During World War II, he was taken prisoner while fighting in Tunisia in 1943, leading Patton to set up the controversial Task Force Baum to break him out.

Waters graduated from The Boys' Latin School in Baltimore in 1925 and then attended Johns Hopkins University in Maryland for two years before deciding he wanted a military career.

He relocated to Illinois in order to obtain an appointment to the United States Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1931 with a commission in the cavalry.

Waters was captured in Tunisia at Dejebel Lassouda when German forces attacked Sidi bou Zid during World War II.

Badly wounded, he was treated by a Serbian doctor, Colonel Radovan Danic, the chief surgeon of the former Yugoslavian Army, who was also interned at the camp.

The camp was liberated about a week to ten days later, but the only prisoners there were badly wounded and sick, the rest (including the remnants of Task Force Baum) having been moved farther east.