25. A Teenage Marine’s Sublime Courage
In February of 1945, seventeen-year-old Jack 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 teenager 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“.
Lucas landed atop one grenade, and grabbed the other to place it beneath his body as well. One grenade was a dud and failed to explode, but the other went off beneath Lucas and severely injured him. “I wasn’t a Superman after I got hit“, he added, recalling how he screamed after the explosion.