Profiles in Courage: Hershel “Woody” Williams Explains the Qualities of a Good Marine

Medal of Honor recipient Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams discusses the Battle of Iwo Jima’s impact on his life and the sacrifice of his fellow Marines.

To Hershel “Woody” Williams, the Medal of Honor he wears around his neck does not belong to him. It’s not because he isn’t worthy of it, he undoubtedly is. For Williams, the medal belongs to the men who never made it home.

On Feb. 23, 1945, Williams was a 21-year-old Marine corporal fighting in Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the most brutal and unforgiving battles in American military history. The fighting was horrific, and the events of that day have stayed with Williams for the last 71 years.

On the small and heavily fortified volcanic island, Williams repeatedly assaulted enemy positions armed with a flamethrower and demolition charges in order to clear the way for the remains who remained pinned down under the brutal enemy onslaught.

Over the course of four hours, Williams attacked a system of fortified concrete pillboxes. He fought the enemy at point-blank range when they charged him with bayonets. At one point, he climbed atop a bunker, inserted the nozzle through an air vent and unleashed a burst of flame that killed the occupants. However, he did not do it alone. He is emphatic about this. Two of the four Marines tasked with covering Williams as he assaulted the system of Japanese bunkers gave their lives to ensure he was successful.

He wears the Medal of Honor for them, he says.

Williams was presented the nation’s highest award for battlefield bravery by President Harry S. Truman on Oct. 5, 1945, and in 1969 he retired from the Marine Corps as a chief warrant officer four. These days, the 92-year-old Marine veteran spends his time working with the Hershel Woody Williams Medal of Honor Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to erecting monuments in honor of the families of fallen service members.

Williams spoke with Task & Purpose about how his time at war, and the many years spent retelling the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima, have shaped his life; his sense of obligation as a Medal of Honor recipient; and what similarities and differences he sees between his generation and post-9/11 veterans.

After the Battle of Iwo Jima and since receiving the Medal of Honor, would it be fair to say that your life changed, probably pretty dramatically, and if so, how?

It was very difficult for me, as a country boy having been taught all my life you do not kill — that was strictly enforced in my family. That you didn’t kill anything uselessly, whether it was a bird, a chicken, or anything. You just didn’t do it. It was quite an adjustment that I had to make to condition myself, that now I’m going to have to kill other people. That was a terrible adjustment for me.

I had never heard of the Medal of Honor, all the time in my career in the Marine Corps, Medal of Honor was never mentioned. … I had decided it was just a medal, but I realized the day after I received the medal that it would have a tremendous impact on my life.

There were 11 Marines who received it the same day I did … and all of the Marines were ordered to report to the office of the commandant of the Marine Corps the next day. … When I appeared before the Commandant of the Marine Corps on the sixth of October, I realized my life was changing. … I could no longer be the person I was prior to the Marine Corps.

I watched an interview that you did awhile back for Medal of Honor oral histories, and you talked about that meeting with the commandant, can you tell me what he said?

The one thing that has always stuck with me, the little bit that I do remember was one of the very early things that he said. We went into the office, each individual by themselves. Nobody was in the office of the commandant except you and him. … I didn’t know it it at the time, but A.A. Vandegrift was also a Medal of Honor recipient from Guadalcanal, so he knew more about what was coming my way and what the recipients would face, than the average individual because he’d already been there. … But he said to me: “That medal does not belong to you. It belongs to all of those Marines who did not get to come back home.”

Read the Remainder at Task and Purpose

In Memoriam: MSgt. John Davis, USMC

 

I wanted to take a moment and send out a Memorial to my friend Bobby who lost his dad, Master Sgt. John Davis, USMC this week to illness.

Jut letting you know our thoughts and prayers are with you and your Family Bobby during this time.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Semper Fi

Military Defense News: US Military Relearning Conventional Warfare

Forces relearning conventional warfare after 15 years of fighting terrorists

TWENTYNINE PALMS (California) • Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines was deep in a simulated firefight on a recent morning in the high California desert.

A group of Marines on the aptly named Machine Gun Hill unleashed live fire as another group of Marines tried to seize the surrounding valley from an imaginary enemy.

“They’re dug in,” shouted Chief Warrant Officer Brian Somers of Kilo Company, describing the “enemy” forces, supposedly supported by a real state with real resources and who were theoretically returning fire. “This is conventional warfare.”

After 15 years of fighting terrorists, the US military is learning how to fight big armies again.

From the Middle East to South Asia to Africa, United States forces for the past decade and a half have fought counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist campaigns – essentially smaller-scale guerrilla warfare – rather than the large land wars of the past.

 But Russia’s invasion of Crimea, a surging China and an unpredictable North Korea have led US commanders to make sure soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are trained in conventional warfare.

It is part of learning how to fight what the Pentagon calls the hybrid wars of the future, envisioned as a mix of conventional battles, insurgencies and cyber-threats.

Army chief of staff Mark A. Milley said: “You’re looking at a different level of capabilities when you’re talking about a higher-end threat, and the US Army hasn’t fought against that type of enemy in a long time.”

Future wars, he said, “could have conventional forces, Special Forces, guerrillas, terrorists, criminals all mixed together in a highly complex environment, with potentially high densities of civilians.”

In recent months, the Army has held training exercises with hundreds of troops, tanks, drones, missiles and armoured vehicles.

The exercises are far different from what the US faced in Afghanistan in 2001, when Al-Qaeda insurgents and Taleban fighters disappeared into the hills and mountains and pulled the US military into a counter-insurgency guerrilla campaign that is still ongoing.

Similar counter-insurgency campaigns were also fought by US forces against Iraq in 2003 and today against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Marine Corps commandant Robert B. Neller said the next fight will be against “somebody who’s got electronic warfare, armoured vehicles and the ability to manoeuvre”.

On a recent morning at Twentynine Palms, Gen Neller was joined by Admiral John M. Richardson, chief of naval operations, to watch the training exercise – the first time a Navy chief had travelled to the Marine base to do so.

Defence officials say the changing nature of war calls for closer cooperation between the services. After the morning’s live-fire mortar pounding from Machine Gun Hill, the two chiefs drove down the road to observe another exercise, the retaking of an occupied urban area.

The exercises showed that as US forces learn conventional warfare, they continue to train in counter-insurgency tactics to take on ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taleban – or some other group.

“We should not expect the Chinese and Russians to forgo counter-insurgency warfare,” said Dr Kathleen H. Hicks, director of the international security programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Or, she said, “they may mass and stand and fight”.

Read the Original Article at Straits Times

The Nine Crappiest Pieces of Gear in USMC

While the Marine Corps is the tip of the spear, when it comes to issued gear, we often get the shaft.

One of the benefits of serving in the military is having the chance to use all kinds of cool equipment like in Hollywood action movies and repetitive Call of Duty games. The Army has its hi-tech Strykers; the Navy has its powerful nuclear engines; the Air Force, its exquisite nine-hole golf courses; and the Coast Guard has, actually I don’t know, orange helicopters?

As for the Marines, well, we have our own things.

Like 30-pound radios with shrapnel from Vietnam still embedded in them and fleece beanies we’re not allowed to wear when it’s cold for some reason. The Corps doesn’t really get the gear on the higher end of the coolness spectrum. I know my people tend to brag that our branch is the tip of the spear, but the truth is we get the shaft.

Related: 6 Marine Corps ‘rules’ that are not actually regulations »

Yes, it’s been a few years since I left active duty so the stuff being issued to Marines these days may have changed. Pfft, who am I kidding? We’ll keep getting the same crappy gear and Army leftovers for years to come. In a thousand years our descendants will be fighting giant squid people on Neptune and celebrating the F-35 finally being completed as they pick silk wedgies out of their asscracks during morning physical training.

Anyway, here are nine issued Marine Corps items that aren’t going away, even though they should.

1. Canteens

Outside of training, I don’t think I saw anyone actually use a canteen. Between CamelBaks, Nalgenes, and the various other brands of water sacks and reusable bottles, there are a whole lot of ways to carry more water with greater ease than a pair of plastic flasks. And no matter what you do to clean them, the inside always smells like plastic and old swamp water.

2. Sword belt

Any time there’s an event — wedding, funeral, birthday ball, horse cavalry charge, etc. — where corporals and above might need to wear a sword, you just end up wearing the cooler looking Sam Brown belt.

So really, what’s the point?

3. Night vision goggles

For those who haven’t used night vision goggles, they don’t work like in the movies. In Hollywood, night vision paints the world in perfect detail with a green tint, but in reality, everything looks like an old Game Boy game: two-dimensional, two-toned, and full of deadly turtles.

Before my first night patrol, I joked that our night vision goggles were only good for seeing what you’ve just tripped over. Everybody had a good chuckle. Then I tripped several times that night. Everybody had more good chuckles. Then we almost lost a Marine who fell down a huge hole that none of us could see and it took us a few minutes to figure out what happened. Nobody chuckled.

Our night vision sucks.

4. Skivvy shorts

Look, I know some of my fellow Marines out there have a certain affection for silkies, as they’re often called. But they’re stupid. Really, really stupid. We can’t keep bragging that we have the best looking uniforms of all the services when there are packs of our brothers and sisters PT-ing in these crotch-hugging nightmares.

5. Barracks cover

Remember when there was all that hoopla about the Marine Corps considering changing the design of this thing, and everybody got up in arms about how they thought the idea for the new cover, which was really just an older version, looked stupid? It was a pretty laughable “controversy” to me, because I thought the version we have now looks pretty stupid too.

I always hated having to wear that white Frisbee-looking thing on the walk from my car to wherever the birthday ball was, then putting it on a table with dozens of ones just like it for the rest of the night.

6. Load-bearing vest

Maybe these were all the rage in the days before body armor, and the lingering shoulder pain that goes with it was standard in the field. But nowadays, what with flaks and plate carriers having MOLLE straps on them, this thing is just another piece of tan nylon you have to worry about losing in your closet.

7. Those weird leather glove shells

The Korean War was a long time ago. Haven’t less crappy ways to keep our hands come about since then? Ways that don’t smell like grandma’s basement and look like something a serial killer in the 1930s would wear?

8. Boot blouses

So if we want to have our trousers bloused but also have the option to unblouse them in extremely hot weather, why don’t we just have uniform trousers with drawstrings at the bottom? Oh, that’s right: because it would be easy and convenient and save Marines money. And that’s just not how we do things, dagnabbit!

9. Beretta M9 pistol

Yes, the iconic sidearm of the U.S. military since 1985 sucks. Hard.

Granted, I was an utterly miserable shot with this thing and would probably have had better luck neutralizing an enemy if I threw it at them instead of firing it. But I’m definitely not alone in considering the M9 a paperweight that occasionally fires an inaccurate round with low stopping power. You also have to carry this paperweight around in the field or on deployment to boot. Basically the worst kind of paperweight you can imagine. Oh, and the magazines are malfunction prone.

 

Read the Original Article at Task and Purpose

 

Inspirational: Father Honors Son’s Sacrifice Through Military Service

“We use words like honor, code, loyalty…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something.”  –Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, USMC (Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie a Few Good Men)

Cmdr. Bill Krissoff joined the Navy Medical Corps to honor his fallen son.

First Lt. Nate Krissoff decided that he wanted to be an officer with the Marine Corp after he saw the effects of 9/11. After majoring in international relations at Williams College, he joined the Marines in 2004. Three months post-graduation, he commissioned as a second lieutenant.

“He joined because he deeply believed in the importance of service and for citizens of this generation to do their part,” said his younger brother Austin in a Marine Corps press statement. “He was not content to sit inside the Beltway at a think tank and write about foreign policy without having actively participated in its execution.”

A counterintelligence officer with 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, Nate was returning to his base from a village near Fallujah in Iraq when his Humvee drove over a bomb on Dec. 9, 2006.

The Krissoff family was notified soon after.

His father, Bill — an orthopedic surgeon — went back to work, but spent weeks looking for a way to honor his son. He decided that the best way would be to join the military. At 60, however, Bill was 18 years over the age limit.

After applying for an age waiver, he and his family, along with other families of fallen service members, met with former President George W. Bush in August 2007, according to Marines Magazine.

While speaking with the president, Bill mentioned that he wanted to join the Navy Medical Corps, but needed his age waiver approved. Bush gave word to his senior advisor Karl Rove, who looked into the case.

In a 2009 editorial for The Wall Street Journal, Rove wrote, “His reputation was that of an outstanding trauma and sports medicine surgeon. He was also a marathon runner and a really fine person.”

Two days after the encounter with Bush, the waiver was approved.

Austin also joined the Marine Corps and shipped over in March 2007. He has since served multiple tours. Bill’s wife Christine gave her full support to their decisions.

In February 2009, Bill arrived at the al-Taqaddum Air Base in Iraq. He spent seven months treating orthopedic injuries at the field hospital near Fallujah. According to the Huffington post, he was less than 10 miles from where Nate had been killed.

Soon after he returned home, Bill got a call to deploy to the trauma center at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

“I’m just a doc that was fortunate to be able to use my surgical skills in a deployed setting to care for injured Marines, sailors and soldiers,” Bill said in a Marine Corps release.

After Afghanistan, Bill came home and served at the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton, continuing to treat service members. He also made the rank of commander while serving there.

Now 68, he has retired, and he and Christine live in Rancho Santa Fe.

“So long as our nation produces families like the Krissoffs, America will remain not only the greatest nation on earth, but also the most noble in history,” Rove wrote.

Read the Original Article Task and Purpose