How a single flame-throwing 'killing machine' saved his entire company at Iwo Jima - as told to JAMES PATTERSON by his grandson

UK Daily Mail ^ | 10/13/2024 | James Patterson

[DFG]

Hershel 'Woody' Williams is 17 years old and lives on a dairy farm in Quiet Dell, West Virginia, with his mother and 11 siblings. War is coming; one, he is sure, that will take away America's freedoms and privileges.

Marines wear snappy blue uniforms around town and Woody is impressed. If he's going to war, he's going as a Marine. But, at 17, he needs his mother's signature to enlist.

Mom refuses to sign the papers. He turns 18 next October - if he wants to be a Marine, he's going to have to wait.

December 7, 1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

November 1942: Woody walks into the Marine Corps recruiting office. The recruiter doesn't so much as glance at his papers. The man is too busy studying Woody's stature.

'I can't take you,' the recruiter says. 'You're too short.'

To be a Marine, Woody is told, you must be five eight or better. He's five six.

His two brothers have been drafted by the Army. He might've seriously considered following in their footsteps if it weren't for the Army's old brown wool uniform. It's the ugliest thing in town.

I want to be in those dress blues, he thinks. If he can't be a Marine, well, he's not going.

Woody returns to working on the dairy farm with Mom.

In early 1943, the recruiter shows up on his doorstep. The Marine Corps, he explains, has lowered the height requirement.

'Do you still want to go?'

'Yes,' Woody replies, and signs up.

He's sent 8,000 miles from home. On the boat, he looks at a map of the pork chop-shaped island of Iwo Jima.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

In August 1944 the island had been shelled and bombed so much that the Japanese commander stated that Iwo Jima could have been taken by a platoon of US Marines in one day. For the next six months Japan reinforced the island. They dug 17 miles of tunnels that weren’t there in August.

[SunkenCiv]