While a shepherd working on a farm in Hawke’s Bay, he inflated his age by three years in order to enlist in the New Zealand Army in March 1916.

By 1917, he was on the front lines in Belgium working as a runner with the 3rd Battalion New Zealand Rifle Brigade at Messines, before being severely wounded in the Battle of Passchendaele on 12 October 1917.

During a 2001 interview, Williams spoke of suffering through mud and freezing rain, and sheltering in trenches among the corpses of dead German soldiers.

Most of the recipients were over 100 years old and gratefully accepted the awards in recognition of their lost mates and the high price paid by the New Zealand Army in the First World War.

Williams received his Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur from the French Ambassador at the Napier RSA in 1998, and wore "it on parade to honour men who did not come back from France, who were buried there in known and unknown graves".