Pearl Harbor Anniversary: WWII Vet Gets Purple Heart 68 Years Later Thanks to Family's Efforts

(Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images) (2007 Getty Images)

EL PASO – One family's decades long effort to honor their loved one, a WWII veteran, has finally paid off.

Pct. Juan C. Marquez, injured after getting struck by a German tank in France, will be posthumously awarded a Purple heart and two bronze star thanks to his family in Texas.

Pvt. Marquez was deployed shortly after enlisting in 1944, the same year he suffered shrapnel wounds and later broken ribs and a separated shoulder when hit by an enemy tank. He was discharged the next year but died after he was hit by a car in 1948, leaving behind his wife and four young sons.

As a U.S. citizen, a man proud of his country he didn't want to dodge his obligation. They taught him to shoot a rifle and two weeks later he was sent to war.

— Antonio Marquez, Son of PVT Juan C. Marquez

One of his sons eventually looked at his father's Army documents, and seeing that it stated he had been wounded in combat, the family began digging. His relatives — including his granddaughter, now a state lawmaker — worked to find the right documents to prove he deserved the honors.

"There were several attempts made to gather all the information," including the death certificate and the discharge papers, said State Rep. Marissa Marquez, who plans to attend the ceremony to honor the grandfather she never met.

Friday's ceremony will come after the family made several unsuccessful attempts to convince the Army he deserved the honors and reached out to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The late soldier's son, Antonio Marquez, said the Texas Republican helped get the process to fruition — and the Army finally agreed to award the medals.

"We shouldn't have to ask and scrape around for this medal," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "It was very frustrating, I didn't know who to go to, (but the) senator, she pushed."

The medals and other military honors will be awarded to his family by Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, the commanding general at Fort Bliss. Marquez had been assigned to the Army post in El Paso.

"Juan C. Marquez exemplifies the citizens our nation sent to liberate the world from tyranny, and Major General Pittard is humbled by the opportunity to present him the Bronze Star and Purple Heart," Fort Bliss spokesman Maj. Joseph Buccino said Thursday.

Antonio Marquez said Friday's ceremony, which he and other relatives also plan to attend, will bring closure to his family's effort to see his father decorated and justifies the hardships they endured after his death.

"I was nine, my youngest brother just eight months old," Marquez said, adding that his father had been a welder and machinist at a local business.

After their father's death, Antonio and his brothers were moved to San Elizario, a small border town where they subsisted on their mother's wages as a cotton picker and the father's social security and veteran's affairs checks. He said his father didn't request the decorations after being discharged.

"He was a very humble man, didn't care about being honored in any way," he explained.

Noting that his father had already been wounded by shrapnel before he was hit by a German Tiger tank, Marquez said: "Then when you had shrapnel wounds, they'd patch you up and send you back to the front line."

His father had enlisted after receiving a letter from the Army telling him to report to Fort Bliss. At the time the family was living in a town on the Mexican side of the border, but he took his wife and sons to El Paso, rented an apartment and enlisted.

"As a U.S. citizen, a man proud of his country he didn't want to dodge his obligation," his son said. "They taught him to shoot a rifle and two weeks later he was sent to war."

Reporting by the Associated Press.

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