I'm going to the World War II Air Show at the Reading Airport next weekend (taking my 9 year old son for the 1st time) and I'll talk to Hershel "Woody" Williams who is 94 years old now and was the honoree of flipping this past years Super Bowl coin before the game. I studied Woody's heroism before I went to the show last year. I wanted to know what this hero did to preserve my freedom. All Woody did was attack pill box after pill box with a flame thrower strapped on his back on Iowa Jima to help carve a way through a murderous defensive honeycomb of concrete entrenchments with criss crossing machine gun fire. He went back to his lines over and over again to retrieve serviceable flame throwers to help save the lives of other GI's who were being mowed down my Japanese machine gun fire from interconnecting pill boxes.
Under murderous fire, Woody took out one pill box after another and at one point, jumping on top of a pill box to point his flame thrower down an air vent to take out an entire enemy entrenchment on his own. Neutralizing every enemy combatant inside. He did all of this with a liquid bomb attached to his back. One shot to his flame thrower and he would have been gone.. dying a horrific fiery death. At one point... a group of Japanese soldiers charged Woody trying to take him out. A quick burst from his flame thrower... the only weapon he had, saved his life.
I ask you... who would get up in the morning imagining to do that or having to do that? Who would be so brave in the eyes of inevitable horrific death to push forward and do what Woody did that day? I doubt any of us would. He told me he to this day doesn't know how he wasn't killed or why it wasn't him that died as his buddies were dying all around him. That's why I find it hard to talk to Woody without my voice cracking and thanking him for all he did that day. He told me... "I was just a farm boy from West Virginia... doing my duty." I know I'll have to look away this year... because I don't want him to see the tears streaming down my face.
At 94... I don't if I'll get to see Woody again... but his heroism lives for eternity and his acts of selflessness will always live inside of me. I hope this year, my son gets to experience what his dad feels for Hershel "Woody" Williams and all Veterans who gave us and give us the freedom we so enjoy today.
