Last Surviving WWII Medal of Honor Recipient Hershel “Woody” Williams’ heroic actions on Iwo Jima

when the medal of honor was presented to me i really did not know what it was why was i selected to receive our nation's highest award when marines right beside me didn't get home [Music] i was born in marion county a little community country community of quiet dell my father died when i was 11. my mother was running a dairy farm in west virginia and there was no way i could possibly get an endorsement so i came home and i came home with the intentions of joining the united states marine corps to protect america because we're going to go to war i felt that war could take away our freedom and our privileges and i was going to be a part of protecting that when i got home i still was 17 years old my mother would not sign my paper to permit me to go so i had to wait until i was 18. i was 18 in october in november i went into the marine corps recruiting to enlist and i'm only five foot six tall and the recruiter when he looked at my paper that i'd filled out for enlistment didn't look at it really he just looked at me and said i can't take you you're too short so i went back to the farm if i couldn't go in the marine corps i wasn't going to go i'd had two brothers already drafted that were in the army and i didn't like particularly that uniform so i want to look like a marine so uh in that was in november of 1942. in early 1943 the marine corps or the government at least lowered the height requirement that they had had of 5 8 or better down to a lower height and then they could take people that were not that tall so the recruiter came to the farm i'd gone back to the farm to work with mom and and he came to the farm and asked me if i still want to go and i said yes so i went back to the office in town and he signed me up and off i went once we got aboard ship then they brought out a board that showed the outline of what iwo jima looked like and the words were used at that time or maybe a little later it looked like a pork chop and they told us that we were a reserve to two other marine divisions and that probably we would never get off ship that we would be reserved to them in the event they needed us and that the campaign would probably last no more than three to five days that was the information that everybody apparently had at that time because we had no intelligence of what the island consisted of we certainly didn't know they had 22 000 japanese on it we didn't know that they had miles of tunnels dug out in the island none of that information was available so when we got to iwo jima we're parked out in the ocean waiting to see if they need us and on the first night after losing so many people on the beach we were notified we will be going in the next day and that was the 20th of february and when we got aboard the higgins boats to try to go ashore we went out and circled in the ocean all day waiting for the signal to come in and we never did get it because there was no groom there was no room for us to land they had them pinned to the beach and and uh the there was no place for us to to to go when we got there so we went back aboard ship and spent another night then we went in the next day and uh landed when we landed the ramp went down we're all huddled down in the higgins boats so we can see nothing on the way in uh everybody is down below so that that you can protect yourself to some extent and when they've dropped the ramp to let us you know exit the higgins boat the beach was just completely covered with all kinds of equipment blown up jeeps and tanks stuck and bodies and and equipment laying everywhere and one of the things that has always been in my mind it'll be there and long as i live that when we went off the higgins boats off to my left and i'm sure everybody saw that i don't think i was the only one that of the marines that had been killed they had wrapped them in their ponchos everybody had a poncho for the rain and rained a lot and they wrapped them in their poncho and just stacked them in stacks right along the beach edge and i saw that and i've never lost that vision we finally got through the soft ash that was there they call it black sand but it really is ash from the volcano over the eons and uh very uh fine it's not it won't compact it's like little bbs and and you couldn't dig a hole in it because you dig a hole and just roll back in again but uh it was so chaotic and we finally worked our way crawled most of the way but we finally worked our way up to the first airfield we didn't know it as the under uh ranked people but the objective was that we would become the spearhead on the island we would we would go across the airfield and be the spearhead to sort of split the island we didn't know that until we got involved but when we got to the airfield everybody is digging in at that point you could dig a hole because the ash wasn't there it was dirt and uh we were digging foxholes to get into and all of a sudden uh the marines around me began yelling or saying something about a flag and some of them were firing their weapons into the air standing up she was just shooting into the air and uh they're all looking back toward mount suribachi and we're about a thousand yards up the beach from suribachi and uh i turn around to see what what's going on and that was my first vision of the flag flying on mount sirobachi it was already up and the wind was blowing it it had full full unfold and what i do same thing they were doing i decided to join the group and start firing my weapon too you know you got got to take part the reason i became the flamethrower operator is i had six marines with me when we hit the beach and i had two of them with each of abc and companies but they're gone and i don't know where they are i don't know whether they were killed or wounded and still yet today don't know but i'm the only flamethrower now left in sea company and uh i'm an acting sergeant i'm the guy in supply or back in headquarters that supposed to keep them supplied with demolition and flamethrowers that they need and since they were gone um my commanding officer uh captain beck at the time he eventually became a major he called for a meeting of all ncos i as a corporal was not considered an nco and i wasn't going to go but my first sergeant told me that he wanted me there so we gathered in a huge shell crater and he was to work out he was working out a system of how we could uh get to the pill boxes that had us stopped there was a string of pill boxes that built to protect the airfield and they we couldn't break through them there were just too many of them and the japanese was in a protected area were in the open area so when we gathered in the shell crater much of which had no particular meaning to me because he's he's talking about plans and but then he said to me do you think you could do or worse to this effect at least do you think you could do something with the flamethrower against some of these pill boxes and apparently we hadn't tried that i don't know but how i answered some other marines said later on that i said i'll try so he gave me four marines to give me some help protect me while i'm trying to get to a pill box and get flame in it and uh and then uh i select one other individual to help me with an explosive we call him a pole charged man uh if i burn out the pill box he used to run in and put a demolition in it set it off make sure everybody in there is gone and he didn't last but just a little while he got shot through the helmet and and it didn't penetrate his head fortunately but he was out of whack for a little while and so i just went to work after we crossed the first airfield and encountered this great number of pill boxes they were reinforced concrete pill boxes and naturally the enemy is inside in a protected area and the only way we can get to them is to jump up and run aways and hit the deck and try to get close enough and the only target that we had was in the aperture that they had in the front of the pillbox that they used to shoot out of all the rest of the pillbox was solid so we we would try and we would have to back off because they would get too many of us and we'd have too many killed or wounded so when when i picked up the flamethrower to eliminate some of the pill boxes i was only doing that for which i was trained other marines had trained me to do that and had they not trained me it would have been impossible but by eliminating the seven pill boxes in the area in front of us or at least eliminating the enemy within according to what my commanding officer said and i knew nothing about this i'm a corporal i don't i don't know what's going on except in my own little realm that it opened a lane that we could get through and by in once we broke through the line of pill boxes we had the advantage because they have no way of shooting from the back of the pill box they can only shoot from the front of the pill box so they said that by breaking through that string of pill boxes it opened a lane that gave us an opportunity to continue to advance and succeed in our operation and two of those marines that day i didn't know who they were i just selected marines we were so disorganized at the time we didn't know who anybody except our own squad was and these two in marines i had no idea who they were but i said come with me and of course as a marine you do what you're told and two of those lost their lives that day protecting mine so it absolutely changed my total life i became a person i never dreamed of becoming as far as i knew when i when this war is over and i never would permit myself to think i was not going to survive if that thought even started into my brain i would kick it out because i felt that i had to believe that i'm going to get back home to a beautiful lady that i'm engaged to and i want to marry so i would never let myself think i wasn't going to make it but when the medal of honor was presented to me i really did not know what it was i even though the words may have been mentioned somewhere along the way by my commanding general i still didn't know what it was i had never seen one never heard tell of it and the day that president truman presented it to me i still had no concept of what it meant or exactly why am i getting this why was i selected to receive our nation's highest award when marines right beside me didn't get home so it it was something that took a tremendous amount of adjustment and i became a public figure at that point that i never dreamed of coming of becoming and i've had i had to live a different life than i ever anticipated the world war ii generation was a tough committed loving country loving believing in freedom group of people we were raised that way we were taught that way all through school it was it was something that our teachers emphasized constantly and the historical parts of our country i had to memorize the gettysburg address and recite it time and time again because it had such a meaning that of people who had sacrificed their lives to maintain the one of the most precious gifts we have that of our freedom so the people today need to remember that if we ever lose it we will never ever be able to regain it

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 1,836,928

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal

Id: r5CyOmuXrhs

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021