Flamethrower: The Story of Medal of Honor Recipient Woody Williams, Iwo Jima, and World War II in the Pacific

Imagine strapping on a highly flammable 70-pound pack and entering combat as a surefire walking target - and you'd only begin to understand the job, and the horror, of Marine Corps flamethrower man. That's precisely what Hershel "Woody" Williams did in World War II, most importantly in February 1945 on Iwo Jima, one of the Pacific War's toughest battles. A few days into the battle, Marines were fighting hard for an airfield, and his captain asked Woody if he could do anything. He responded, "I'll try" - and for the next four hours, he virtually singlehandedly took on and ultimately destroyed seven enemy pillboxes and helped secure the airfield.

Accomplished military historian Bryan Mark Rigg reconstructs Williams' remarkable story, from his youth in West Virginia to his experiences on Guadalcanal, Saipan, Guam, and most significantly Iwo Jima. In Rigg's telling, Williams's Medal of Honor action is not "just" a brave deed, but one of only a few strategically significant brave deeds - one that secured a strategic objective during a major campaign. Rigg tells Williams' story vividly, and objectively, and places it in the context of the broader Pacific theater of World War II.