[The following takes place during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.]
Jacklyn Lucas was an example. He’d fast-talked his way into the marines at fourteen, fooling the recruiters with his muscled physique and martinet style – he’d attended a military academy before signing up. Assigned to drive a truck in Hawaii, he had grown frustrated; he wanted to fight. He stowed away on a transport out of Honolulu, surviving on food passed along to him by sympathetic leathernecks on board.
He landed on D-Day without a gun. He grabbed one lying on the beach and fought his way inland.
Now, on D+ 1, Jack and three comrades were crawling through a trench when eight Japanese sprang in front of them. Jack shot one of them through the head. Then his rifle jammed. As he struggled with it a grenade landed at his feet. He yelled a warning to the others and rammed the grenade into the soft ash. Immediately, another rolled in. Jack Lucas, seventeen, fell on both grenades. “Luke, you’re gonna die,” he remembered thinking.
Jack Lucas later told a reporter: “The force of the explosion blew me up into the air and onto my back. Blood poured out of my mouth and I couldn’t move. I knew I was dying.” His comrades wiped out the remaining Japanese and returned to Jack, to collect the dog tags from his body. To their amazement, they found him not only alive but conscious. Aboard the hospital ship Samaritan the doctors could scarcely believe it. “Maybe he was too damned young and too damned tough to die,” one said. He endured twenty-one reconstructive operations and became the nation’s youngest Medal of Honor winner – and the only high school freshman to receive it.
When I asked him, fifty-three years after the event, “Mr. Lucas, why did you jump on those grenades?” he did not hesitate with his answer: “To save my buddies.”
Source:
Bradley, James, and Ron Powers. “D-Day Plus One.” Flags of Our Fathers. Bantam Dell, a Division of Random House, Inc., 2006. 174-75. Print.
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