Edward Florez was 18 years old, a high school senior in rural Rocky Ford, when he decided to take his future — or, at least the part of it he still could — into his own hands.

It was 1968. Officially designated American combat troops had been in Vietnam for three years, although the nation’s military advisers had arrived years before, numbering approximately 11,000 by the end of 1962. By the late 1960s, alongside the escalating conflict in the jungles of Southeast Asia was a growing wave of antiwar sentiment at home.

U.S. Marines were the first combat troops sent to Vietnam in 1965, and the last to leave in 1973, but more soldiers were needed, and a draft lottery to fill those needs — in a supposedly more egalitarian and emergent way than the conscription already in place — would begin on Dec. 1, 1969.

Florez knew that most Americans who were drafted went into the Army. If he was going to combat, he wanted to fight in the same military branch as his father, a veteran of World War I.

So, like most of the 450,000 Marines who served in Vietnam, Florez volunteered.

“I decided, not the government,” said 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 soon as he graduated from high school, traveling to California for boot camp and then for advanced infantry training 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 said. “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 plane could whisk him away to join the 3rd Marine Division at Da Nang Air Base, on the coast of Vietnam about 130 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, he took a big risk — leaving base, without permission, to bid farewell to his family in the Arkansas River Valley and the high school sweetheart, Bea, he intended to wed when he returned from war.

“It wasn’t right … but I didn’t really consider it AWOL,” Florez said. “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 sent north to Dong Ha, and then 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 said, with a chuckle.

Such rivalries are an “ongoing fight,” as well as an inside joke.

If every military branch, every service member stateside or overseas hadn’t worked together, hadn’t had one another’s backs, no one would have made it out alive, Florez said.

And when you can’t find a way to laugh, to joke, to live with it … well, that’s no way to live.

“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 said. “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 ground and protecting the base 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 said, his voice quavering, barely a whisper. “That was a horrible thing to see.”

And he also remembers the whump-whump-whump of the helicopters — a sound that, more than a half-century later, still snaps him back to that brief, defining season a lifetime ago, half a world away.

In Vietnam, that throb of air that rattled your bones meant good things: retrieval of the wounded, or deliveries of supplies, and more 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 said.

In the Springs, the flashback triggers are frequent.

“Talk to just about any Vietnam veteran here, and (they will tell you) it’s the helicopters,” Florez said. “You just think Vietnam the moment you hear it, and you hear it a lot here.”

And he also remembers the tropical setting, being surrounded by death 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 said. “You didn’t only have to worry about the enemy.”

The environment, 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 three weeks, with headaches so intense he thought he was going mad.

As soon as he recovered, he was sent back to Charlie 2.

Florez served 10½ months with that unit, finishing his tour in 1970.

“I say they forgot me, because I shouldn’t have been up there that long,” said Florez, with a wry laugh.

Back home in Rocky Ford, Bea eagerly awaited the letters and Poloroid photos, 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 pieces into a picture of what his life was like so far away. And worrying, always worrying.

She knew her fiance’s dispatches home showed only the calmer, happier moments of his days. He was limited in the details he could share, and cameras were verboten once he was in a combat zone.

News reports filled in the horrifying gaps, Bea said. “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 said. “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 learned his tour in Vietnam was coming to an end, he said it felt as though every molecule in his body erupted in cheers.

“Like a stadium full of people, just on their feet happy about something: raaaaaaaah,” said Florez.

Returning veterans of World War II and Korea were welcomed as heroes, feted in parades and community celebrations.

“When us Vietnam vets got home, there were no bands playing, there were no speeches of welcome home. You just came home,” Florez said.

The nation that had rushed him to war by air, returned him home by ship. Twenty-one days of gut-wrenching seasickness.

When the time came for Florez to leave the base and fly commercial, he thought he was prepared for the scene that would greet him at the San Diego airport, a hub for both returning troops and antiwar protesters.

Service members were required to travel in uniform, which made them easy targets, Florez said.

“When they see you getting out of the plane or whatever, they’d spit on your or yell at you,” Florez said. “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 family, and future wife, met him at the airport in Colorado Springs.

“I couldn’t decide who to hug first, my mom or my fiance, so I hugged them both at the same time,” Florez said.

After more than 50 years of marriage, he and Bea are still holding tight.

“He’s been the love of my life, since I was 15 years old,” said Bea. “What else can I say?”

And Bea is still Eddie’s “Angel.”

He’d become a man in Vietnam, and a different person. It would be years before he realized just how different.

Physically, he said he feels like he got lucky. Exposure to Agent Orange sent his cousin and fellow Vietnam veteran to an early grave, and is estimated to have caused the deaths of more than 400,000 U.S. veterans who survived the battlefield.

The toxic chemical defoliant was sprayed by aircraft over thousands of jungle acres that served as cover, camouflage and resources for enemy guerrilla forces — and over the thousands of U.S. service members who were fighting them.

“I’ve got just about all the symptoms you can get, except for cancer,” said Florez, who suffers from a number of heart conditions, high blood pressure and diabetes — all deemed related to his exposure to Agent Orange. The VA considers him to be 100% disabled.

Mentally, it took decades for him to shed the emotional armor he hadn’t realized he’d donned to survive.

“Back in them days, you were hardened … cold. You had to be,” said Florez.

He eventually found his way to a therapist at Veterans Affairs who was able to help him work through the trauma, shed the armor and show his true feelings.

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 said. “And they do.”

Florez said he couldn’t have done it without Bea by his side.

“My angel stayed with me, and she’s still with me,” he said.

Now retired from a 30-year career running the glass repair shop for school District 11, and poised to celebrate his 52nd wedding anniversary, Florez said how he feels about being a Vietnam veteran has changed over the years.

He’s a different man, and America is in a different place.

A member of local Vietnam Veterans of America Post 1075, Florez no longer hesitates to wear the ball cap proudly proclaiming his service. He’s probably wearing it right now.

These days, strangers buy him coffee and stop him to say “Thank you” and shake his hand, even when it’s not a military holiday.

Florez and his fellow veterans are finally getting the welcome home they were due, and denied, a half-century ago.

A scene from a recent Veterans Day parade is one that will never leave him, he said. As his unit’s float passed by the crowd lining the street that day, a young boy — maybe 5 years old — raised his hand to his brow, in a salute.

“Somebody taught him that’s what you do,” Florez said. “It was worth the parade just seeing that little boy do that.”