Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories Hershel Woody Williams 20240713

I was born and raised in the country. At the time of growing up, my father was in the dairy business. We were farm people and we lived in a farm community. We had 11 kids born to our family. Some of them back in the teens and when the flu hit in 1918, the epidemic came along, we lost most of them. But five of us survived. I wasnt born yet. I wasnt born until 1923. Of course the flu epidemic ended in 1919. We had no military influence in our community at all. There was no bases. People who went in the army back at that time and we didnt know there was any other branch of the service. Because we thought everybody went into the army. The army was the army and included everybody. The army or military service was not too well thought of in those days. You went in the army because you were in trouble with the law or you were too lazy to work. Thats the only reason you went into the military. We had a couple of fellows in our community who apparently didnt like to farm. They didnt like hoeing corn and putting up hay and whatever. Those two fellows though they were not related, two different families, they were good friends and they joined the marine corps. Back at that time the only enlistment period they had was six years. So you had to enlist for six. Also back at that time all marines when they were off base wore dress blues. It was trying to make its name and its way into what it finally became. And in those days, you got one 30day furlough a year. That doesnt mean you couldnt have a weekend pass, but thats the only furlough you got. You had to use it all at one time. Those two individuals, perhaps not at the same time, but sometimes they would be together. They would come home on the 30day furlough. When they did, they were always so very neat in dress and manners and all of that. We kids would follow them around like listening to their stories and they storied to us a little bit and told us wild stories and entertainment kind of thing. Home fights they and how many battles they won and stuff like that. I was very impressed by those two marines. Never dreaming i would ever go into military service. I had no plans whatsoever. And as i said, we had no military influence into any of our cousins or people around us. The ccc came along and for people who didnt like to hoe corn, it was a Good Opportunity for them to get into an occupation where they could have an assured monthly income, even though it was only 21 a month. It was a place to eat and clothing furnished and warm place to sleep. We had a lot of young fellows, young men in our communities, my brother was one of them, that joined the conservation corps. When i got to be 17, you could go to the ccc. When i got to be 17, i went in. I thought since we had civilian conservation corps bases in our state i would be sent to the same one my brother was. That didnt happen. He was in the mountains of West Virginia. They sent me to another city for just a short period of time and transferred me to montana. As far as i was concerned, i was clear out of the world. If i knew montana existed, i didnt know anything about it. I ended up in montana and thats where i was when december the seventh came along. The ccc made a provision that if you wanted to get out for the purpose of entering the armed fores, we wore Army Uniforms and we had army doctors and that type of thing. The permanent personnel of the cccs were army people. First sergeant, sergeant major, lieutenant that handled all the discipline and finances and that type of thing. I requested a discharge and asked to be discharged to go home and join the marine corps. I had not quite missed my 18th birthday yet. They gave me a discharge and i went home. As soon as i passed my 18th birthday in october and in the november i went to enlist. You never had a doubt you always wanted to join the corps . I wanted to join the corps. Theoretically i guess thats all i knew. I was impressed by the actions and the appearance of these two marines who would come home on their furloughs. I guess i decided somewhere along the way if i ever become or go into the military, thats really what i want to be. I want to look like those guys. They were taller than me because you had a height requirement of 68 or better before you could get in at one time several years before that. They had a height requirement of 511. You couldnt get in. There werent a lot of people in the United States that were 511 or better back in those days. They didnt make them. I decided if i ever went into the military, thats what i wanted to be. Nothing about the marine corps. I went in after my 18th birthday and filled out the paperwork to enlist and turned it in and he looked at me and said sorry, we cant take you and he told me the reason being, i was too short. I was only 56. I went back to the farm. If they dont want me, i dont want them. I will go there or stay on the farm. But he kept the paper. In early 1943 or Something Like february or march in that area, they did away with the height requirement and they would take runts or most anybody else that were looking for people. He looked me up. I lived about seven miles out of town. He looked me up and asked me if i wanted to go to the marine corps and i did. Even at that time they were coming into the marine corps so rapidly from the east coast that paris island could not handle everybody that wanted to be in the marine corps. They had to set up temporary systems down at paris island, but they couldnt find enough instructors to handle everybody and when was this . 1942, 43. The tent cities were out they called them mud huts because it was just mud. With all the hundreds of people and the rain, there were no paved streets or paved walks or nothing. Just dirt. When it rained, it got muddy. Six of us backed up because each county, we have 55 counties in our state and assume this is true in other states and i dont know that, but in our state anyway they took two marines from each county a month. That was the quota. They took me from my county and they took two from another county close by and two from another county. Six of us got together at one time and they swore us in and sent us down to the capital city of charleston to wait for transportation to take us to boot camp. Boot camp certainly didnt mean anything to me at that point, even when they said it. When we got there, they kept us overnight the next day and took us out and put us on the train. If they told me, i didnt get it as to where i was going. I thought i was going to paris island. This troop train started down in florida or georgia and they come up through the Southern States and were picking up people as it came along. Tennessee, South Carolina and ended up in West Virginia and they continued to pick up troops until we got to indiana or illinois. One or the other. I guess the train was full. They shipped us all to california. We all ended up that whole troop train ended up, that whole troop train ended up in california, boot camp. And of course having been in montana which i thought was the end of the world, california, i knew was the end of the world. Theres no place else you can go out here. So i became a hollywood marine. The paris island guys gave me a hard time, but thats all right. But following boot camp, you got a tenday furlow, everybody got one. But in those days, flights were impossible. All the aircraft were being used for military purposes. You couldnt catch a plane anywhere. So in ten days, i couldnt leave california, i went from san diego, california and come back to West Virginia in ten days, i could dont that. So i never got home. So following the tenday furlow, i stayed with a marine friend in los angeles who took me in, gave me a bed for two weeks. And then we took additional a couple of months and shipped overseas. This is what, early44 . That is late43. Late43. So you had heard about guadal canal and those places . Very little. We had some drill instructors who had been to guada canal. But they really didnt teach us much about what was over there, what they did. They were more interested in trying to make us marines. The boot camp length at that time was also 13 weeks, which it is today. So at the end of 13 weeks, then you went for additional, and we were riflemen, so we went for additional snooping and pooping kind of training. And learned how to follow tanks and use tanks for protection to get to the objective if we had any tanks. And then sent overseas. And when i got to guadal canal, i went there as a replacement to fill in for those marines that we had lost. Our division, our divisions there when i got overseas, and we were to be replacements for the third division. But before they could get us all organized and transportation arranged and to ship us out, the marines on bogganville, thats where i got involved with flame throwing and democrat listing. We had been told over and over again, dont volunteer for anything. And i dont know how i was selected. I knew nothing about either one. But the sergeant that was in charge of the special weapons unit, which was only demolition flame thrower, thats all we had, he selected the people to go in that unit. And we started out with more than six, but thats what we ended up with. Eventually, we ended up with, well, seven counting the guy in charge. You mean the corporal in guadal canal . Yeah. So what sort of training did you do with the flame thrower and the demo . Well, of course the most dangerous part of the whole thing was demolition, so thats where we started out, thats what they started training us at, how to handle tnt. And that the point, we did not have what they call composition c2 yet. It was strictly tnt and of course we were using blasting caps and prima cord so they were teaching us how to safely use that stuff and how to blow something up and how much to use to blow something up. So we went through that phase first and then they selected those who were going to train on flame throwers. And since they were going to give me the job and i didnt know this at the time, give me the job as the corporal in charge of this sixmarine group, sixman group, i took training in both. After we finished demolition training, then i went to flame thrower training. We trained with all kinds of the flame thrower was new, we had never seen that kind of thing before. We trained with all kinds of different fuels. Napalm, we just called it flash fresh gel. Napalm had not been thought of as a name. But it was a phosphorous gel. Thick, was like jello. Jello like the stuff you eat . Thicker than jelly. Because you didnt want it to run when it hit something, it would stick and stay there. And the purpose of the phosphorus was, if you got it on your clothes and tried to wipe it off, it just continued to burn. It didnt have to have continual ignition, because if theres a pod here, and theres a pod there, it will burn just like this pod up here and theres no connection between the two. But it was very difficult to get on target. We would crawl out through the field and we would have a target out here. And assuming that its a pill box or a hole in the ground or a cave, and we would try to shoot at that thing and before we could get our gun organized, we have already got all of our fluid going. Because it only lasted 70 seconds, if you just opened it up and let it go. Because the air tank on your back would only contain so much air and the tanks themselves got a few gallons of whatever fuel you were using, napalm or whatever it was. And so the sergeant that was doing the training on this thing, he didnt like that at all, and he just felt that we needed some other kind of fuel. He began experimenting, hes the guy that came up with the proportion of the diesel fuel and high octane gasoline that we mixed up. At first we got it too light and if you fired it into the air, it would just backfire on you, and i said i lost my eyebrows and all the hair on my arms and things like that because it hits the wind and it bounced right back because it was so light. And it was on fire . But we finally got a mixture that had the proper balance to it. And then you could fire it on the ground instead of into the air, roll it on the ground, and it would roll for 15 or 20 yards. Just a huge ball of flame. About three seconds of flame and it was just rolling. Was it sticky too . No, it was not. It was just liquid . It was just liquid, but it burned about 3,500 degrees fahrenheit, so when it hit, whatever it hit, it would immediately set afire, but the main chilling element was the removal of oxygen, because when that big ball of flame rolled over, either in the pill box or a person that might be in the in vietnam, they called them spider holes. I dont remember what the heck we called them at all. But just so it would just roll. Roll. Yeah. It was very deadly. Whos the guy that was in charge of your unit . He was a sergeant, you said . No, i had a sergeant in charge. He was the trainer. Was he experienced . No, see, the flame thrower was new. They had just brought that thing out when we got overseas. We didnt even use flame throwers in bogganville, we didnt have them. I was just wondering if they told you what it could do. No, just experimentation. Its quite obvious that its well known that the flame thrower were aimed at armying at thes . Did they throw you that if you were a flame thrower that you were going to be transferred . Our First Campaign after we were trained, we were there, i got there in late november of43, and we didnt go to guam until july of44. So it was during that period of time that we were training and practicing and all that kind of stuff. At the same time, youre out doing ten and 20 mile hikes and conditioning and all the other training that just goes with being a marine, you know. You just dont get over one thing, if theyre doing a 20mile hike, you got to go too, i dont know why, but everybodys got to go. But when we went to guam, being the flame thrower operator, i had an assistant. You had to have an assistant with a flame thrower operator because you were carrying the flame thrower on your back and you had no room for anything else, your pack, nothing. And they gave you a. 45 as your weapon. And i couldnt hit the side of a mountain with a. 45. I just never was any good with those things, i guess i jerked it too quickly, i dont know. But anyway, my assistant that they assigned to me was a guy by the name of vernon walker. And vernon was 64. But he carried his pack, my pack, my ammunition, my grenades, all that stuff that i couldnt carry. And i lost vernon, we were together all the time during guam. And then we stayed together when we got to ewell and i lost vernon in iwo. March the 6th. We had been there since the 26th of february. At the time vernon was not trained as a demolition or flame thrower operator, he was a rifleman. But they made him my assistant, as i said, you had to have somebody carry your stuff for you. He carried my stuff. But when we landed on the 21st vernon was with one of the other companies. We had abc company, the First Battalion and he was with a company at the time. So the 23rd, the day i knocked out the pill boxes and did my job, vernon wasnt with me at the time all this happened. But following that, we got back together again. We were down to, well, ill back up a moment. We hit the beach, our company hit the beach with around 270 marines, that was a normal company strength, first, second, third platoon, border platoon, et cetera. On march 5, we were down to 17 people. Thats all we had left. So vernon came over as a result of that. He was brought over by First Sergeant somebody, not me. But he came over to assist me. On the fifth, we got a whole group of replacement marines straight from the states that graduated boot camp, but they had not had any advanced training. But they brought them in to replace the loss that we had had. So the night of the 5th of march, we spent all night training these marines, they had never seen a flame thrower. Many of them had never fired a machinegun. And certainly or a mortar. So they were divided up. All they had, whatever the number. So i got the flame thrower because im out, i dont have any flame thrower left, except me. And i got somebody to train with flame thrower and we went through the night attempting to train them and we were back off of the line at the time. But it was our outfit to head out the next morning to go back on the front line again to move forward. So we did. And we havent been online but just a short time until i got hit in the leg and finally found a low place in the ground that really wasnt a foxhole, but it was a low place in the ground where i thought i could get down below grazing fire level, so i crawled in that thing, but i couldnt get my legs in, it wasnt big enough where i could get all my body in. And called for a corpsman, so he came and fixed my leg up and he said im going to put a tag on you and send you out. And i said no youre not. He said i got to do that, i said no, youre not, he says i got to put a tag on you, i said go ahead, ill tear it off, im not going, im not leaving. Vernon was out just a little ways in front of me. He was flat on the ground, he didnt have a hole, he was just flat on the ground. And so the corpsman wrote out his report, he had to do that. And he didnt put the tag on me, he wasnt any use wasting the tag, but at any rate, i said im not going, im staying. So just a short time after that, they called for us to move out, get up and start. And vernon jumps up and runs toward a hill. Its just a knoll, in West Virginia we wouldnt call it a good sized hill, but the japanese were throwing mortars over at us, and vernon jumped up to run toward the hill, as he did, a mortar came in and caught him smack dab on top of the helmet. Of course he never knew what hit him. I ran to him. But he was already gone. You guys were pretty tight . Closer than brothers, absolutely closer than brothers. But you cant do anything, i naturally called for a corpsman, but you cant stop, you got to move on. So thats what i did. Never knew how it happened, where it happened, what they did with him. I do know that he was buried in the Third Marine Division cemetery after they finally got a cemetery established. And then when they did away with the cemeteries on iwo jima, they carried him back and buried him in a cemetery in hawaii. [inaudible] no, we did something that is a courtmartial offense in the marine corps, we both knew that, we have been told many times, you never take anything off the body of a dead marine, thats the aerial peoples job. You dont do that sort of thing. But when i left for the marine corps, i was engaged to my present wife, we have been married now for 61 years. But i was engaged at that time and she would have gotten married, but i didnt think that would be a fair shake for her, because i had no idea where i was going or if i would ever come back, i said well be engaged, but im not going to marry you. So she gave me a little ring, a little ring that had a ruby in it because her name is ruby. And she gave that to me and one of those ten set rings, it turns your finger green as gourds, and she gave that to me, and she said any time you look at that, you think of me. Well it was a pretty good reminder, it kept me pretty straight, ill tell you that, every time i would look at that thing, uhoh, i better straighten up. I had that ring and then vernon, very unusual in his family, their two middle fingers on the male side of the family and he had a couple of brothers, and a father, of course, and they were all grown together, those two fingers. Just one of the genes in that family. Well, when he came in the marine corps, they wanted to separate those, just, you know, cut them. Oh, no, no, no. Hes not going to do that. And they never did do it. But it didnt affect his trigger finger and it didnt affect anything he had to do so they never did cut him. So his daddy had given him a ring when he left. But it was a great big thing, one of vernons hands would be two of mine, just a great big guy. A 13 shoe and just a big guy. The ring, since these fingers were grown together, he wore it on this finger. All the time. And it was a great big square thing and had a view it was a stone of some kind, but it had a view of a lake in it. You could actually see the lake, you know. So we made a pact, if anything happens to me, im saying, you take that ring off my finger and send it to ruby. And he says to me, if anything happens to me, you take that ring off and send it to dad, because his dad had given him that ring. Okay, we knew that was a courtmartial offense if we get caught. But you know how dumb 19, 20yearold kids are, but anyway, when he got hit with that mortar, why, he was stressed out. And there was that ring. And of course we had been in the pacific now for seven or eight months. Hot, sunshine, all that sort of thing. So i tried to pull that ring off, and had some difficulty getting it off. I finally just wet it with spit, and i finally got it off. egpg hi lackish, volcanoish kind of stuff, so i took some and put wqa ring in my pocket and went it. And made it a on, carried it all the way black spot. cothroughni combat,4 1othroughni combat,4 b q rest of the war. I got home in november,nrxdconin december, i wrote to the the glare and i stuck that ring in ks. On, carried i÷ ll the way through combat, all the w1y 5n december, i wrote to the folks. conrnit nicoconrniout in floyd,. Iwheat country, right up next to the canadian border. The canadianhole place. H ]e and i, ar, i didnt have a car, i borrowed a carco ninrfrom a fd of ouqcx and i delivered that ring. Delivering the greatestw3 diamod that ever existed. nie a5niokcu p just that ring. So it was a very niemotional ti, so as weit used u0y leave, but we had a great time. Ste. uqng back a littleitf . i guess you got through theni thrower. ninrwhen we hit guam, we hit t e beach and there was anrnixdnrnia 1each and there was anrnixdnrnia t ats where the japanese were. And ahu a c h jungle. And you dont use lameco throwers in jungles. niflame throwers on pillnrnie1g and in caves work wf÷pillnrnie1g 1nd in caves work wf÷pillnrnie1g away even more because youre going to set cdasomething on fi. Thrower with us, wenr never used it. L wrco used ouzi rifles. P didnt carry a flamefanini nitho the beach, theni flame throwers were brohuni u in by boat after we got there. R the reserve division, the fourth and fifth would be the Assault Division and of course most of us knew how many people were in a division, Something Like 20,000 people. In each division, no one ever dreamed that you would need more than 20,000 people to take a little old rock thats 2 1 2 miles wide and 5 miles long. To need more than 20,000 or 30,000 marines, that was unheard of. You probably wont get off the ship. If you dont get off the ship, we will return to guam. Thats sort of what we expected, because thats what we thought was going to happen. When we got there and they hit them on the 19th, they decided they were going to have to have more marines because they were losing them to rapidly, you heard the figures that jack gave today and you were just losing them to rapidly, theyre going to have to have more marines. So on the morning of the 20th, about 3 00 in the morning, everything is blacked out theres not a light anywhere in all that armada of ships and whatever, everything is total darkness, you cant light a cigarette, because they told us the end of that cigarette can be seen five miles away and stuff like that, so everything was total darkness. They fed us about 2 30 or whatever in the morning, got us ready to go, put our packs on and then we go down the roads. Its still dark, very dark. They had a storm somewhere on away from us, but the residual of that was high waves. We were having, oh, 10, 12, 15foot waves coming through. And they were pulling the higgins boats they were loading them alongside of the ship, they broke ladders and of course they told us they trained us when you go down a rope ladder you hold on to the whohorizontals and not the verticals, somebodys going to stomp your fingers off if you get the verticals. But the most horrifying moment was when i went over the side of that ship to start down that rope ladder, i knew absolutely if i fell off that rope ladder, i would never make it. With a pack on my back, hand grenades shocked on in various places, and two banda leers of ammunition strapped over your shoulder, i wasnt going to make it. I believe thats the scariest moment i have ever seen. But i went down the rope as everybody else did. And the higgins boat, one time its way up here, the other time its way down there. And we had navy people in the higgins boat holding the rope to keep it within the higgins boat. Because it would go down so far, because the rope ladder would go out and then youre going down the side of the ship with nothing to get into. The navy people tried to keep the rope in and we finally got down. But we went out that day and just we got out to where we were rendezvousing just about daylight and we started circling. And there were several higgins boat in a group and they were making circles around and around and around. And the waves are going like this, youre going up and down all the time. I have never been seasick, but that day i got seasick, as practically everybody else did. I dont know whether i got seasick because of the waves or i got seasick because somebody puked on me. Everybody was puking, everywhere. There were 36 of us in that thing and theres no room to sit. You cant get 36 people in there and sit them all down. Theres just no room. So we rode around and were standing and of course we got our packs on our backs and i never will, i guess, forget this. A higgins boat doesnt have a head on it, you know. So if you had to go, and it does have a bilge pump, because waters splashing in from the waves, or from the front of the boat when it hits a wave, it comes over the front of it. So the bilge pump over here is running to pump the water out. So if you had to go to the head, you had to move around the boat. If im back here in this corner, and the bilge pumps over here, everybodys got to move in this direction until i can get to the bilge pump and use the head. And then the next guy. Thats the way we did it. You couldnt you could not get relief in the higgins boat. Somebody would have killed you if you would have done it in their hip pocket or something. So thats the only way we could get relief is to keep moving around the higgins boat because of the bilge pump, that was the head. It must have been a constant circle. It was almost a constant circle. You just dont believe it. You take 36 people and theyre all scared and when youre scared, something happens to your kidneys, i dont know what it is, but something happens. But we did that all day long. Until almost dark that night and then they decided they did not have room on the beach for us. Not enough ground. So they took us back to the boat. Now we couldnt go back up the rope because the water was still very, very rough and with all those thousands of boats out there, we didnt have waves from someplace else, it would be wavy because there was just hundreds of them running around out there. So since we couldnt go up the rope, we had to get off and walk up the gangplank. The gangplank is only a 4 by 4 piece of steel hanging on the side of that ship with a step going up to the top. It took us forever to unload the higgins boats. And you go up, the waves were such that you would go up above the plank, the steel mesh down here, but as it came down, then you would have to get off. You didnt dare get off going up. You got off as it was coming back down. Guys got legs broken and a couple of them fell in the ocean, and, you know, accidents happen. I made it. So i got to the top of the ship, just flopped out on the deck, and didnt move. They would have fed us. I kouldcouldnt have eaten anything if i had wanted to. But i just flopped down on the deck and thats where i was at 3 00 the next morning when they woke us up and said lets go again. The second time wasnt as bad as the first time. I figured, well, i can make it a second time. Did you hear about the casualties on the beach . No, nothing. We were several miles not several, probably two or three miles out in the ocean on the big troop carriers. And you could see the blasts during the daylight, of course theres smoke going up and all that sort of thing. You could hear the blasts and feel the vibration of them, but it wasnt close enough that you could see any detail whatsoever. So we really did not know what was going on on the beach. I know i didnt. You finally get in the boat for the second time, and i guess, then you headed for the shore . We went back out and started circling again, but just before noon that day, they had enough space where the Fourth Division had moved off to the right, the Fifth Division had moved off to the left, that left the middle open and thats where we went in. We became the Spearhead Division to go across the airfields and it was at the end of the first airfield where most of these 800 pill boxes were, they were made so that they would protect the first airfield as well as the second one that they were building. So when we finally got ashore, got up the bank from the beach, and it was just i have said this many times, it was just like walking on bebes, or somebody thats been in the farm business, a silo of or storage bin of corn. Just you just couldnt make any head way. You would step and your feet would just keep rolling out from under you, so you actually crawled more than you walked. But once we got up to this airfield, the first airfield, then it was flat. A lot of shell holes in the first airfield, because they just bombed that thing to smithereens. But there was no coverage, and no nothing to get behind or under. So the only thing you could do is run to a shuttle, which is basically below ground. So and there would be five or six or eight or nine marines in the same hole, because that was the only protection you could find, so obvious would run for a hole and jump in and stay there until youre ready to jump and go again to another hole. So we got across the first airfield, we lost an awful lot of people on that first airfield because they were over in the pill box area, which was grazing fire straight across that airfield. So once we got across the airfield and tried to penetrate those pill boxes, thats where we really started suffering an awful lot of lost marines. In my company, and c company. This isnt far off the beach . Oh, no. 100 yards, maybe . 200 yards . 150, 200 yards, yeah. And they were still in there tighter than a tick . Absolutely. And they had holes in their pill boxes. Now these pill boxes were reenforced concrete with rebar in them, covered over with sand and you could drop artillery or a bomb or whatever on the top of that thing, there was three or four foot of sand on top of it, they were blowing a lot of sand out, but it certainly did not penetrate the pill box. It was reenforced concrete, but they were only good for a short distance because they bogged down and bellied out and the tracks would just sit there and dig, they wouldnt go anywhere because the bottom of the tank was on the sand and they had no way of elevating the thing to get traction. So the japanese were running in throwing hand grenades down the barrel of the gun, or if the guy opened the turret to see what was going on, they would drop it in the turret. So tanks were just useless at that point. Now later they came in handy, because once we got out of the deep volcanic sand then the ground was more solid and more rock and that type of thing so they would maneuver, but we couldnt get them to the pill boxes. But much of that afternoon, i do not remember. Im positive that fear wiped a lot of that memory out. Im convinced of that. How did you handle the fear . I guess with it stayed with you all the time, i would imagine . I dont think there was a time when there wasnt fear there. I really cant answer that except to say that you come to the point that you believe youve got a job to do for what youre trained, youve got to do it for the people around you, the other marines, so you just go at it. And thats basically what i did. I can recall some vivid things that happened, but many i used six flame throwers. Now i facetiously said, i didnt have very good friends in the marine corps, in my t at u because i would go out there and empty a flame thrower and you think they would come out there and give me another flame thrower . No, i would have to go get it myself, now thats not a very good buddy. I used six of them. But once you empty a flame thrower, it is useless, so you just unbuckle it, crawl out of it and go back and get another one. So you would just leave it out there, dont even try to get it back. So i did that. Did you volunteer for that . To go out there and take out those pill boxes . I guess i did volunteer. Because our Commanding Officer, captain donald beck was his name, he was a good c. O. And he had we, or he as a Commanding Officer had lost so many marines out of c company on the 23rd, that was the same day the flag went up. And let me say this before i say what i was going to say about captain beck. When the flag went up, we, 1,000 yards up the beach, we had no idea what was going on, i mean 1,000 yards, we had no idea what was going on, we were too busy in our own little realm to pay any attention to what anybody else was doing, but suddenly around me, and i didnt know what was going on. I had my back suddenly marines around me raised up, jumped up and started firing their weapons into the air, screaming and yelling and that kind of stuff. I really thought everybody had lost their mind there for a second. I couldnt figure out what was going on. And then i caught on to what was going on because they were looking up to the mountain and then i looked and theres old glory up on top of the mountain so i jumped up and started doing the same dumb thing they were doing, firing a weapon in the air and jumping and screaming. I didnt have a flame thrower at that point. I was carrying a weapon. That pistol that i carried on my hip, as i said, i couldnt hit anything with that, so as soon as i got on shore, got on the beach, that was true with guam as well there. And i found a rifle, somebody had been wounded, i would grab the rifle and go with it. I wanted an em1. I didnt want one of those car beams, that thing was useless as far as i was concerned. So i had one at this time so i started firing in the air and yelling and screaming like everybody else. I wondered how many marines we lost at that particular moment, we saw old glory up on top of the mountain. But it changed the whole attitude of the whole thing. It absolutely did something to us. And the captain, having lost a great number of his marines, called for a meeting of all ncos and officers. We only had a couple of officers left, but he called a meeting in a great big shell crater. And so we all and being a corporal, with these individuals that had come ashore with me, i was elected as an nco, i was an nco, but we had people before this thing was over, we had sergeants acting as c. O. S and we had anybody doing anything that you could get them to do because you just run out of people. So i went out to meet with the n. C. O. S and the First Sergeant, the gunnery sergeant, what was was left. And the captain was down in the bottom of the hole and i can remember him being very frustrated. Just absolutely didnt know what to do. And he was looking for ideas, how do we do this thing . What can we do to keep making make progress and not get people killed, that type. So he was asking others for ideas and he looked over at me and he said, this is what somebody else told me. I dont know, but Something Else told me, they said do you think you could knock out some of those pill boxes with a flame thrower. And i had no idea what i really said. Some of the guys in the hole said, ill try. So i guess that was a volunteer. He said ill give you some marines, and he gave me four, two automatic riflemen and two riflemen, and their instructions were to protect me. And i strapped a flame thrower on my back and started crawling toward the pill boxes. And a fellow who was not part of my outfit at all, he wasnt doing anything, he was about a 61 guy. So i grabbed him as i went by and told him to bring a pole charge, we had pole charges already fixed up. Bring a pole charge because once we burned a pill box out, we wanted to blow it up so they couldnt use it again. So he came with me. And we would crawl out and get in a shell crater and go after the next pill box. The japanese had dug trenches between these pill boxes, and they could crawl from one to the other and escape grazing fires. They couldnt escape other stuff, but grazing fire they could. So they could escape from one pill box to another. They put oil drums in the ground with the top of it unfastened, of course, these little fellows, they were 42, 45, maybe five foot. They would get down in that oil drum and pull that lid over them and you cant even know they existed. They would push up the lid and pop you and back in the hole. You didnt know where that thing came from, the guy beside you would drop over dead and you dont know who in the heck shot him. But a flame thrower rolling over that thing would suck the oxygen right out of that drum and hes gone. So we started out of this shell crater to advance toward one of those tracks, hole in the ground and a pill box that was above him a little ways, that japanese, and as we got to the top, i dont know what slider was thinking of, maybe he just got frustrated and mad or whatever. But im still on my belly, im not going to crawl to that thing, im crawling, he jumps up like hes going to run toward it and one of them shot him. And when it hit, it hit on the side of his helmet at about this point. We had steel helmets, pots we called them. And inside was a fiber liner. And that bullet penetrated the helmet, went between the liner and the helmet and went all the way around, and when it did, the force of it just took his head around like that and threw him back into that shelf crater. Because he was getting up and getting ready to go someplace. And i thought, hes dead. I crawled back down in the hole where he was and shook him. I couldnt see any blood, couldnt see anything his helmet was still on, but i shook him and kept yelling at him, are you all right . Are you all right . Are you hurt or whatever . Finally he looked up and his eyeballs rolled around for a little while and he finally got them focused and he said no, im all right, im all right. And he took that helmet home with him. I dont know whether hes living today or not, but i bet you hes got the helmet or somebody in the familys got that helmet because you couldnt get it out of his possession. And we finally got close to that pill box, but i got the guy in the hole, but just a short version of the flank. So i crawled on over toward the pill box and the closer i got, he had a nambu in there, stuck out the aperture and he was firing. And i can remember crawling toward the pill box, and hes off to my right because this ditch is running this way and the pill box is over here. And im going to try to get close enough that i can get the flame in there, that apparently was my purpose. And i can remember that nambu bullet ricochetting off the air tank on my back, hitting that tank, i dont know why i was smart enough to figure out that if i crawled closer, he couldnt get me, if had crawled backwards, he would have got me. So i just crawled faster and closer. He could only lower his weapon so far out of the aperture and i got him. The other vivid memory i have was another pill box, i was trying to get to it and couldnt. Every time i would start, he would get too close for comfort and i would back out. And finally, his firing, they didnt have smokeless powder, firing the nambu inside, the smoke was curling out of the top, i saw the smoke coming out of the top over the pill box, i didnt know what was up there, but the pill box was sunk back in the ground, covered with sand and on the backside, it had piled sand up against the pill box, so i crawled around out of his sight and over up the pill box, went up the side, where the sand was, got up on top of the pill box, and here was a pipe about that big around, they cooked in there, they ate in there, they stayed in there, everything, and it was just about that big around, just about the side of my flame thrower nozzle. So i just somebody said i guarantee you i wasnt counting, but somebody said there was 17 in there, but i dont know, i had no idea. But i got that one, knocked that one out. Another vivid memory, and some of these i dont remember, some of these pill boxes, i dont remember even getting to them. But one other one i approached, apparently they ran out of ammunition, thats the only thing i could figure, but i was getting close enough that i could get my flame into the pill box and they came charging, there was five or six or whatever of them, came charging around the side of the pill box. And they had rifles and bayonets, so i assume they were out of ammunition, i dont know, all i did was look up and here they are charging toward me. And i just opened up, when the flame hit them, they stopped, because it just took off the oxygen out of the air and they just fell over. Those are the most vivid things i remember of that four hours. How many did you knock out . Do you have any idea . Seven. Seven . Yeah, seven pill boxes i got to in four hours. Dont ask me how i did it, i dont have any idea how i did it. And i never got touched. They never got me. When you fire a flame thrower, particularly if youre using diesel fuel, the minute you fire it, you have smoke. You got you know, you have a black smoke raised up because the diesel fuel makes black smoke. And the minute you fire it, you fire and then you better move because if they have got any mortars or artillery and they had both, theyll start logging those in there where the smoke was, they may not be able to see you, but they can see the smoke. So i would move and then i would have to wait until they were done mortaring or whatever they were firing at us, because they didnt have a target, if they didnt see any smoke, they would quit firing. They didnt have any illumination, they had all they probably wanted and they knew eventually they were going to run out. What happened to the four guys that were with you . Two of them i never knew these fellas. They were just marines in the unit. And i suppose thats true with every unit, you never get acquainted with all the people and sometimes you just call names. I was always willie. Williams, i dont care who he was, if he was a williams, he was a willie. And if he was a macarthur, he was a mack. You never called a guy macarthur, or mcmurphy or anything, you just called him mack. So i didnt know these guys. I may have had the opportunity prevailed, recognized their face, name, i dont have any idea. But two of those fellas, i was told later gave their lives that afternoon. The people in the pill boxes got them because they were giving me protection protection, and two of them got killed protecting my life. So as i have said many, many times, ever since i got out of the marine corps, this medal belongs to them, it really doesnt belong to me. I wouldnt be here perhaps if it werent for them. Tell me about being awarded the medal, what happened . You got hit on iwo . And were you eventually evacuated because of that wound . Or did you leave when the Division Left . I left when the Division Left. So you got out late march, early april . April 1. The same day okinawa was hit, we shipped out. When we were gone to iwo, the engineers or the people who stayed in camp to keep the camp rolling and all that sort of thing, they built two false fronted buildings on what would be, what would you classify as a street. They had windows in them, no glass or anything, just a window frame, door frames, and three or four of them on each side that would be representative of a house. And when we came back, after we got restored all of our equipment, because you lost or used about everything you had, got that over, they gave us a couple of weeks and then we started training again. And when we started training, all of our previous training hat been jungle warfare, because thats as far as we knew all we were going to do. And iwo was anything but a jungle. It didnt have a stick on it. No tree, no shrub, no nothing. So when we got back, here are these false fronted buildings, and we began training for street fighting. How do you approach a house . How do you go through a window . How do you go through a door. And that type thing. And of course the scuttlebutt was, everyone in our outfit knew we were going to tokyo. Everybody thought that. Tokyo is our next campaign. Come to find out, november was going to be our next campaign, at kyoshu, and all six marine divisions were going to kyoshu and we would be street fighting, no jungle. And according to the history and the program that they had set up, they had a campaign name. And according to that information, the japanese had trained 250,000 people, 14 children, 12 or 14 years of age up. Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, everybody was to have some kind of a weapon and they were to kill americans when they arrived in japan. So its been estimated there would be a million casualties if we had actually invaded japan. And of course, we would have been out of necessity protecting ourselves, secure the war, we would have just had to shoot any and everybody. What could you do . No choice. So i have always said, the atomic bomb saved my life. I firmly believe that. Your odds run out after a while, you know, you do these things so many times, somewhere along the way, youre going to get caught. Now i had never thought of dying. Never entered my mind that the japanese were going to kill me. Now to say i didnt think there were times when i was going to die, i did. But to think that, i just wouldnt let myself think it. Im going to survive this. When did you find out that you were being awarded the congressional medal . About the 12th or 13th of september, of course the war had ended on august 8th, so the First Sergeant called me into the office and said that they want you up at division. And i naturally would say why . But i didnt think i had done anything wrong, but i said, why . And he said, i dont know, they just called down and said send you up to division, so he called a driver, put me in a jeep and sent me to division. And i went up and of course the aid to the general who was the c. O. At the time, met me, he was a colonel. And he said, im going to take you in to see the general, and they gave me a little how to act, walk in, stand at attention, until he gives you at ease and, you know, protocol. So i went in and the general told me i was being sent back to the states for an award. He did not use the word congressional medal of honor, he didnt say that, he just said an award. I knew i was going to get the purple heart, i had never heard of the medal of honor, so i dont know what hes talking about. If hed said it, i wouldnt know what it was. So i thought in my mind about the purple heart. That didnt make sense in my mind because we had awarded purple hearts to guys in formation. Why would they do me that way . I didnt know. And as marines, you dont do a whole lot of questioning, but anyway, the aid gave me a brown envelope, its about that long and about that wide, and it was sealed with wax. Ever see one of these things . Every person at that time, authority at least, had a seal they would put wax on the envelope if it was not to be opened by only certain people, and then he had the seal that has his initial or emblem in it and he would put that in the wax. That was his signature. So he handed me this envelope and there it was, there was that piece of wax, with a symbol in it. And he told me, take this with you, do not open it. It is a courtmartial offense if you break that seal. I wouldnt have broke that seal for nothing in the world. So i took the envelope and he told me they had a plan for me the next day that i was flying back to the states. Im a lowly corporal, completely out of my realm. I had leaders all the time and here i am out here all by myself, so i went down to the airport. I was down there pretty early in the morning, a jeep took me down and i had this envelope, but i didnt walk up and insist that anybody do anything, i thought they would call me. I sat there all day, nobody ever called my name. Nothing. That evening, getting close to closing time, i called the First Sergeant and went in their office and asked if they would call the First Sergeant for me and did that. I called the First Sergeant. I said, First Sergeant, i thought i was supposed to fly out today, im still here or whatever i said to him. And he said, okay, ill send back. And he sent the chief back to pick me up and picked me back up. So, when i got there, i told him, i went there and i sat there all day and nobody said anything, i didnt know what to do. They assign priorities to the airplanes. P. O. W. S had First Priority and then second priority were general officers and third priorities was down the line. They had four different priorities. Well, i had First Priority, but i didnt know what it meant. So, the next morning he called the aide of the Generals Office and told him what happened. So, that time somebody went with me. And that time when i got down there, they got me on an airplane, you know . And i flew down from guam to an island called Johnson Island and changed planes there, and then went from Johnson Island to hawaii. And they told me when you get to hawaii, turn this in to marine corps headquarters. Okay, i went to marine corps headquarters, turned the envelope in, they broke the seal, opened it, didnt tell me a thing, just said were going to send you out to a repo depot for a period of time until we can get you a flight to frisco. They said san francisco. They put me in a jeep, sent me out to a navy base. Lost me for seven days. I was there for seven days, nobody ever told me a thing. All i was doing was going to chow and sleeping and going to chow and sleeping. Finally on the seventh day i said somethings got to give. Somethings got to happen. So, a marine came by and i waved out in front of him and he stopped, and i said, are you going downtown . And he said, yes. And i said, can i ride downtown with you . He said, yes, you have to ride in back because i cant have any passengers up front. He had a sign that said, no passengers up front. So, he took me downtown and went to the headquarters, and i reported back to the same place id reported to before. The same corporal on the desk, and when i walked in, i said i want to see the First Sergeant. He jumped up and ran to the First Sergeants office real fast. First sergeant came out and i wont say on film what he said. It wouldnt be nice. He wondered why why i was there, because i was supposed to have already been gone. And so anyway, he finally got my orders straightened out and got me ready to go. We went to the airport, and we were waiting for an airplane that had an empty seat on it. And all of them were full all evening long. Were now around midnight, 1 00 in the morning, waiting for an airplane. And i never will forget this as long as i live. It was loaded with our american p. O. W. S. They didnt even look like human beings. Now they wayed 70 and 80 pounds. They had skin stretched over. Terrible looking. So, i got on, and the reason i got that seat is they were loading the airplane, one of the p. O. W. S died and they didnt have time to find another one, so i got his seat to frisco. And that was the happiest group of people i believe ive ever been around. Those guys sang all the way to san francisco. They were just the happiest people in the world. I thought about that a lot. You know, we really do not appreciate our freedom until we have lost it. And then those guys got it back. What a happy bunch. My life changed that my life changed as a result of that. Ive never been the same ever since. I can see why. So, what does the medal represent to you . It really represents the tremendous sacrifice that it takes to keep what we have. Something that most americans take for granted until it is threatened to be taken away. America has never been a good aggressor. We just we just are not an aggressive sort of people. Were restorers. We want to restore things, not tear things up. That isnt our nature. And for us to go to war, to be an aggressor to go to war, makes it so much more difficult, i think. And i think iwo jima was tougher than most of the other islands simply because that was the first piece of japanese land that we were really trying to take. Okinawa and those other places didnt belong to japan. This belonged to them. Those 21,000 japanese on that island, that was theirs. This is mine. And i firmly believe that if i am going to try to take something from you that belongs to you, you will fight harder to preserve it than i will fight to take it. Now, they knew they knew they were going to die. I have trouble believing that every one of them wanted to die. I have to believe that there were a lot of japanese on that island that would have liked to have been home with their family, just as i would have liked to have been. Wanted to return to their family. They say that it was an honor to die for the emperor. We say it was its an honor if we have to die to preserve our freedom. It is an honor to die preserving our freedom. But that isnt our deepest human desire. Our human most deepest human desire is to live. And thats what made the difference between japanese and americans. We wanted to live. They wanted to die. I think we have the same thing in the world in which were involved right now. Our people, our marines, our army, our air force, am i right, they want to live. And theyre going to do everything they possibly can to keep that life. Those people who strap things around their body and blow themselves up, i dont understand that. I just cannot fathom where that comes from. So, this medal means those who sacrificed their lives did it, perhaps not even willingly, but did it so that others could have what they had. Didnt you meet general van der griff at some point . Yes. I saw on another video didnt he Say Something pretty profound . He very well yes, he did. And i guess that formed my thinking, because he being a medal of honor recipient although they said all the time that he was on active duty, he never wore anything that would indicate he had the medal of honor. He just didnt do it. But when i was in his office and he said to me, much of what he said, i dont remember. I was just as scared as i think i was getting off of that ship. But he said to me, and it sort of shocked me when he said it, that medal does not belong to you. He didnt point. I did that. But he just said, that medal does not belong to you. And that shocked me. And then he went on on to say it belongs to all those marines who did not get to come home. And then he admonished me to say say and i dont know what he said to the other marines that day. There were 11 of us. I dont know what he said. They never volunteered to tell me. I never asked. He said to me, dont ever do anything that will tarnish that medal. The word tarnish is an old word we dont use anymore. Ive tried to live up to that. One day i was doing press releases and i got i went up into the head on the third floor. I am standing there. Who comes in but the commandant in civilian clothes. He looks at me and says youre a marine, arent you . I say yes, sir. He says how do you like your job . What are you going to tell the commandant . I liked it very much because i went to town and the press club, got to