Updated

World War II Medal of Honor recipient Walter D. Ehlers (EE'-lurz) has died in California at age 92.

Ehlers's wife, Dorothy says her husband of 58 years died Thursday at a hospital in Long Beach. The cause was kidney failure.

In 1944, Ehlers was a 23-year-old Army staff sergeant when the Allies invaded the beaches of France in some of the war's deadliest fighting.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, he killed seven enemy soldiers, knocked out two machine-gun nests and rescued a wounded comrade despite being shot in the back.

His older brother, Roland, died during the D-Day invasion.

Ehlers moved to California from his native Kansas after the war and worked for many years as a Veterans Administration benefits counselor.

He took part in numerous D-Day memorials.