Army Sgt. 1st Class Chad Gonsalves, 31, Turlock; Among 4 Killed by Roadside Bomb in Afghanistan

“I knew from the day I brought him home and rocked him -- I knew he was destined for the military,� Marsha Gonsalves said of her elder son.

She was right. As a boy growing up in the Central Valley city of Turlock, Calif., Chad Gonsalves outfitted himself as a fantasy soldier in camouflage fatigues. As a young man who became a member of the Army’s elite Special Forces, he wore the group’s fabled green beret.

“That was his calling. He was just military all the way. He absolutely loved it,� his mother said. “I guess if he had to die, that was the way to go.�

Gonsalves, 31, a weapons sergeant first class assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Ft. Bragg, N.C., was on patrol with Afghan troops Feb. 13 in the volatile Dihrawud district of Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province when his armored Humvee struck a roadside bomb, according to military officials and news reports. Gonsalves and three other U.S. soldiers were killed.

His mother speculates that he found his love of the military through his bond with his paternal grandfather, Lester Gonsalves, who died in 1984. The family lived on a ranch owned by the grandparents, and Chad’s parents -- Marsha, 55, and Larry, 54 -- still live there.

An indifferent student -- “It was not his thing,� his mother said -- Chad dropped out of high school in his senior year and went through a series of jobs that included installing TV satellite dishes and washing trucks. He developed a passion for off-roading and fell in love with a blue Chevy pickup truck.

Nelson Fonte, 31, a friend since childhood, said the two did “crazy things� together. “We used to go to parties and just walk in and it wasn’t parties we knew people at,� he said.

For Gonsalves’ 21st birthday, his parents took him to a Reba McEntire concert in Fresno. “He was a big Reba fan,� his mother said. “He was a cowboy then. I wish he had remained a cowboy. It might have kept him out of the military.�

But Gonsalves was being pursued by a military recruiter he first talked to when he was 18, and, after earning a general equivalency diploma, enlisted in the Army in 1996.

His ambition kindled, Gonsalves embraced the training and spent four years with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment near Schweinfurt, Germany. His parents shipped him his beloved Chevy pickup, which he took great pleasure in driving on the autobahn. “He used to say it was a chick magnet,� Fonte said.

In 2000, Gonsalves began the Special Forces qualification course, and the green beret he fantasized about wearing as a child was within reach. The lackluster high schooler became a focused student, and he blazed through a series of courses over the next few years, learning to scuba dive, becoming a weapons expert and mastering Spanish. “He was so proud,� his wife, Julie, 30, said of his learning a foreign language.

He met his future wife shortly after arriving at Ft. Bragg for his Special Forces training. She was working as a waitress and bartender at a local country club when the two saw each other at a nightclub in Fayetteville, N.C.

He was charming, with luminous blue eyes, his wife said. “One of his friends was talking to a friend of mine,� she recalled. “I noticed his eyes. They gleamed across the table. Then he started talking and he had a sense of humor, and that made it even better.�

On their first date, “I said, ‘Well, you look good tonight,’ � she recalled. “He said, ‘I know.’ He was so cocky.... We talked and cut up the whole time.�

They were married in 2001 at a Ft. Bragg chapel the day after he graduated from Special Forces training. The couple had three boys -- Cody, who will be 4 on Monday, and twins, Blake and Dylan, who will turn 2 in May.

Gonsalves loved wrestling with the boys and often picked up the twins by the backs of their overalls, his wife said, adding, “He’d say, ‘They need to wear these more often. They’re like little handles.’ �

Gonsalves’ Special Forces unit was deployed mostly to South America, particularly Colombia. He was closemouthed on the details of his assignments.

“I know a lot of it had to do with Colombians in the jungle,� Fonte said, “but he wouldn’t talk much about it.�

Gonsalves was eager to go to Afghanistan or Iraq. “He could not get there fast enough,� his wife said.

“He believed 100% what we were doing was right,� his mother said. “He told me before he left, ‘Mom, if something were to happen to me, don’t be one of those moms that blames the military.’ �

But he did not display his customary ease when he left for Afghanistan in early January. “He teared up a little bit as he was saying goodbye to his boys,� his wife said.

His mother got a phone call from him the week before he died. “They had had three days of bombing,� she recalled.

Julie Gonsalves got an e-mail several days before his death. But it was filled with routine questions: How were the boys? Did the tax refund come?

When a chaplain and a soldier showed up at her house, Julie Gonsalves thought for a moment as she approached the door that the soldier was, in fact, her husband.

“I thought, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you ringing the doorbell?’ � When she opened the door and the two men asked if they could come in and talk, “I thought, ‘Just say he’s hurt, just say he’s hurt.’ And that’s not what they said,� she recalled.

“I’m proud of him,� she said. “He loved it.� She laughed. “He wasn’t scared of anything. I always told him he could go on that show ‘Fear Factor’ because he has done all those things.�

In addition to his parents, wife and sons, Gonsalves is survived by a brother, Joshua, 27; and his grandmothers, Irene Gonsalves, 80, and Estelle Runyan, 85.