I just saw this in the NY Times. The last Medal of Honor winner from WWII.
"Hershel Williams, the last survivor among the 472 servicemen who were awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary bravery in World War II and the oldest living recipient of the medal, died on Wednesday in Huntington, W.Va. He was 98.
His death, at the Huntington Veterans Affairs Medical Center, was announced by the Woody Williams Foundation.
Corporal Williams was lying prone on the black volcanic ash of Iwo Jima the morning of Feb. 23, 1945, when he was startled by the sounds of cheering. “Suddenly, the Marines around me starting jumping up and down, firing their weapons in the air,” he told the Marine Corps History Division long afterward. “My head was buried in the sand. Then I looked up and saw Old Glory on top of Mount Suribachi.”
But the fight for that Japanese-administered island and its airfields some 750 miles south of Tokyo, needed by the Army Air Forces to support long-range bombing missions over Japan, was only in its fifth day when the flag went up. The battle was just beginning for Corporal Williams, a 21-year-old Marine from West Virginia.
That afternoon, he wiped out seven Japanese pillboxes with flamethrowers, opening a gap that enabled Marine tanks and personnel carriers to break through the enemy defenses. He scurried from one pillbox to another, miraculously untouched by the intense Japanese machine-gun fire that bounced off his equipment — sounding, as he told it, like a jackhammer.
During his four-hour foray, in which he received supporting fire from several fellow Marines, two of whom were killed during the mission, Corporal Williams returned five times to his headquarters to get new flamethrowers when his supply of diesel fuel and high-octane gasoline ran out.
He received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, from President Harry S. Truman in October 1945. The citation stated that his “unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strong points encountered by his regiment.”
A total of 27 Marines and Navy servicemen received the medal, 14 of them posthumously, for heroism in the 36-day battle for Iwo Jima.
Corporal Williams arrived on Iwo Jima with the 21st Marines of the Third Marine Division. When Marine armored vehicles became bogged down in their attempt to penetrate the network of Japanese defense positions, his commander asked him if he could do something to support them.
Thus began his one-man flame-throwing foray.
He told Larry Smith for the oral history “Iwo Jima” (2008) that “you had to get within 20 yards of a pillbox, with machine-gun bullets kicking up.”
“One time, the men in one pillbox came out,” he recalled. “As they came running toward me with their rifles and bayonets poised, they ran straight into the fire from my flamethrower. As if in slow motion, they just fell down.”
Corporal Williams incurred a leg wound from shrapnel 11 days later, but he remained on Iwo Jima until the battle ended.
Mr. Williams left active military service in November 1945 and returned to his native West Virginia, where he was a counselor for the Veterans Administration. He remained in the Marine Corps as a reservist and retired as a chief warrant officer in 1969. His foundation raises money to provide scholarships for children who had lost a parent in war.
In March 2020, he attended a ceremony in Norfolk, Va., for the commissioning of the warship Hershel “Woody” Williams.
Mr. Williams’s wife, Ruby (Meredith) Williams, whom he married in 1945, died in 2007. They had two daughters, Travie Jane and Tracie Jean, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
Semper Fi Hershel Williams
Rest in Peace
"Hershel Williams, the last survivor among the 472 servicemen who were awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary bravery in World War II and the oldest living recipient of the medal, died on Wednesday in Huntington, W.Va. He was 98.
His death, at the Huntington Veterans Affairs Medical Center, was announced by the Woody Williams Foundation.
Corporal Williams was lying prone on the black volcanic ash of Iwo Jima the morning of Feb. 23, 1945, when he was startled by the sounds of cheering. “Suddenly, the Marines around me starting jumping up and down, firing their weapons in the air,” he told the Marine Corps History Division long afterward. “My head was buried in the sand. Then I looked up and saw Old Glory on top of Mount Suribachi.”
But the fight for that Japanese-administered island and its airfields some 750 miles south of Tokyo, needed by the Army Air Forces to support long-range bombing missions over Japan, was only in its fifth day when the flag went up. The battle was just beginning for Corporal Williams, a 21-year-old Marine from West Virginia.
That afternoon, he wiped out seven Japanese pillboxes with flamethrowers, opening a gap that enabled Marine tanks and personnel carriers to break through the enemy defenses. He scurried from one pillbox to another, miraculously untouched by the intense Japanese machine-gun fire that bounced off his equipment — sounding, as he told it, like a jackhammer.
During his four-hour foray, in which he received supporting fire from several fellow Marines, two of whom were killed during the mission, Corporal Williams returned five times to his headquarters to get new flamethrowers when his supply of diesel fuel and high-octane gasoline ran out.
He received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, from President Harry S. Truman in October 1945. The citation stated that his “unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strong points encountered by his regiment.”
A total of 27 Marines and Navy servicemen received the medal, 14 of them posthumously, for heroism in the 36-day battle for Iwo Jima.
Corporal Williams arrived on Iwo Jima with the 21st Marines of the Third Marine Division. When Marine armored vehicles became bogged down in their attempt to penetrate the network of Japanese defense positions, his commander asked him if he could do something to support them.
Thus began his one-man flame-throwing foray.
He told Larry Smith for the oral history “Iwo Jima” (2008) that “you had to get within 20 yards of a pillbox, with machine-gun bullets kicking up.”
“One time, the men in one pillbox came out,” he recalled. “As they came running toward me with their rifles and bayonets poised, they ran straight into the fire from my flamethrower. As if in slow motion, they just fell down.”
Corporal Williams incurred a leg wound from shrapnel 11 days later, but he remained on Iwo Jima until the battle ended.
Mr. Williams left active military service in November 1945 and returned to his native West Virginia, where he was a counselor for the Veterans Administration. He remained in the Marine Corps as a reservist and retired as a chief warrant officer in 1969. His foundation raises money to provide scholarships for children who had lost a parent in war.
In March 2020, he attended a ceremony in Norfolk, Va., for the commissioning of the warship Hershel “Woody” Williams.
Mr. Williams’s wife, Ruby (Meredith) Williams, whom he married in 1945, died in 2007. They had two daughters, Travie Jane and Tracie Jean, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
Semper Fi Hershel Williams
Rest in Peace