 He worked with newspapers and radio stations in the Southwest for a year, then reluctantly joined the war effort, enlisting in the United States Army Air Force early in 1942, and spending two and a half years as a sergeant in India and Burma.During his enlistment in Calcutta, he wrote pages of a novel, which later became "Nothing But the Night," published in 1948 by Swallow Press and later reissued by New York Review Books Classics.At the end of the war, Williams moved to Denver, Colorado, and enrolled in the University of Denver, receiving Bachelor of Arts (1949) and Master of Arts (1950) degrees.