Show top rated links | LinkViewer
RIP, Jack Lucas
Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 2:24:01 pm PDT
They just don’t make ’em like Jack Lucas any more: Vet who earned Medal of Honor at 17 dies.
JACKSON, Miss. - Jack Lucas, who at 14 lied his way into military service during World War II and became the youngest Marine to receive the Medal of Honor, died Thursday in a Hattiesburg, Miss., hospital. He was 80.
Lucas had been battling cancer. Ponda Lee at Moore Funeral Service said the funeral home was told he died before dawn.
Jacklyn “Jack” Lucas was just six days past his 17th birthday in February 1945 when his heroism at Iwo Jima earned him the nation’s highest military honor. He used his body to shield three fellow squad members from two grenades, and was nearly killed when one exploded.
“A couple of grenades rolled into the trench,” Lucas said in an Associated Press interview shortly before he received the medal from President Truman in October 1945. “I hollered to my pals to get out and did a Superman dive at the grenades. I wasn’t a Superman after I got hit. I let out one helluva scream when that thing went off.”
He was left with more than 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body and in every major organ and endured 26 surgeries in the months after Iwo Jima. He was the youngest serviceman to win the Medal of Honor in any conflict other than the Civil War.
“By his inspiring action and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice, he not only protected his comrades from certain injury or possible death but also enabled them to rout the Japanese patrol and continue the advance,” the Medal of Honor citation said.
In the AP interview, written as a first-person account under his name, he recalled the months he spent in a hospital. “Soon as I rest up, I imagine I’ll run for president,” the story concluded. “Ain’t I the hero, though?”
Big for his age and eager to serve, Lucas forged his mother’s signature on an enlistment waiver and joined the Marines at 14. Military censors discovered his age through a letter to his 15-year-old girlfriend.
“They had him driving a truck in Hawaii because his age was discovered and they threatened to send him home,” said D.K. Drum, who wrote Lucas’ story in the 2006 book “Indestructible.”
“He said if they sent him home, he would just join the Army.”
116 comments
- Comments are open and unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Little Green Footballs.
- Obscene, abusive, silly, or annoying remarks may be deleted, but the fact that particular comments remain on the site in no way constitutes an endorsement of their views by Little Green Footballs.
- Posts that contain phone numbers, street addresses, email addresses or other personal information will also be deleted, as will posts that consist only of a variation on the word, "First!"
- Comments that advocate violence will be cause for immediate banning with no appeal.
- REMEMBER: posting comments at LGF is a privilege, not a right. Abuse that privilege, and your account will be blocked.
