In 1942, with World War II raging, Lucas forged his mother’s signature on enlistment papers and joined the U.S. Marines. He said he was 17; he was actually 14.
But his true age was discovered and he was given light duty in Hawaii. So three years after enlisting, he stowed away on a ship to Iwo Jima and joined a Marine unit there so he could see combat. The day after he arrived, he was out with three other Marines when two Japanese grenades dropped into their foxhole. Lucas quickly buried them in the sand and then jumped on top of them to shield his buddies. One exploded, and the other three men figured he was dead and moved on. He wasn’t dead: he ended up with at least 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body, and even after 26 surgeries over the next few months, most of them were still there.
President Harry S Truman awarded Lucas the Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery; Lucas is still the youngest Marine (17) ever to receive one. The president “told me he’d rather have that Medal of Honor than be president of the United States,” Lucas once said. “I said, ‘Sir, I’ll swap you.’ And all he did was laugh.” In 1961, Lucas joined the military again — the Army, as a paratrooper, in part because he had a fear of heights. On one training jump, both his main and reserve parachutes failed to open, but he survived again. He quit the Army in 1965, disappointed because the Army wouldn’t send him to combat in Vietnam. He recounted his military career in the book, Indestructible *, and went on to build a successful chain of meat markets. He died on June 1 from leukemia at age 80.