and went to high school in
Washington, White House officials said. He graduated from West
Point and served as an intelligence adviser in the Mekong Delta.
In October 1963, two weeks before his tour
in Vietnam was to end, Versace set out with several companies
of South Vietnamese troops in a planned attack on a Viet Cong
command post.
They were ambushed by a much larger Viet
Cong force. Versace was wounded, but kept providing cover fire
so the troops with him could withdraw.
 Versace and
two other officers were captured and marched to a prison camp
in the jungle. Given little to eat and held in mosquito-ridden
conditions, he tried to escape four times and refused to cooperate
with his captors. Eventually he was separated from the other
prisoners, Bush said.
"The last time they heard his voice,
he was singing 'God Bless America' at the top of his lungs,"
Bush said.
Versace was executed September 26, 1965.
"Today we award Rocky Versace the first Medal of Honor given
to an Army POW for actions taken during captivity in Southeast
Asia," Bush said.
Copyright
2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.
Steve Versace shows his brother's
medal to the audience.
 Circa 1963
of Rocky's father, Humbert Versace USMA 1933, pinning the Combat
Infantryman Badge on his son. |
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 This statue
was dedicated on July 6, 2002 as part of the Captain Rocky Versace
Plaza and Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Alexandria, VA.
The statue represents
the many orphans Rocky helped before being captured on 29 October
1963, and also represents his ambition to return to South Viet
Nam as a Maryknoll priest after his release from active duty.
This goal was shattered when he was captured.
The many orphans
that Rocky encountered were the children of villagers who resisted
the communist Viet Cong. Usually the parents were murdered in
the presence of the children, and other villagers were afraid
of sheltering the children, so they ended up in orphanages, run
by Catholics. Rocky was known as the "candy man" for
giving hard candy to the children on his visits to the orphanages.
Rocky's remains are buried in an unmarked jungle grave known
only to God, in communist Vietnam. There are other American POWs,
mostly murdered by the Viet Cong also buried in unmarked jungle
graves.
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