Jacklyn Harold Lucas, youngest Marine awarded the Medal of Honor

Dec 21 , 2025

Jacklyn Harold Lucas, youngest Marine awarded the Medal of Honor

Jacklyn Harold Lucas was just seventeen. Barely out of boyhood and barely tall enough to enlist, yet when the smoke rose and grenades fell, he answered the call with a heart forged in fire. Two grenades in his hands. Two lives more precious than his own in the blink of hell’s cruel eye. He threw himself over those bombs and turned the fury of war into a testament of courage no older man could match. This was no reckless act of a child—it was the cutting edge of sacrifice.

The Boy Who Broke the Mold

Born April 14, 1928, in Plymouth, North Carolina, Jacklyn Lucas grew faster than most boys of his time. He wasn’t content to watch the world burn from the sidelines. He wanted to be where the fight was fiercest. With an iron will and a troop’s worth of guts tucked under that Marine Corps uniform, Lucas lied about his age to join the Corps in 1942—just shy of his sixteenth birthday.

Faith carried weight in young Lucas’s life, though he didn’t wear it like a preacher’s collar. In recorded reflections, his resolve echoed something stronger than bravado—something sacred. Wrestling with the terror of war, Lucas found his courage not in himself, but in a quiet foundation of purpose. He once told a reporter his faith helped him “know that God would take care of me.”

“I had no fear of death,” Lucas said, “because my faith gave me hope beyond this world.”

Peleliu: The Firestorm From Hell

September 15, 1944—Peleliu Island, a blot of volcanic rock in the Pacific, burned hotter than any hellscape in the Marine Corps history books. The mission was brutal: break the impregnable Japanese defenses, secure airfields that would fuel the final push toward Japan’s home islands.

Lucas was a scout sniper in the 1st Marine Division. His cover was in the shadows; his weapon was patience and precision. But when an enemy grenade arc landed near his squad amidst the rocky coral ridges, Lucas’s split-second decision seared his name into history.

Two grenades landed within arm’s reach.

He caught both with hands trembling but unyielding. With no thought for himself, he pressed the bombs into his chest, absorbing the blasts’ shrapnel and concussive force.

He lived.

Two days later, against all odds, Lucas could still crawl. Nearly every Marine around him believed him dead, but he survived for another fight, another day.

Medal of Honor: The Youngest Marine to Wear the Badge

At just 17, Lance Corporal Jacklyn Harold Lucas became the youngest Marine to ever receive the Medal of Honor during World War II. His citation reads:

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as scout sniper with Company I, 3d Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Peleliu Island, Palau Islands, September 15, 1944.”

His selfless act saved the lives of two fellow Marines. That sacrifice, laid bare on the scorching sands of Peleliu, stands in bloodstained testimony to the spirit of the Corps.

His commanding officer called him, “a boy with the heart of a lion.”

Beyond the Medal: A Testament to Redemption

Wounds from the grenade blasts nearly claimed his life again in the hospital. Many would have collapsed under such physical and emotional weight. Lucas bore his scars without bitterness, carrying his survival as a cargo of purpose. His story is a bloodied beacon for all who face darkness and despair. Not all heroes wield swords or guns—some fold themselves over others like armor.

Jacklyn Harold Lucas did that and more.

“I didn’t think of dying as fear, but as part of a greater purpose,” he later said in interviews. His life after war was quieter, but no less defined by battle-tested faith.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” — John 15:13

Lucas’s life reminds us all: courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it through sacrifice.

Even as the youngest of Marines, he carried the heaviest burden—the burden of choosing others first when the sky exploded around him. His story is carved deep into the bedrock of the Marine Corps and the soul of American valor.

When you wear the scars of war, you wear a story nobody else can tell. And Jacklyn Lucas’s story is carved in flesh and fire: a young boy who became a legend the hard way.

Remember him when the world grows dark: there is no greater strength than that of a man who would choose death to grant life to others.