He lay bleeding from more than 100 wounds in the volcanic ash at Iwo Jima, five days after his seventeenth birthday.  Already he had been in the Marine Corps for three years.

He was something of a renegade, quick to ignore rules and do things his own way.  He'd lied his age to join the Marines age the age of 14...but only after obtaining his mother's permission.  His heart burning with a patriotic fervor, when the Marines learned his true age and refused to allow him to serve in combat, he stowed away on a ship headed for Iwo Jima.  Determined to serve, some would call him brash, others would call him disobedient and disrespectful.  But when TWO grenades landed near him and his fellow Marines, without hesitation the young boy knew what do do.   Quickly he dove on top of the first grenade, then reached out and pulled the second beneath him...taking the full impact of their explosions himself to spare the lives of his comrades.