On February 23, 1945, a network of reinforced concrete pillboxes pinned an entire Marine company flat on the black volcanic sand of Iwo Jima. Sherman tanks couldn't break through. Flamethrower tanks couldn't reach them. Five of six men in the demolition team were already dead or wounded.
Corporal Hershel Williams — five-foot-six, once rejected by the Marines for being too short — strapped seventy pounds of pressurized fuel to his back and volunteered to go forward alone.
He had seven seconds of flame per tank, four riflemen for cover, and seven concrete bunkers between his company and their objective. The Japanese targeted flamethrower operators on sight. On Iwo Jima, those men measured survival in minutes, not hours.
The man too short for the Marines was about to do what their tanks could not.
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