- My father, Ralph Hayes Jr. was a member of the 813th. Ralph Hayes Jr passed away on February 13, 2013. Born on his father’s ranch in Slope County North Dakota in 1924, his family moved to Sonoma County, California in 1930. After graduation from high school in 1942 enrolled in Santa Rosa Junior College and played on the college basketball team. In 1943, Ralph was drafted into the Army. He joined the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion, in North Africa, and learned to drive a Tank Destroyer. Attached to the 79th Infantry Division, Ralph landed in Normandy, six days after D-Day, and participated in the Normandy campaign and Patton’s Third Army breakout. As a recon corporal Ralph and a lieutenant were the first Americans to enter the town of Bonnetable, France. In October, Ralph was wounded by a mortar shell fragment, his hospitalization coinciding with the only time the 79th Infantry was pulled off the front line. Ralph rejoined his unit, eventually spending the first half of a freezing January in the town of Drusenheim France, near the German border. There, Ralph received a Bronze Star for recovering an abandoned Tank Destroyer by driving it across a river. On January 19th, 1945, the Americans in Drusenheim were surrounded by the Germans, who launched one of their last offensives. The entire 2nd Battalion of the 314th Infantry regiment was captured. Ralph, at this point in charge of two tank destroyers, was captured the next morning when the Germans marched American prisoners toward his position. Ralph spent the next few months as a POW, gaining his freedom when the guards surrendered to the prisoners. After serving as a Drill Instructor, Sergeant Ralph Hayes left the army, shortly before his 21st birthday After the war, he met his wife Beth Hayes and they raised their four children in Santa Rosa California. Ralph always cherished his memories of the men of the 813th.
