Jack Lucas
During WWII, Jacklyn Harrell “Jack” Lucas (1928 – 2008) lied his way into the military to enlist in the US Marine Corps at age 14. He went on to become the youngest Marine ever to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor – the country’s highest award for valor – for heroic conduct at age 17, whereby he saved the lives of fellow Marines during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Born in Plymouth, North Carolina, Lucas was a 13-year-old cadet captain in a military academy, and captain of the school’s football team, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America joined WWII. Eager to join the action, at age 14 Lucas forged his mother’s signature on a form that granted permission for her “17-year-old” son to enlist, and used that to join the Marine Corps Reserves.
He completed training, but after his true age was discovered, Lucas was restricted to driving a truck in Hawaii while the Marines decided what to do with him. Facing the threat of being sent back home, he stowed aboard a troop transport headed for combat. Once the ship was underway, he turned himself in to avoid a charge of desertion, and volunteered for combat – without disclosing his true age. The ship was part of the task force headed for Iwo Jima, and Lucas was duly assigned to a rifle company and placed on its roster.
In February of 1945, young Lucas was in a trench in Iwo Jima with three other Marines, when a firefight erupted against 11 Japanese in a nearby trench. When two enemy grenades landed in Lucas’ trench, the 17 years saved his comrades by shielding them with his own body. As he described it: “I hollered to my pals to get out and did a Superman dive at the grenades“. He landed atop one, and grabbed the other to place beneath his body as well. One grenade was a dud and failed to explode, but the other went off beneath the teenager and wounded him severely. “I wasn’t a Superman after I got hit“, he added, recalling how he screamed after the explosion.
Lucas was lucky to survive, but was left with over 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body, and required 26 operations during subsequent months to repair the damage. In October of 1945, President Harry S. Truman personally placed the Congressional Medal of Honor around the teenager’s neck during a ceremony on the White House lawn, before he was discharged from the Corps.
He went on to get a business degree, and in 1961, enlisted in the US Army. He joined the 82nd Airborne as a paratrooper, and survived a training jump in which both parachutes failed to open. He was commissioned, reached the rank of captain, and was assigned to train paratroopers in Fort Bragg. He volunteered to serve in Vietnam, but after his request was denied, he resigned his commission in 1965.