By Price Daniel
Author of Book on U.S. War Hero Freddy Gonzlez of Edinburg
The Marine Corps recently announced that former U.S. Coast Guardsman John Flores will receive the civilian Meritorious Service Award for his years of research and writing about the life of Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Freddy Gonzlez.
Flores was a correspondent for the McAllen Monitor in the 1990s covering Edinburg as his main news beat. It was during his tenure as a South Texas journalist that he began his research that chronicled the naming of a U.S. guided missile destroyer in honor of the war hero from Texas.
He has also written extensively about the USS Gonzlez a guided missile destroyer attached to the Navy Base in Norfolk.
During Viet Nams Tet Offensive Gonzlez took over as platoon commander before his companyentered Hue City and quickly found themselves surrounded by enemy forces trying to stop the Marines from entering the city on January 31 1968.
Over the course of the next three days he was wounded several times while saving fellow Marines and launching brave deadly solitary attacks on enemy positions.
On the morning of February 4 1968 at the St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church he fired a dozen rockets at North Vietnamese Army positions saving the pinned-down platoon giving his life for his men. He was the only man awarded the Medal of Honor for the month-long battle of Hue City the most violent intense fighting of the entire 10-year war.
Floress book entitled When The River Dreams: The Life of Marine Sgt. Freddy Gonzlez took 10 years ofresearch. Flores served four years in the U.S. Coast Guard in the 1980s asa search-and-rescue crewman inNew Orleans.
Last month Ruchar Webb of the Marine Corps Headquarters Medals Incentives Board contacted Flores by phone at his home in Albuquerque New Mexico he said.
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