Herschel Woody Williams
1923–2022
Historical Figure“You have never lived until you have almost died. For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know.”
Hershel Woodrow “Woody” Williams was born on October 2, 1923, in the small community of Quiet Dell in Marion County, West Virginia, and raised on a dairy farm in the surrounding hills of the Mountain State. At birth, he weighed just three and a half pounds and was not expected to survive, a precarious beginning that belied the extraordinary toughness and tenacity that would define his ninety-eight years of life. His mother, Lurenna, named him after the doctor who arrived at their farm several days after his birth. Growing up during the Great Depression, Williams learned the values of hard work, self-reliance, and faith that sustained rural Appalachian communities through the darkest economic crisis in American history.
Before joining the military, Williams worked as a taxi driver and then as a truck driver for a construction company, modest occupations that gave no hint of the heroism that lay ahead. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Williams was among millions of young Americans who answered their country’s call. He attempted to enlist in the United States Marine Corps but was initially rejected for being too short, standing just five feet six inches tall. Undeterred by this setback, Williams persisted, and the Marines eventually accepted him in May 1943 as the need for manpower grew with the expanding scope of the Pacific war. His determination to serve despite rejection reflected the indomitable spirit that would carry him through the most harrowing combat of the Second World War.
Williams underwent training as a demolitions specialist and flamethrower operator, assignments that placed him at the very tip of the spear in the brutal island-hopping campaign across the Pacific. He first saw combat on Guam in 1944, fighting with the 21st Marines, before his unit was assigned to what would become one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the Marine Corps: the assault on Iwo Jima. The tiny volcanic island, just eight square miles in size, was defended by more than twenty thousand Japanese troops dug into a labyrinth of tunnels, bunkers, and reinforced concrete pillboxes that made it one of the most heavily fortified positions the Americans had ever attempted to take.
On February 23, 1945, Corporal Williams distinguished himself in a display of courage that remains among the most extraordinary acts of valor in the annals of the United States Marine Corps. When American tanks attempting to open a lane for the infantry encountered a network of reinforced concrete pillboxes pouring devastating machine gun fire into the advancing Marines, Williams volunteered to neutralize the fortifications with his flamethrower. Carrying a weapon that weighed half his body weight and made him a conspicuous target, Williams advanced under withering enemy fire and systematically destroyed seven concrete pillboxes. He returned to his own lines five separate times to refuel his flamethrower and obtain additional demolition charges, each trip requiring him to traverse open ground swept by Japanese fire. His actions that day opened a breach in the enemy defenses that allowed the American advance to continue.
For his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” Williams received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman at the White House on October 5, 1945. The citation detailed his four hours of unrelenting combat against fortified enemy positions while “covered only by four riflemen” and praised his “aggressive fighting spirit and valiant devotion to duty.” Williams accepted the honor with characteristic humility, insisting throughout his life that the medal belonged not to him alone but to the Marines who fought beside him and especially to those who gave their lives on the black sand beaches of Iwo Jima.
After his discharge in November 1945, Williams served in the Marine Corps Reserve, retiring in 1969 with the rank of Chief Warrant Officer Four. He devoted his civilian career to serving his fellow veterans, working for thirty-three years as a counselor with the Veterans Administration in West Virginia, helping veterans navigate the challenges of readjusting to civilian life. He also served as Commandant of the Veterans Nursing Home in Barboursville, West Virginia, for nearly a decade, caring for veterans who were often in the final years of their lives. His decades of quiet service to those who had served their country exemplified the deep bonds of brotherhood that unite those who have shared the crucible of combat.
In 2010, Williams founded the Woody Williams Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring Gold Star families and the legacy of their fallen loved ones. Under his leadership, the foundation established more than one hundred and fifty Gold Star Families Memorial Monuments across the United States, permanent tributes that ensure the sacrifices of America’s fallen service members and the grief of their families are never forgotten. The foundation represented the culmination of Williams’s lifelong mission to honor the debt owed to those who gave everything in defense of American freedom.
Williams received countless honors during his lifetime. The VA hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, was renamed the Hershel “Woody” Williams VA Medical Center in 2018. The USS Hershel “Woody” Williams, a Navy expeditionary sea base, was commissioned in 2020. The National Guard facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, bears his name, the only such facility in the country named after a Marine. Hershel “Woody” Williams, the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, died on June 29, 2022, at the age of ninety-eight at the medical center that bore his name. His life stands as a monument to the courage, selflessness, and enduring patriotism that represent the finest qualities of the American character. From the dairy farms of West Virginia to the black sand beaches of Iwo Jima and back again, Woody Williams’s journey is a testament to the proposition that the measure of a man is not found in the battles he wins but in the lives he touches through a lifetime of service, sacrifice, and unyielding devotion to his comrades, his community, and his country. His foundation’s Gold Star memorials, standing in communities across America, ensure that the nation will never forget the price of the freedom it enjoys.