Beyond the Call: Corporal Hershel “Woody” Williams at Iwo Jima, 1945
Welcome to Beyond the Call, where history, leadership, and heroism come alive. Today’s story explores Corporal Hershel “Woody” Williams at Iwo Jima in 1945, a powerful account of courage and responsibility in combat. If you enjoy learning more about military history and extraordinary individuals, you can find more articles, podcasts, and resources at Trackpads dot com. On the black volcanic sands of Iwo Jima, Marines lay pressed into shallow shell craters while machine guns hammered from hidden concrete pillboxes ahead. Tanks stalled in the open, trapped by mines and obstacles, unable to move forward or back without drawing a storm of fire. In that bleak stretch of ground, the assault threatened to grind to a halt under relentless enemy resistance. It was here that one compact Marine with a flamethrower on his back was asked to step into a role that might last only minutes.
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Hershel “Woody” Williams crouched behind one of the stalled tanks, the metal hull warm at his back and the weight of the flamethrower pressing into his shoulders. In front of him, the open sand between the American line and the enemy strongpoints looked short on a map, but every inch was swept by crossing fields of fire. Each time a Marine tried to move up, the pillboxes woke, and the air seemed to fill with bullets and fragments. Tanks had tried to inch forward, only to be stopped by mines and precise shots that found every exposed weak point. The situation was simple to understand and almost impossible to solve. Someone had to go forward and burn the strongpoints out.
Beyond the Call is the Monday feature of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine. When the company commander called for a volunteer to take on that task, it was not a formal order backed by rank, but a request that everyone understood could be deadly. Williams stepped forward and accepted the job, knowing that a flamethrower operator was always a marked target. Four riflemen were assigned to protect him as best they could, to fire on enemy openings and draw attention away from his advance. He adjusted the straps of the heavy fuel tank on his back and felt the familiar mixture of dread and focus that comes before dangerous work. Then he rose from the relative safety beside the tank and moved toward the first pillbox.
To understand how he reached that moment, it helps to step back to a quiet dairy farm in West Virginia. Williams grew up as the youngest of many children near Quiet Dell, where days began early with milking cows and ended with the small but constant tasks that kept a farm running. His father died when he was still young, and the family weathered loss and hardship during the years of the Great Depression. Those early experiences taught him responsibility and persistence long before he wore a uniform. The boy who once weighed barely more than three pounds at birth became a wiry teenager used to hard work in all seasons.
As he grew older, Williams took on jobs that kept him moving: driving trucks for a construction company and later working as a taxi driver. These roles demanded alertness, steady nerves, and an ability to read people in quiet, unspoken ways. When war broke out after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was serving with the Civilian Conservation Corps, working on projects far from home yet closely tied to the nation’s needs. He tried to join the Marine Corps in 1942 but was turned away for being too short under the standards of the time. When the height requirement changed the next year, he returned and was accepted, beginning the training that would shape him into an infantry Marine.
Williams eventually joined the Twenty first Marine Regiment of the Third Marine Division and trained as a flamethrower operator, a specialty that combined technical knowledge with intense physical demands. He saw combat on Guam, gaining hard experience in jungle fighting and in working closely with other Marines under fire. The flamethrower was a feared and fragile tool, vulnerable to jams and leaks, and anyone carrying it became an immediate priority for the enemy. By the time his division sailed toward Iwo Jima, he knew exactly what that weapon could do to fortifications and how exposed he would be whenever he used it. All of that training and experience converged on the morning when his company stalled before a wall of concrete and fire.
On Iwo Jima, the Japanese defense in Williams’ sector was built around a network of pillboxes and buried positions that locked together like teeth in a gear. Each strongpoint supported the others, and the black volcanic sand made movement slow and exhausting for the attackers. Tanks were supposed to work with the infantry, drawing fire and smashing fortifications, but mines and well planned obstacles held them in place. The Marines were left lying in shallow depressions, every attempt to rise met by a renewed burst of machine gun fire. Against this backdrop, Williams and his small escort began a series of attacks that would stretch over roughly four hours.
Their method was as simple as it was dangerous. Williams used the stalled tanks as moving shields, staying close behind the armor as it edged forward a short distance. When they reached a point where the tank could go no farther without unacceptable risk, he would break away alone and rush across the remaining ground toward a selected target. The four riflemen tried to keep enemy gunners’ heads down, firing at firing slits and suspected openings. Often, though, the defenders were deep inside reinforced concrete boxes connected to unseen tunnels, and the only clue to their exact location was the flare of a muzzle or the angle of incoming bullets.
At the first pillbox he attacked, Williams crawled along the flank of the position, staying as low as he could while the air above him snapped with rounds. The front of the structure was a narrow opening, protected by sandbags and broken rock, designed to make direct assault nearly impossible. He knew that the weakness lay elsewhere, in the vents that supplied air to the enclosed interior. To reach one, he had to climb on top of the pillbox, giving up what little cover the ground provided. He scrambled up, found the vent, thrust the flamethrower nozzle into the opening, and triggered a blast of burning fuel that silenced the gun inside almost instantly.
That pattern repeated again and again as the fight wore on. Williams would destroy one position, then retreat through the same deadly ground to the friendly side of the line, where others helped him refill his tank or change to a fresh weapon. Each return to the front meant deliberately stepping back into the same storm of fire he had just escaped. At one point, enemy soldiers charged out from a trench to attack him directly, brandishing explosives and bayonets in a last attempt to stop the man whose weapon threatened their entire system of defenses. Instead of falling back, he turned toward them and fired, breaking the attack and clearing the way to another pillbox. The work was brutal, exhausting, and unrelenting.
By the end of those hours, Williams had taken part in the destruction of multiple strongpoints that had anchored the enemy’s line in that sector. The volume of fire hammering the company’s position dropped as each pillbox went silent. Tanks could finally thread a path through the wreckage and move forward in support of the infantry. The battalion still faced a long, hard fight across the island, but the immediate deadlock was broken. The narrow strip of sand that had seemed impassable now became a corridor of advance, opened by one Marine and the small group covering him.
The official Medal of Honor citation for Williams describes his “gallantry and intrepidity” at the risk of his life “above and beyond the call of duty.” Those phrases carry specific meaning. Every Marine on Iwo Jima was expected to face danger and obey orders, yet the decision to volunteer for a near suicidal mission marked a level of initiative that no commander could demand. The citation notes that he fought for approximately four hours under intense fire, repeatedly returning for more charges and fuel, covered only by four riflemen. Behind that language lies the image of a single figure making the same terrible journey over and over, each time with no guarantee of return, until the job was done.
The citation also highlights particular moments, like climbing onto a pillbox to fire through an air vent and charging enemy riflemen who tried to kill him at close range. These are not abstract examples but specific actions that required him to move toward danger rather than away from it. In climbing onto a fortified roof, he deliberately exposed himself to any watching enemy in order to reach the only vulnerable point. In confronting attackers with bayonets, he used a cumbersome, fuel laden weapon at the very distance where it was most awkward to wield. The citation concludes that his determination and heroism were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most heavily defended positions and enabling his company to reach its objective.
After the war, Williams returned to West Virginia and continued a life shaped by service. He married, raised a family, and worked to support veterans and their loved ones, listening to their stories and helping them find their way through the challenges of life after combat. He remained humble about his own role, often speaking more about the Marines who did not come home than about his own actions. Over time, his country recognized his example in lasting ways. A United States Navy ship was named in his honor, and memorials in his home state and elsewhere now carry his likeness and his story.
Remembering Hershel “Woody” Williams means seeing more than a single moment of flame on a battlefield. It means understanding the long line from a fragile newborn on a small farm, to a young man turned away at a recruiting station, to a Marine who volunteered again and again to step into the open under fire. His story reminds us that history often turns on the choices of individuals who accept responsibility when others might quietly hope to be overlooked. In that sense, his courage on Iwo Jima continues to speak to Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardians, and civilians who face their own difficult decisions. The sand of that island is far away now, but the example of one man who went beyond the call remains close whenever we consider what duty, sacrifice, and leadership truly mean.
