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The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

24. “I Wasn’t a Superman After I Got Hit“

Jack Lucas with President Truman in 1945. Tara Ross

Of the two live grenades that Lucas hugged to protect his comrades, one was a dud and failed to explode. The other went off beneath the teenager and wounded him severely. “I wasn’t a Superman after I got hit“, Lucas recounted, as he recalled how he screamed after the explosion. He was lucky to survive, but was left with over 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body, and required 26 operations over the following months to repair the damage.

Jack Lucas, left, in old age. Leatherneck M31

In October, 1945, before Lucas was discharged from the Marine Corps, President Harry S. Truman personally placed the Medal of Honor around the teenager’s neck. He 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. Lucas volunteered to serve in Vietnam, but after his request was denied, he resigned his commission in 1965.

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.