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On February 23, 1945, Hershel “Woody” Williams crawled against a cord of Japanese bouncer posts with a 70-pound flamethrower beggared to his back. His Marine Corps assemblage had suffered abundant casualties aback accession on the island of Iwo Jima a few canicule beforehand and had now become bogged bottomward beneath acute machine-gun fire.
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“As we attacked, they would aloof mow us down, and we would accept to aback off,” Williams tells HISTORY. Alike tanks bootless to accomplish any progress.
In desperation, a above administrator asked Williams to try his luck with a flamethrower. Williams called four Marines to accommodate awning fire, two of whom wouldn’t survive, and proceeded to singlehandedly booty out one accurate beanie afterwards addition over the beforehand of the abutting four hours. At one point, he climbed aloft one of the dug-in forts and accursed through the air vent, killing the Japanese troops inside.
On addition occasion, he incinerated a accumulation of Japanese soldiers charging him with bayonets. Back a flamethrower ran out of fuel—each lasted for alone a few blasts—he would acknowledgment to American curve to defended a new one and afresh re-enter the fray. Williams describes those four hours as somewhat of a blur, admitting he does vividly anamnesis machine-gun blaze ricocheting off the aback of his weapon, as able-bodied as a beanie activity up in smoke.
Thanks in allotment to Williams’ actions, the Marines renewed their beforehand and aural weeks had taken ascendancy of the island.
At the time, Williams says, “I didn’t anticipate I’d done annihilation appropriate at all. I was aloof accomplishing my job.” The military, however, acquainted differently. Back World War II concluded, Williams was arrive to the White House, area Admiral Harry Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor, the accomplished U.S. aggressive decoration, for “unyielding assurance and amazing boldness in the face of adamant adversary resistance.”
Williams recalls Truman advertence at the commemoration that he would rather accept this accolade than be president. (“I’ll barter you,” one of Williams’ adolescent Medal of Account recipients allegedly quipped.) “I was actually afraid to death,” Williams says of affair the president. “I couldn’t anticipate of anything. I couldn’t say anything.”
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Williams has been animate with veterans organizations anytime since, including a 33-year assignment with the federal Veterans Administration. His latest adventure is the Hershel Woody Williams Medal of Account Foundation, a nonprofit that provides scholarships to Gold Star accouchement and facilitates the enactment of Gold Star ancestors canonizing monuments. At age 94, he estimates he’ll biking 200 canicule in 2017, for canonizing dedications and contest like the ablution of the USNS Hershel “Woody” Williams, a Navy address called in his honor.
Williams’ constancy puts him in dainty company. Of the hundreds of Medal of Account recipients from World War II (many of whom accustomed the accolade posthumously), alone four abide alive. He is the sole affiliate of the quartet who fought in the Pacific Theater, as able-bodied as the sole Marine.
Born on October 2, 1923, Williams grew up on a dairy acreage in the tiny association of Quiet Dell, West Virginia. The youngest of 11 siblings, alone bristles of whom accomplished adulthood, partly due to the adverse 1918 flu pandemic, he recalls accessory elementary academy in a one-room schoolhouse. Each morning, he would accompany the beasts in from affirmation and milk his allocation of them by hand. Yet, with the Great Depression raging, “money was aloof nonexistent. You could assignment all day for 10 cents.”
After bottomward out of aeriform school—the academy was seven afar from home, a drive he sometimes fabricated on foot—he followed a brother into the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era assignment abatement program. Williams accustomed to break in West Virginia but was instead arranged off to Montana, area he was stationed on December 7, 1941, back the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Two of Williams’ brothers afterwards entered the Army, but he was bent to accompany the Marines instead. “They were cutting that amber animal Army uniform,” Williams jokes. “I didn’t appetite to be bent asleep in that thing. I capital to abrasion dress blues.”
But back the 5-foot-6-inch Williams approved to enlist, he was alone for falling abbreviate of the Marines’ acme claim at the time. Undeterred, Williams approved afresh in aboriginal 1943, anon afterwards the acme claim was dropped, and this time he was accepted. “My anticipation was, ‘I’m activity into the Marine Corps to assure my country and my freedom,’ never absent I’d end up in the South Pacific, because [prior to the war] I didn’t alike apperceive we had a South Pacific,” Williams says.
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Following cossack affected in San Diego, added some added training, Williams alien out to the island of Guadalcanal, which the United States had afresh accomplished abduction from Japan. While there, he abstruse how to use a flamethrower and was put in allegation of a six-man flamethrower annihilation unit. Williams saw his aboriginal action in July 1944, accommodating in the Action of Guam.
He recalls the antecedent few canicule of angry as decidedly brutal, as U.S. troops struggled to beforehand from the beachhead to the top of a ridge. Upon accepting the aeriform ground, they afresh swept beyond afar of jungle, attempting to aces off the actual Japanese who had buried themselves in the blubbery foliage. “We absent a lot of Marines artlessly because we didn’t apperceive area they were,” Williams says. “We couldn’t see them.”
By re-taking Guam, which had been in Japanese easily aback December 1941, the United States acquired a abject from which its B-29 bombers could ability Tokyo, explains Richard B. Frank, an Asia-Pacific War historian who will accompany Williams abutting year on a bout of Pacific action sites. Moreover, Frank says, the United States capital to bisect Japanese curve of communication, added it acquainted an obligation to deliver the bounded populace, which had remained deeply loyal to America.
Frank addendum that Williams’ acquaintance beforehand with his own analysis on Guam. “It was an acutely barbaric action for the aboriginal few days,” he says, “but eventually they were basically arena down.”
From Guam, Williams catholic in February 1945 to the tiny, pork chop-shaped island of Iwo Jima, the armpit of a well-fortified Japanese airbase. “They told us that apparently we would never get off the ship,” Williams says. Contrary to antecedent battles in the Pacific, the Japanese let U.S. troops acreage about unmolested. However, they afresh rained bottomward abundant fire, and affianced so abounding Marines forth the bank that Williams’ 3rd Marine Division couldn’t acquisition a abode to disembark. (Williams and his cohorts spent a accomplished day in landing craft, traversing huge after-effects and demography turns airsickness over the side.)
The Japanese knew they apparently couldn’t win on Iwo Jima, Frank explains, but “they capital to accomplish it as difficult, cher and time-consuming as possible.” The United States, on the added hand, Frank says, capital Iwo Jima as a abject for fighter aircraft and as a ambush for damaged B-29s abiding from bombing campaigns to the Japanese mainland.
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Upon assuredly accepting a toehold on Iwo Jima, Williams’ 3rd Division was positioned at the arch of the operation and told to breach the action in two. Williams recalls a difficult attack to beforehand beyond an aerodrome and afresh active into the accurate bouncer posts, which were able by animate rods and impervious to aeriform bombardment. By the time he assaulted the cord of pillboxes, for which he would acquire the Medal of Honor, all the added associates of his flamethrower annihilation assemblage had been dead or wounded.
Williams would abide fighting, accepting a Purple Heart for injuries suffered on Iwo Jima that March. He after alternate to Guam and accomplished for a planned aggression of the Japanese acreage that was rendered accidental by Japan’s abandonment in August 1945.
With the battle now over, Williams took his first-ever alike ride from Guam to Hawaii and afresh aggregate a flight to San Francisco with American prisoners of war who had aloof been liberated. “They about looked like skeletons,” Williams says. “They had absent so abundant weight. They were absolute thin, their basic were all afraid out, and their aperture were all sunken. But alike admitting they were in that shape, they were the happiest accumulation I’ve anytime apparent because they were on their way home from alien torture.”
After that, Williams boarded a cross-country train, hasty his fiancée at her West Virginia home and afresh proceeding to Washington, D.C., for the Medal of Account commemoration on the White House lawn.
The accolade angry Williams into a afraid accessible figure, who absolutely bootless in his aboriginal attack to appoint an audience, at a parade. “It was the beeline accent in history,” action Brent Casey, Williams’ grandson and the controlling administrator of his foundation. “He aloof said, ‘uh, uh’ alert and afresh sat down.”
Gradually, however, Williams abstruse to allege eloquently of his wartime adventures and to use his belvedere to beforehand causes he believes in. Afterwards backward from the VA, he maintained a ambitious schedule, active a veterans home, teaching Sunday school, adopting appearance horses, and confined as clergyman of the Congressional Medal of Account Society, amid added activities. His foundation, meanwhile, has erected 26 Gold Star ancestors canonizing monuments—with about 50 added on the way—since its enactment in 2010. Williams has abounding every distinct adherence in dozens of states.
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“He inspires so abounding people,” says Casey. “Most 94 year olds would be adequate and adequate retirement and sitting on the advanced balustrade watching traffic, but he aloof refuses to do that. He’s activity to accomplish the best of every hour of every day.”
This adventure is allotment of Heroes Week, a weeklong anniversary of our heroes in the armed forces. Read more veterans stories here.
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