Hershel Woodrow “Woody” Williams, 71 years ago

What a great man and Marine Woody is. This is a story you won't soon forget. Talk about a hero.

71 years ago yesterday, Marine Corporal Hershel Woodrow “Woody” Williams, pretty much all by himself under the covering fire of four infantrymen battled with the Japanese on Iwo Jima for four long grueling hours. He tried to clear a path for tanks to get past a number of “pillboxes” while the diminutive Corporal (he’d initially been rejected by the Marines for being too short at 5’6″) was armed only with a flamethrower. You can hear him tell the story in this video;