Jack Lucas wanted to join the US Marine Corps in World War II. He was only fourteen-years-old, though. So he lied about his age, enlisted, and became a Marine. At age seventeen, he displayed such extraordinary heroism in combat, saving the lives of fellow Marines, that he earned the Medal of Honor. It made him the youngest Marine to ever receive the country’s highest award for valor. Below are some interesting facts about the remarkable Jack Lucas.
A Teenager Eager to Join the Fight
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and thrust America into WWII, Jacklyn Harold “Jack” Lucas (1928 – 2008), of Plymouth, North Carolina, was thirteen-years-old. A cadet captain in a military academy, and captain of the school’s football team, he was eager to take part in the action and experience the adventure of war. Too young to enlist, and afraid that the war would end before he reached legal age to take part, Lucas resorted to trickery to join the fight. He lied.
At age fourteen, Lucas forged his mother’s signature on a form that granted permission for her “seventeen year old” son to enlist, and used that to join the Marine Corps Reserves. The teenage recruit completed the Marines’ boot camp, but his true age was eventually discovered. So he was restricted to driving a truck in Hawaii, while the Marine Corps decided what to do with him. Facing the threat of being sent back home, Lucas went AWOL and stowed aboard a troop transport headed for combat.
An Act of Sublime Selflessness
Once the ship was underway, Lucas 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, 1945, Lucas, by then seventeen-years-old, was in a trench in Iwo Jima with three other Marines, when a firefight suddenly erupted against eleven Japanese in a nearby trench.
The enemy hurled grenades at the Marines, and two of them landed in Lucas’ trench. In an act of sublime courage and selflessness, 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 on top one grenade, and grabbed the other to place it beneath his body as well. One grenade turned out to be a dud and failed to explode. Unfortunately, the other grenade worked just fine, went off beneath Lucas, and severely injured him.
A Well Deserved Medal of Honor
Jack Lucas dove on the grenades like Superman, but as he put it later: “I wasn’t a Superman after I got hit”, recalling how he shrieked after the explosion. He was lucky to survive, but was left with more than 250 shrapnel bits in his body. It took 26 operations spread out over several months to repair the damage. In October, 1945, President Harry S. Truman personally placed the Medal of Honor around Lucas’ neck during a ceremony on the White House lawn, before the teenager was discharged from the Marine Corps.
Lucas went on to get a business degree, and in 1961, enlisted in the US Army. He joined the 82nd Airborne Division as a paratrooper, and survived a training jump in which both parachutes failed to open. Lucas 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. Frank Lucas passed away from leukemia in 2008. In 2016, the USS Jack H. Lucas, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, was named in his honor.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
History Halls – Young Warriors: John Lincoln Clem, the US Army’s Youngest Sergeant
Marine Corps Magazine, Summer 1996 – The Story of Jack Lucas
