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Active after duty
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Philip Gonzalez, a Vietnam War Marine veteran, visits the war memorial in downtown Youngstown. Gonzalez received the Purple Heart for an injury suffered during the Battle of Hue.
- Veterans Day 2010
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
alcorn@vindy.com
CAMPBELL
Marine Corps Pfc. Philip Gonzalez looked up and saw a crucifix on the wall of the convent where he was wounded by rocket fire during the Battle of Hue in South Vietnam.
“I realized at that moment that God had a purpose for me back home,” he said.
The Purple Heart recipient was wounded the second day of the Battle of Hue in which Marines fought building by building to
retake the city captured by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Gonzalez, of Campbell, was on the second floor of the convent when he was hit in the left leg behind and above his knee by a fragment from a B-40 rocket when got up to report to the lieutenant on the first floor.
He found out later that two other Marines who reported to the unit commander to do what Gonzalez was to be ordered to do — cross an open space to another building — were both killed.
“I would have been one of those guys,” he said.
“That’s why I am here today. That told me, as I look back, I was saved for a purpose. God called me to serve in the Marine Corps and then the church,” he said.
Gonzalez says it is also the grace of God that has enabled him to live a productive life “without too much of a problem” despite suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The nightmares about the horrors he experienced as a combat rifleman during the height of the Vietnam War “never, never go away.”
One incident in particular that stays with him was during an operation when his unit took fire as he was crossing an open rice paddy. After they crossed the rice paddy into a wooded area, his squad leader stooped down to look at a map and was blown apart from the waist down by a land mine.
“I stayed with him to try and calm him, and then I was asked to gather up his body parts. We were friends. It is something I can’t get out of my mind, the way he was killed,” he said.
Gonzalez, 63, graduated from Lorain Admiral King High School in 1966, and then attended college for three years after leaving the service — initially at Youngstown State University and then Geneva College, Pa., where he studied for the ministry.
He enlisted in February 1967 and was shipped to Vietnam in August 1967 and assigned to Foxtrot Co., 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.
“We pulled a lot of operations,” including in the Phu Bai area and the Battle of Hue, he said.
After he was wounded, he spent six weeks recuperating on Okinawa and then was sent back to Foxtrot Co. and the front lines fighting in several different operations.
Two days before he was rotated to the rear, he witnessed what for him was one of the saddest moments of the war. An Air Force pilot mistakenly dropped napalm on his unit. Gonzalez was not injured, but he said a lot of guys were burned.
“I was right in the area, but I wasn’t injured. I see that as another sign that God had a purpose for me,” he said.
Gonzalez, who moved from Youngstown’s West Side to Campbell seven years ago, met his wife, the former Mary Mulero, who was raised in Youngstown and graduated in 1967 from East High School, just before he enlisted.
The couple, married June 14, 1969, while Gonzalez was still in the Marine Corps, have three children — Madeline Woodberry of Cleveland, Felipe Gonzalez of Cincinnati and Leela Marie Gonzalez of New York City — and four grandchildren. A brother, Victor Gonzalez, lives in Youngstown.
Gonzalez was discharged as a corporal in 1970, having served in Vietnam from August 1967 to September 1968. Besides the Purple Heart, he received several other decorations including the Vietnam Service Combat Medal, of which his unit received two.
“Personally, I thought it was a war that should never had been,” Gonzalez said. “A lot of guys came back to a lot of negative publicity and felt mistreated, but we were a bunch of men who dedicated ourselves to defending our country. We won a lot of battles because of the dedication and bravery of the men fighting.”
Today, he is head of music ministry at Sta. Rosa de Lima Catholic Parish, which is merged with St. Lucy Catholic Parish.
A self-taught guitarist who doesn’t read music, he plays for Sunday and Masses three other days of the week and is cantor for Sta. Rosa de Lima. He also began a prison ministry offering Liturgy of the Word and Holy Communion on Wednesdays and Saturdays to inmates, and has been commissioned a leader of prayer by the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.
He plays in a Latino band Conjunto Riquena (Puerto Rican Ensemble) formed by his wife 33 years ago and hosts a radio show, “Contigo Los Sabados,” featuring Latino music at 1:30 p.m. Saturdays on WKTL 90.7 FM.
“I stay busy doing the work of the Lord, and that keeps me from dwelling on my war experience,” he added. “That’s my witness to the world. You can overcome a lot of things if you trust God to get you through it.”