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A West Virginia Town Applied For Soviet Foreign Aid, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan February 21, 2020 33 min

Vulcan - McDowell County — Vulcan miners in 1919. The Sangha Kommune

24. The Youngest Marine Medal of Honor Recipient

Jack Lucas and President Harry S. Truman on the White House lawn. Pintrest

Jack Lucas was lucky to survive, but was left with over 250 shrapnel bits in his body. It took 26 operations spread out over several months to repair the damage. In October of 1945, President 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 Corps.

Lucas went on to get a business degree, and in 1961, enlisted in the US Army. He joined the 82^nd 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. He died of Leukemia in 2008, and in 2016, the USS Jack H. Lucas, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was named in his honor.

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Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.