The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) started in 1942 as an auxiliary unit and entered its full status in 1943. It was the women’s branch of the Army and over 150,000 women served during World War II. The WAC was disbanded in 1978, but not before Sonia Gonzales found them, or rather they found her, in 1966.

Gonzales had graduated high school, was living in the Bronx in New York City and working at a furniture store in Brooklyn. One day, she was crossing a very busy street and had stopped on an island in the middle of the road when a downpour of rain started. As she crossed the street she ran to the nearest building and a man who had been watching her invited her to come in his office to stay dry.

“He asked if I liked math and asked if I could solve this puzzle and I did,” recalled Gonzales. “Next there were more questions and word problems and I solved them all. It was kind of fun. He then said to me I had just passed the Army’s exam and in 30 days I could be in another country.”

Gonzales learned more about the Army and the WAC and soon went to Ft. McClellan, Ala. for basic training. Gonzales recalls being so tiny that she had to put on weight to make the cut and that all of her uniforms had to be altered.

“I did everything wrong at basic training at first,” Gonzales recalled. “I had to learn not to talk when I wasn’t being spoken to, how to address everyone, and all this terminology. I was always getting into trouble and reprimanded, but by the end of basic I was a squad leader.” Gonzales said that her transformation was typical and she saw a lot of similar transformations many years later when she returned to Ft. McClellan as an instructor. “There’s just a lot to learn as you go over all the dos and don’ts,” she said. “You have to realize that there are more don’ts than dos.”

Upon completing basic training, Gonzales went straight to the Pentagon as a clerk typist.

“It was very exciting and I had to be extra sharp and dress well,” Gonzales recalled, adding that for every job there is in the Army there is a book to go with it of things to learn. She learned everything she could, even going so far as to give up a break to go to become an NCO (non-commissioned officer), which is an enlisted member of the service who has been given authority by a commissioned officer. Gonzales went from E4 to E5 and earned a stripe.

One day, Gonzales was coaxed by her friends to put in for Vietnam. They all signed up to go over but Gonzales was the only one to be selected from that group.

“On a plane of 200 men, I was the only woman,” Gonzales said, adding that their long plane ride was even longer because the airport they were landing at was under fire. “It was February 1968, the Tet offensive was going on and we had to keep circling because the airport was being shot at. We could see the shots being fired beneath us.”

Eventually, the plane landed and everyone on board got out in the dark and did a “fall and crawl” to the terminal. The next night, an ammo dump a tenth of a mile from where Gonzales and members of the WAC were stationed was hit.

Gonzales was there for 18 months and extended her time there to go to Saigon. She served in the order battle room which featured many maps of the area and they would post on the maps where the enemy units were. The order battle room was where the intelligence analysts would brief the field commanders. Gonzales would type what was on the maps on to G2 notes and use a mimeograph machine. A lot of the information they received came from informants and there were always questions about how dependable the information was.

Aside from her thrilling entry into Vietnam, she was OK. There were times they had to spend times in bunkers, but other times she was living off base and riding a bus to and from work, going to safe areas in the country. Still, she, like everyone else in Vietnam, saw things they will always carry with them.

“I would be at the hospital and see the walking wounded,” Gonzales said. “It was difficult to see the young guys injured like that.”

Upon returning from Vietnam, Gonzales served as a personnel specialist at Ft. McNair. She was in charge of processing orders that transferred soldiers to other stations. The following year she was back at Ft. McClellan as an instructor.

“At first, I did not want to go back there,” Gonzales said. “It was too rigid and strict. I had to be a role model and perfect and it was unacceptable for anyone to fail, so if someone required additional training we were in there with them until they got it.”

Eventually, Gonzales enjoyed teaching and helping mold people into soldiers. She enjoyed continuing to acquire knowledge and pass it on and felt a great feeling of accomplishment at her students’ successes.

As a field training instructor, Gonzales taught things like general military knowledge but also classes on escape and evasion and surviving gas or chemical attacks.

“They would go into a gas chamber with their mask, test the equipment and then have to take their mask off and recite their name and social security number in one exhale and leave the room,” Gonzales recalled. She also discussed giving her troops their equipment and having them find the right terrain, pitch a tent and camouflage it, leaving Gonzales and her fellow instructors to find them.

Gonzales was at Ft. McClellan for five years and in 1978 the WAC was disbanded.

After the WAC was disbanded, Gonzales went into reserve duty. She wanted to study cabinet making, but was soon working with the 87th MAC training reserve units in ways similar to what she was doing with the trainees at Ft. McClellan. That didn’t last long because she was soon sent to the 96th Bravo School and served as an intelligence officer until her retirement. Eventually she was stationed in Puerto Rico and six months after arriving, Operation Desert Storm broke out and she had to process the security clearances for all of the troops that were there before they could deploy. When the soldiers returned, she would debrief them and take the security clearances back. It is similar to what she does now, as a civilian, working at Ft. McPherson.

She and other members of the WAC have reunited over the years, even meeting women who are currently serving in high ranking positions in the Army.

“A bunch of us, our first sergeant and several Vietnam vets met with a female general recently and she opened her arms and hugged all of us, thanking us for paving the way,” Gonzales said. She went on to praise the WAC and the way it prepared her and generations of women for service in the Army.

“The training we had was unsurpassed and because things were different back then we were held to a different standard,” Gonzales said. “We were a different breed. We were soldiers first.”

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