• Sonny Long •
• Originally published July 30, 2008 at 12:29 a.m., updated July 30, 2008 at 12:29 a.m.

CUERO – Ralph Gonzales did not get to walk across the stage to receive his Cuero High School diploma in 1944. He was wading through the bloody water off Utah Beach in Normandy, France as part of the D-Day invasion.

Gonzales recently received that diploma, 64 years later, under a veterans’ program offered by the Texas Education Agency.

“It means a lot to me,” Gonzales, 83, said recently from his sister’s home in Cuero.

What Gonzales did in defense of his country means a lot, too.

Inducted into the Army in August 1943 before the start of his senior year in high school, Gonzales remembered being “a little scared and a little nervous. But I knew I had to go.”

Nine months later, Gonzales was in England as his unit prepared to take part for the invasion of Normandy.

Utah Beach was the westernmost of five beaches where U.S. forces planned to land. While not as deadly for U.S. forces as Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, about 200 soldiers lost their lives on the sands of Utah Beach that day, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.

“I was lucky I wasn’t in the first wave. There were a lot of dead soldiers on the beach,” Gonzales said, also remembering the discolored water and body parts floating by.

Gonzales, who was a member of the 79th Infantry Division, said he “shook for days” at the atrocities he saw, but “after a few days, I got used to it.”

Gonzales and his unit spent the night on the beach. The next day they began to battle their way toward the city of Cherbourg.

“There was a lot of opposition from the Germans,” said Gonzales. “There were a lot of scares. But the villagers were glad to see us.”

He recalled one woman in particular who offered the soldiers apple cider.“We poured the water out of our canteens and filled them up with apple cider. The people were very nice and helpful. If the enemy had seen them, they’d been shot right there. They were taking a chance befriending us,” he said.

Once they reached Cherbourg, the fighting became even more intense.

“There was some hand-to-hand combat,” he said. “My buddy and I were changing sides of the street and we were running. He got shot; I didn’t. He died crossing the street.”

Gonzales paused remembering his fallen comrade, gathered his thoughts and continued.

“After we liberated Cherbourg, we were to move on to St. Lo,” he said.

But Gonzales didn’t make it.

“As we were marching toward St. Lo, they ambushed us. We hit the ground, and I hit a mine,” Gonzales said. “One reason I wasn’t killed is that I had my gun on my left side and it deflected part of the explosion.”

His left arm and left side took the brunt of the explosion.

“The medics treated me and left me there until the next morning. They took me to a dairy farm where we had a first aid station,” he said. Gonzales was moved to another first aid station and operated on to remove shrapnel from his wounds. Then it was on to a hospital in England and eventually to Harmon General Hospital in Longview.“I was glad to be back in Texas,” he said.Told he may not walk again due to the injury to his hip, Gonzales defiantly insisted he would never be confined to a wheelchair. He stayed at Harmon for almost a year, eventually completing intensive rehabilitation.Today he has no trouble with his mobility, but his left arm shakes slightly from the damage it suffered.

After he recovered, Gonzales was discharged from the Army. He went to trade school in San Antonio studying electronics and began a nearly four-decade career at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. After retiring from civil service in 1985, Gonzales continued to work in residential real estate until 1995.

He and his wife of 47 years, the late Marie Gonzales, had five children including Rafael Gonzales III, who is a Secret Service agent.

“We are so proud of our father,” said his daughter Dianna Gonzales-Wood of Keller. “He is such a humble man that it wasn’t until 10 or 15 years ago that we knew much about what happened in the war and that he had received a Purple Heart.”

In 2008 Gonzales, with the assistance of his children, made the trip back to France to take part in the annual D-Day observance. While in France he met Texas Governor Rick Perry, also there to take part in the D-Day remembrance.

“I told him it was a pleasure meeting him, but I’m sorry it was so far away from Texas,” Gonzales said chuckling.

With the help of the U.S. Embassy and locals in St. Lo, was able to retrace the steps to the exact spot where he had been wounded“I was stunned at how special I was treated,” he said. “I spoke to a high school class. The mayor asked me to come to council chambers for a get together.”

Gonzales, who was born on Armistice Day, said “We must never forget the ones that didn’t make it back,” he said.

• For more information

  Veterans who were scheduled to graduate from high school after 1940 and before 1975 and left school to serve in World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War and were honorably discharged may be eligible ...

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For more information

Veterans who were scheduled to graduate from high school after 1940 and before 1975 and left school to serve in World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War and were honorably discharged may be eligible to receive their high school diploma. Contact the Texas Education Agency’s Division of Curriculum at 512-463-9581 for more information.

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