Vietnam veteran finally receives medals due him

CONWAY — Lester Floyd left Vietnam some 40 years ago, but it’s never left him.

He said he thinks about the war every day - and the friend who died in his arms.

That’s why the 63-year-old Conway man will take the handful of medals he finally received Thursday - decades after he should have - and leave them at the base of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., nearthe name of his best friend during the war, Charles Johnson.

“He was a real hero,” Floyd said in an interview last week. “I’m not keeping any of the medals; they’re all going to the wall. My biggest thing is I have to pass them on to the people who earned them.”

Floyd, a Wilson native and a former Air Force staff sergeant, received his awards from U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor in a ceremony Thursday at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2259 in Conway.

Floyd received about a dozen honors, including the Bronze Star and the Vietnam Medal of Honor, which Pryor said was “very rare.”

Because Floyd worked on classified missions, he said his discharge papers were blank. He received a certificate and a letter saying he should receive benefits, but he’s been trying since the early 1970s to get his medals. It was only when he contacted Robbie Reed in Pryor’s office a few weeks ago that it finally happened, Floyd said.

Floyd, who volunteered for two full tours and another two half tours in Vietnam, came to the event wearing leg braces and in a wheelchair, but he stood up and walked to the podium using crutches.

“Agent Orange is eating me alive,” he said in an earlier interview, referring to an herbicide used during the war. “I stood beneath it while the Agent Orange missions were sprayed. I got sprayed every day with it.”

Floyd, who was an intelligence specialist, said he “walked with the grunts on the ground. I called in the air strikes - where to drop the bombs.”

“ That full first year - you’d jump out of choppers into a rice paddy, and I’d call in air strikes,” he said. “I met some wonderful people and saw some wonderful people die.”

He purposely didn’t make friends with many people, he said, because it was too hard when they died. Charles Johnson of North Carolina, whom Floyd called Chuck, was an exception.

“I was a dumb little Air Force guy who didn’t know much - he taught me everything - kept me alive. I’d never been on a combat assault,” Floyd said.

He and Johnson were assigned to teach the Vietnamese how to be soldiers.

Johnson died on Floyd’s first tour, during the Tet Offensive of 1968.

“We got cut off, and people couldn’t get to us,” Floyd said.

Floyd s aid he and his friend were the only Americans at that location.

Johnson was across the road from Floyd, and when the Viet Cong attacked, the Vietnamese who were supposed to be fighting with them ran, he said.

“When I went over there to get him, he’d already been hit,” Floyd said, but Johnson was alive then. “I had to carry him out. It blew his kidneys out - they shot him through the back. We got him on a helicopter, but he already was dead.”

It was his friend’s death - and other horrors ofwar - that affected Floyd’s mental well-being.

“I went back two more times, and it kind of messed me up,” he said.

Floyd wants it known that he never has had an alcohol or drug problem, which he said is a stereotype of Vietnam veterans.

“I’ve never had a drink of liquor, and I’ve never used drugs,” he said.

The military was aware of Floyd’s emotional problems.

“They said if I would stay in three more weeks, I would have gotten disability. I didn’t want it. I wanted to go on,” he said.

When Floyd left Vietnam for good - he isn’t sure of the year - he wanted to leave the memories behind him.

“I didn’t tell anybody where I’d been,” he said. “I never mentioned Vietnam for 20 years.

“I didn’t even come home in a uniform. I went and bought a suit of clothes and flew home that way. I wasn’t ashamed of it. I just felt like I needed to get away from it if I was going to be successful.”

Success was elusive.

He changed jobs frequently, but he kept a promise to his friend.

“I m a d e a prom i s e t o Chuck before he died that I’d come back and teach and help kids,” Floyd said. “That’s what I wanted to do.”

Floyd attended Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, and he witnessed just one attempt at a Vietnam War protest. He stopped it short.

He saw students in frontof the student center preparing to burn an American flag. Robert Moore, the dean of students, was there and knew Floyd was a veteran.

“He said, ‘You want to go get that, don’t you?’” Floyd recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ He said, ‘I won’t kick you out of school.’”

Floyd said he silently walked up and took the flag out of their hands. “I just couldn’t let them burn that flag,” he said. “It didn’t hurt that there were a couple of big football players standing behind me.”

Floyd received a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees from ASU and a master’s degree from Auburn University.

He did teach history, as he promised his friend, but he’s also been a vice president of companies, never staying in positions longer than a year.

“I couldn’t handle it. Too much going on in my head,” he said.

“I feel guilty mainly over people dying. Killing’s easy; people dying hurts everybody. That’s why kids do it today. … Pulling that trigger is easy. Dying and death are hard to deal with.”

Floyd said his first wife left him because of the emotional problems he had, and he hasn’t seen his two children in “20-something years.”

Floyd’s current wife, Suzy, “is a dandy,” he said. She was beaming at the ceremony.

“I just think it’s wonderful that finally this is coming together,” Suzy Floyd said. “Hisservice was incredible.”

Pryor read a citation explaining that the Bronze Star was for Floyd’s actions during the Tet Offensive when Floyd was “constantly alert and provided critical intelligence information and taking his turn at the radio” requesting helicopter gunships and Air Force AC-47 gunships.

Floyd said he received the Vietnam Medal of Honor for taking care of his friend who was shot.

“You shouldn’t get a medal for that,” Floyd said after the ceremony.

He said he was upset when he found out that Johnson, a career military man, was buried at West Point, “and they awarded him nothing but a Purple Heart, and they awarded all these things to me, and I want to give them to him.”

Floyd said he has conquered many of his demons through therapy at the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock, where he said he has been treated well. He gives a lot of credit to Susan Holton, one of his therapists who recently retired, he said.

“She probably did more for me than I could ever repay,” he said.

Floyd spends his days trying to repay what he feels is a debt to society, “to kind of make up for what I got that I don’t deserve.”

“I just keep busy volunteering when I can,” he said.

He has volunteered with the Wounded Warrior project and the VA, fed the homeless at Bethlehem House homeless shelter in Conway, worked with suicide prevention and taught golf to other people in wheelchairs. Floyd said he didn’t play golf before the war, but he read a book on it and decided to try it.

He was on the boards to raise money for the VietnamVeterans Memorial, as well as the World War I and World War II memorials.

Pryor, who seemed to get choked up as he spoke, said Vietnam was “not an easy place to be; it was not an easy place to serve.”

Then, when the Vietnam veterans came back, “many people didn’t appreciate the sacrifice” they’d made,” Pryor said. “Vietnam vets are still struggling with the fact they were not always greeted with open arms. We’re trying to do better than that. It’s important, Lester, for you to know, we do appreciate you, and we do thank you for your service.”

Floyd said he is glad to finally get the awards, but he doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him.

“I don’t blame the military; the military was good to me,” he said. “I’ve had a good life.”

Senior Writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.