Edward Florez was 18 years old, a highschool senior in rural Rocky Ford, when he determined to take his future — or, not less than the a part of it he nonetheless might — into his personal fingers.
It was 1968. Officially designated American fight troops had been in Vietnam for 3 years, though the nation’s army advisers had arrived years earlier than, numbering roughly 11,000 by the tip of 1962. By the late Nineteen Sixties, alongside the escalating battle within the jungles of Southeast Asia was a rising wave of antiwar sentiment at home.
U.S. Marines have been the primary fight troops despatched to Vietnam in 1965, and the final to depart in 1973, however extra troopers have been wanted, and a draft lottery to fill these wants — in a supposedly extra egalitarian and emergent means than the conscription already in place — would begin on Dec. 1, 1969.
Florez knew that the majority Americans who have been drafted went into the Army. If he was going to fight, he needed to battle in the identical army department as his father, a veteran of World War I.
So, like a lot of the 450,000 Marines who served in Vietnam, Florez volunteered.
“I decided, not the government,” mentioned Florez. “I figured I’ll follow in my dad’s footsteps. Maybe not so good an idea … It was rough.”
He joined the Marine Corps as quickly as he graduated from highschool, touring to California for boot camp after which for superior infantry coaching at Camp Pendleton.
“They broke you down when you first got there … and then they built you up into a fighting machine. They knew we were going over to the fight, and they prepared us for it,” Florez mentioned. “The training we had, it was horrible at the time they were doing it because they were pretty rough. But it made us survive.”
Before a airplane might whisk him away to hitch the third Marine Division at Da Nang Air Base, on the coast of Vietnam about 130 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, he took an enormous danger — leaving base, with out permission, to bid farewell to his household within the Arkansas River Valley and the highschool sweetheart, Bea, he meant to wed when he returned from conflict.
“It wasn’t right … but I didn’t really consider it AWOL,” Florez mentioned. “They weren’t going to give me leave before I went over to Vietnam. I figured, I may not ever see them again, so I took the chance and came home for the weekend.”
He didn’t get caught.
From Da Nang, Florez was despatched north to Dong Ha, after which Charlie 2, the closest U.S. base to the DMZ separating South from North Vietnam.
“There were several of us Marines that were sent over to be attached to them (the Army forces there), to help them out. I tell them we took care of them,” Florez mentioned, with a chuckle.
Such rivalries are an “ongoing fight,” in addition to an inside joke.
If each army department, each service member stateside or abroad hadn’t labored collectively, hadn’t had each other’s backs, nobody would have made it out alive, Florez mentioned.
And when you may’t discover a strategy to snigger, to joke, to dwell with it … properly, that’s no strategy to dwell.
“A lot of the stuff we did over there … 55 years later, I don’t necessarily want to get into any detail about that, other than (to say) it was a very bad war,” Florez said. “Being a Marine, being Air Force, being Army, Navy, whatever … we all did our jobs together, and whether they were in combat or not, they made what we did in combat possible.”
What Florez did in combat in Vietnam was, by definition, fluid.
“When you’re in the Marines, you don’t have just one MOS (military occupation). You’re going to end up doing whatever they need you to do,” he said.
Much of it felt like busy work, assignments meant to keep the men’s minds from wandering into the darker places.
There’d be plenty of time for that later.
“It’s a lot you went through, and all kinds of different things and thoughts you come up with,” Florez mentioned. “Do I have PTSD? I will die with it, because it doesn’t just go away.”
He remembers his time in Charlie 2 as being marked by frequent firefights, holding floor and defending the bottom with “the enemy coming right at you.”
“We got run over a couple of times, but we were able to establish another perimeter and it worked out all right,” Florez said.
He remembers the last time he saw “Doc,” a good friend and the unit’s medic.
“He was walking away from the front line, and a rocket got him,” Florez mentioned, his voice quavering, barely a whisper. “That was a horrible thing to see.”
And he additionally remembers the whump-whump-whump of the helicopters — a sound that, greater than a half-century later, nonetheless snaps him again to that transient, defining season a lifetime in the past, half a world away.
In Vietnam, that throb of air that rattled your bones meant good issues: retrieval of the wounded, or deliveries of provides, and extra troops.
“You can hear a helicopter from miles away. If you’re down on the ground and you’re getting some backup, it’s a beautiful sound,” Florez mentioned.
In the Springs, the flashback triggers are frequent.
“Talk to only about any Vietnam veteran right here, and (they’ll let you know) it’s the helicopters,” Florez mentioned. “You just think Vietnam the moment you hear it, and you hear it a lot here.”
And he additionally remembers the tropical setting, being surrounded by loss of life and mortal threats that had nothing to do with politics.
“I guess the worst part of the whole thing is that it was a jungle war,” Florez mentioned. “You didn’t only have to worry about the enemy.”
The atmosphere, itself, was out to get them.
“They had what was called a one-step snake. If it bit you, you had one step and you were gone. That’s how strong the venom was,” Florez said. “It was a little green snake that hung around on trees. I kept my eyes out, never did see one, but you always had that thought in your mind: ‘If it gets me, I’m gone.’”
Florez did catch airborne septic meningitis, which landed him in intensive care for 3 weeks, with complications so intense he thought he was going mad.
As quickly as he recovered, he was despatched again to Charlie 2.
Florez served 10½ months with that unit, ending his tour in 1970.
“I say they forgot me, because I shouldn’t have been up there that long,” mentioned Florez, with a wry snigger.
Back home in Rocky Ford, Bea eagerly awaited the letters and Poloroid pictures, with captions scrawled on their backs (“This is my M-60 … I think I’ll call it Gloria.” “Can you see how sunburned I am?”), assembling the items into an image of what his life was like so far-off. And worrying, at all times worrying.
She knew her fiance’s dispatches home confirmed solely the calmer, happier moments of his days. He was restricted within the particulars he might share, and cameras have been verboten as soon as he was in a fight zone.
News studies crammed within the horrifying gaps, Bea mentioned.
“I could only imagine what it was like to be in the bunker. I just kind of pictured him out in the jungle, avoiding bombs and what I could conjure up in my mind,” Bea mentioned. “I just knew he was there … and I wanted him home. I was just so just so madly in love with this man.”
When Edward Florez discovered his tour in Vietnam was coming to an finish, he mentioned it felt as if each molecule in his physique erupted in cheers.
“Like a stadium full of people, just on their feet happy about something: raaaaaaaah,” mentioned Florez.
Returning veterans of World War II and Korea have been welcomed as heroes, feted in parades and group celebrations.
“When us Vietnam vets got home, there were no bands playing, there were no speeches of welcome home. You just came home,” Florez mentioned.
The nation that had rushed him to conflict by air, returned him home by ship. Twenty-one days of gut-wrenching seasickness.
When the time got here for Florez to depart the bottom and fly industrial, he thought he was ready for the scene that will greet him on the San Diego airport, a hub for each returning troops and antiwar protesters.
Service members have been required to journey in uniform, which made them simple targets, Florez mentioned.
“When they see you getting out of the plane or whatever, they’d spit on your or yell at you,” Florez mentioned. “It makes you go to a corner seat and sit down in a corner, so they just won’t bother you. And that’s the best way I can say, because if you’re walking around or anything, they’re on you.”
His household, and future spouse, met him on the airport in Colorado Springs.
“I could not determine who to hug first, my mother or my fiance, so I hugged them each on the similar time,” Florez mentioned.
After greater than 50 years of marriage, he and Bea are nonetheless holding tight.
“He’s been the love of my life, since I was 15 years old,” mentioned Bea. “What else can I say?”
And Bea continues to be Eddie’s “Angel.”
He’d turn out to be a person in Vietnam, and a distinct person. It could be years earlier than he realized simply how totally different.
Physically, he mentioned he appears like he acquired fortunate.
Exposure to Agent Orange despatched his cousin and fellow Vietnam veteran to an early grave, and is estimated to have induced the deaths of greater than 400,000 U.S. veterans who survived the battlefield.
The poisonous chemical defoliant was sprayed by plane over hundreds of jungle acres that served as cowl, camouflage and sources for enemy guerrilla forces — and over the hundreds of U.S. service members who have been preventing them.
“I’ve got just about all the symptoms you can get, except for cancer,” mentioned Florez, who suffers from plenty of coronary heart circumstances, hypertension and diabetes — all deemed associated to his publicity to Agent Orange. The VA considers him to be 100% disabled.
Mentally, it took many years for him to shed the emotional armor he hadn’t realized he’d donned to outlive.
“Back in them days, you were hardened … cold. You had to be,” mentioned Florez.
He ultimately discovered his strategy to a therapist at Veterans Affairs who was in a position to assist him work via the trauma, shed the armor and present his true emotions.
Now, he’s “probably the most affectionate one in the family.”
“I tell my son, my daughter, my grand kids, when you come into my house, what’s the first thing you do? You come and hug Papa,” he mentioned. “And they do.”
Florez mentioned he could not have carried out it with out Bea by his aspect.
“My angel stayed with me, and he or she’s nonetheless with me,” he mentioned.
Now retired from a 30-year profession operating the glass restore store for varsity District 11, and poised to rejoice his 52nd wedding ceremony anniversary, Florez mentioned how he feels about being a Vietnam veteran has modified over the years.
He’s a distinct man, and America is in a distinct place.
A member of native Vietnam Veterans of America Post 1075, Florez not hesitates to put on the ball cap proudly proclaiming his service. He’s in all probability sporting it proper now.
These days, strangers purchase him espresso and cease him to say “Thank you” and shake his hand, even when it’s not a army vacation.
Florez and his fellow veterans are lastly getting the welcome home they have been due, and denied, a half-century in the past.
A scene from a recent Veterans Day parade is one that may by no means depart him, he mentioned. As his unit’s float handed by the gang lining the road that day, a young boy — possibly 5 years old — raised his hand to his forehead, in a salute.
“Somebody taught him that’s what you do,” Florez mentioned. “It was worth the parade just seeing that little boy do that.”
