Ralph Henry Johnson was a United States Marine who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for heroism in March 1968 during the Vietnam War. When a hand grenade was thrown into his fighting hole, he immediately covered it with his body—absorbing the full impact of the blast—sacrificing his life to save a fellow Marine and preventing the enemy from penetrating his patrol perimeter.
Biography
Ralph Johnson was born on January 11, 1949, in Charleston, South Carolina. He attended Courtnay Elementary School and Simonton Jr. High School in Charleston, South Carolina. Johnson enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve at Oakland, California on March 23, 1967, and was discharged to enlist in the regular Marine Corps on July 2, 1967. Upon completion of recruit training with the 1st Recruit Training Battalion, Recruit Training Regiment, MCRD San Diego, California, in September 1967, he was transferred to the Camp Pendleton, California. He underwent individual combat training with Company Y, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, and basic infantry training with the Basic Infantry Training Company, 2nd Infantry Training Regiment, completing the latter in November 1967. He was promoted to private first class on November 1, 1967. In January 1968, he arrived in the Republic of Vietnam, and served as a reconnaissance scout with Company A, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division. On March 5, 1968, while on Operation Rock, a four-day operation by the 3rd Battalion 7th Marines in the "Arizona Territory" northwest of An Hoa Combat Base, his 15-man reconnaissance patrol was attacked by a platoon-sized enemy force on Hill 146 in the Quan Duc Duc Valley. When a hand grenade landed in the fighting hole he shared with fellow Marines, he yelled a warning and immediately hurled his body over the explosive charge. Absorbing the full impact of the blast, he was killed instantly. His heroic actions on that day were recognized with a posthumous award of the United States' highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor. Ralph H. Johnson is buried at Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina.
The Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina, formerly the Charleston VA Medical Center, was renamed in honor of PFC Johnson, with a formal dedication on September 5, 1991. Johnson's Medal of Honor, along with his Medal of Honor citation and a portrait of him, is framed and on public display at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center's front lobby. On February 15, 2012, the Navy announced that a new guided missile destroyer would be named in his honor. The warship arrived at the Port of Charleston's Columbus Street Terminal on March 19, 2018, and was commissioned on March 24, 2018. Johnson's name is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Panel 43E, Line 008.
