Floyd Ballance, a Purple Heart veteran, has overcome Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) thanks to talking with other veterans about their experiences.
“It sticks with you,” Ballance said of having friends and acquaintances die around him. “I’ve gotten over, more or less, the nightmares and all that stuff because I’ve kinda talked to a lot of my friends – well, my brother especially.
“When you have somebody to bounce things off of, like him, and other veterans too, that’s a lot of being in these veterans organizations here too because so many of the veterans have had the same experiences I have. ... The veterans organizations is really important to me, you know, because of that, the camaraderie.”
Ballance entered the United States Army during the Vietnam War as an infantryman after going to technical college in his home state of Missouri and working at McDonald Douglas Aircraft in Saint Louis.
November 15, 1967, Ballance was drafted into the Army and completed basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. He later went to Advanced Individual Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
Of the responsibilities as an infantryman, Ballance said, “The responsibility is just taking care of your buddies, trying to keep one another alive, and that’s the main thing, and to try to defeat the enemy.”
Explaining what it’s like being in the military, he said it’s a lot different than civilian life, but you adapt to it.
Before his third or fourth month tenure as squad leader, his squad leader at the time was sent elsewhere and Ballance was given the position.
“I was E-4 (corporal), so I had as much rank as anybody else in the squad, and I’d been there a long, long time, so they gave me the squad,” Ballance said.
It wasn’t long later that he got into a “fire fight with the North Vietnamese.”
The first time he got hurt, he said, he was out on a Bomb Damage Assessment “‘cause the night before, a bunch of B-52s had carpet bombed around this little Special Forces camp.
“After I got hurt the second time, I stayed in Vietnam in the hospital for 10 days, and then I went to Japan for about 10 days, and then they sent me on home to the United States because I was wounded seriously enough that I wouldn’t get well in time to go back to my unit,” he said.
It was during the second fight that Ballance lost four other men around him, including his best friend.
“We was all fixing to go home, you know, in about another month,” he said calling the event his worst experience while in the military. “That’s kind of a tragic situation even though I was wounded, I was still alive and they weren’t. ... We’d been watching one another’s backs for 10 months, 28 days or whatever.”
Ballance was discharged from service November 14, 1969, then returned to work at McDonald Douglas Aircraft.
For his service, Ballance received a Purple Heart with one bronze oak leaf cluster, Army Commendation Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four bronze service stars, and a Combat Infantry Badge.
To anyone interested in joining the military, Ballance said, “It can be a really good life, there’s so many career opportunities.”
For example, Ballance said, his grandson went into the Navy, began attending college with his GI Bill, and graduate a month after being discharged as a Registered Nurse.
Ballance is an active member of the American Legion Post 248 and the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Chapter 28.
He explained that after retiring, the organization’s filled his void of not working anymore.
Anyone who might be interested in joining a veterans organization such as the American Legion, DAV, North Georgia Honor Guard, Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion Auxiliary are encouraged to reach out to Ray Arthur at fanninveterans@yahoo.com.