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The following biography was written by Fourth Marine Website

William Ashurst began his Maine shooting career in the early 1920s. He was a Distinguished Marksman by 1921 and a Distinguished Pistol Shot Badge in 1928 By the middle of the decade he captained the Marine Team. Winning the National Individual Rifle Match in 1924 he took home the Daniel Boone Trophy as a consequence. By the 1930s Ashurst had retuned to his normal military duties promoted to colonel by the time he was assigned to the 4th Marines in China in the early 1940s.

On the morning of 8 December 1941 Marines in Peking woke to find themselves surrounded by the Japanese. Colonel Ashurst,, the senior Marine officer, was given till noon to make his decision whether to fight or not and was allowed to communicate with his superiors. In a sense Ashurst had been given a Hobson's choice: he could surrender or he could let his troops, fewer than 200 officers and men, be overwhelmed. If discipline and spirit would have won the day, Ashurst could have opened fire on the besieger, but there was no purpose in fighting if the end result could only be useless bloodshed.

In the absence of instructions to the contrary, Colonel Ashurst took the only sensible course open to him and ordered his men to lay down their arms. A strong possibility existed that if no resistance was offered the embassy guards would be considered part of the diplomatic entourage, entitled to repatriation. As the initial treatment of the Marines was relatively mild and they repeatedly received informal assurances from the Japanese that they would be exchanged, few attempted escape. When these rumors proved false, the opportunity had passed

The Marines in Peking were kept in their compound until 10 January 1942, at which time they also were sent to Tientsin. In late January the entire group of 204 Marines was sent by train to the Prisoner of War camp at Woosung, outside Shanghai.

Colonel Ashurst was the ranking officer at Woosung Prisoner of War Camp located 15 miles North of Shanghai with a population of about 1500, evenly divided between Army, Navy, Marine Corps POWs and civilian detainees. When Marine Corps enlisted men were ordered to polish empty shell cases Colonel Ashurst protested to the Japanese authorities and after much haranguing this work, which was against the Geneva Accords, was stopped.

Colonel Ashurst’s leadership, as earlier displayed on rifle ranges across the United States, made it possible for most of his command to survive the harsh realities of a Japanese POW camp and return home at war’s end.