The Youngest Marine to Receive The Medal of Honor Escaped Death Twice
The Youngest Marine to Receive The Medal of Honor Escaped Death Twice
By Alex Snyder Defense Media Activity
For Jacklyn H. Lucas, the reality of being a 14 year old was serving as a Marine during World War II.
As a 13-year-old cadet captain at Edwards Military Institute in Salemburg, North Carolina, Lucas regularly saw headlines of the war America had recently joined. He was angered by the attacks on Pearl Harbor, but didn’t want to contribute to the cause by planting a victory garden or collecting scrap metal to be made into weapons. Lucas wanted to fight. He convinced a notary to swear he was 17 years old, and at 14, he was sworn into the Marine Corps.
After serving for several months, military officials discovered Lucas’ actual age and threatened to send him home. Lucas said he would just join the Army and was allowed to stay, being assigned to a relatively safe detail at a supply depot in Hawaii. However, three years later, he stowed away on a ship headed to Iwo Jima because he was afraid he would never see combat. He survived on bread crumbs to avoid detection by the crew, for fear they would send him back to Pearl Harbor.
After landing, Lucas embedded with 40,000 other Marines during the U.S, assault on Iwo Jima. He had no weapon in the initial charge, but was able to retrieve one off a fallen comrade before making landfall. Shortly after, while engaging the Japanese forces, Lucas crept through a treacherous, twisting ravine which ran in close proximity to a fluid and uncertain frontline.
Pfc. Lucas and three other men were suddenly ambushed by a hostile patrol which savagely attacked with rifle fire and grenades. Quick to act when the lives of the small group were endangered by two grenades which landed directly in front of them, Pfc. Lucas unhesitatingly hurled himself over his comrades upon one grenade and pulled the other under him as well, absorbing the whole blasting forces of the explosions in his own body in order to shield his comrades. The day was February 20, 1945, just one day after D-Day. Lucas was only 16.
Assumed to have been killed by his selfless actions, it was hours before troops were able to recover his body. At that time, they discovered that he was not only alive, but conscious. Lucas was immediately transported to a hospital, where he underwent a 21-hour surgery to remove fragments of the grenades from every major organ in his body. More than 200 pieces of metal remained.
Just six months later, Lucas accepted the Medal of Honor, in person, from President Harry S. Truman in a ceremony on the White House lawn.
Lucas left military service. However, in 1961 at age 33, he once again donned a uniform, this time as an Army paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
On his first training jump, both of his parachutes failed to open. He fell 3,500 feet through the air. He not only lived, he walked away uninjured.
Two weeks later, he was back in the plane on his second training jump. That one went better. Four years later he finished his tour as a captain in the 82nd Airborne.
His adventures in surviving death now complete, Lucas ran a business outside Washington, D.C., wrote an autobiography aptly titled, “Indestructible,” met every president from Truman to Clinton, and saw his original Medal of Honor citation laid out in the hull of the USS Iwo Jima.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS
JACKLYN HARRELL LUCAS, USMCR
(DECEASED)
Medal of Honor Citation
Private First Class Jacklyn Harrell Lucas earned the Medal of Honor during the Iwo Jima campaign for unhesitatingly hurling himself over his comrades upon one grenade and for pulling another one under himself, absorbing the whole blasting force of the explosions with his own body.
Private First Class Lucas, the youngest Marine ever to receive the nation’s highest military decoration, was presented the award by President Harry S. Truman at the White House on Friday, 5 October 1945.
Jacklyn Harrell Lucas was born in Plymouth, North Carolina, 14 February 1928. He attended high school at nearby Salemburg and was captain of the football team. He was an all-around sportsman, also taking part in baseball, softball, basketball, boxing, wrestling, horseback riding, trap and skeet shooting, and hunting.
Although only 14 years of age, five feet, five and one half inches high, weighing 158 pounds, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve with his mother’s consent on 6 August 1942. He gave his age as 17, and went to Parris Island, South Carolina, for recruit training.
During his rifle training Pvt Lucas qualified as a sharpshooter. He was next assigned to the Marine Barracks, U.S. Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida. In June 1943 he was transferred to the 21st Replacement Battalion at New River, North Carolina, and one month later he went to the 25th Replacement Battalion, where he successfully completed schooling which qualified him as a heavy machine gun crewman.
He left the United States on 4 November 1943, and the following month he joined the 6th Base Depot of the V Amphibious Corps at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was advanced to private first class on 29 January 1944.
With statements to his buddies that he was going to join a combat organization, PFC Lucas walked out of camp on 10 January 1945, wearing a khaki uniform and carrying his dungarees and field shoes in a roll under his arm.
He was declared absent without leave (AWOL) when he failed to return that night and a month later, when there was still no sign of him, he was declared a “deserter,” and a reward offered for his apprehension. He was also reduced to the rank of private at that time.
He stowed away on board the USS Deuel which was transporting units of the 5th Marine Division into combat. He surrendered to the senior troop officer present on 8 February dressed in neat, clean dungarees. He was allowed to remain, and shortly after he was transferred to Headquarters Company, 5th Marine Division. He reached his 17th birthday while at sea, six days before he earned the Medal of Honor.
On the day following the landing at Iwo Jima, he was creeping through a twisting ravine with three other men of his rifle team when the Japanese opened a hand grenade attack on them. The men jumped into two shallow foxholes. A grenade landed in Pvt Lucas’ foxhole and he threw his body over it. Another one came hurtling in, and he reached out and pulled it beneath himself shortly before the explosion occurred, which lifted him off the ground and blew parts of his clothing into the air.
He was left for dead by his companions, although he was miraculously still alive. Severely wounded in the right arm and wrist, right leg and thigh, and chest, Pvt Lucas had undoubtedly saved his companions from serious injury and possible death.
He was evacuated and treated at various field hospitals prior to his arrival at San Francisco, California, 28 March 1945. The mark of desertion was removed from his record in August of that year while he was a patient at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Charleston, South Carolina.
He was discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve because of disability resulting from his wounds on 18 September 1945, following his reappointment to the rank of private first class.
Mr. Lucas passed away on 5 June 2008 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at the age of 80 after a battle with cancer. He was buried at Highland Cemetery in Hattiesburg four days later.
In addition to the Medal of Honor, PFC Lucas was awarded the Purple Heart; Presidential Unit Citation; Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one bronze star; American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.