“Jack Lewis, Arriving” by Rolf Yngve

A story by alumnus Rolf Yngve (fiction, ’12) appears at Review Americana:

That they would name our ship USS Jack Lewis stems from the fact that there had once been a true, human Jack Lewis who was the Platoon Corpsman for Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines during the last days of the Vietnam War. One night while encamped near Da Nang, Petty Officer Second Class Lewis found himself next to a live Chinese grenade after a major league pitch by a Viet Cong—which was unusual because most of the Viet Cong had been wiped out during the Tet Offensive three years earlier. Four Marines were also hunkered down with him in their sandbag parapet. They had been alerted to activity, but no one expected anyone to be able to heave a grenade all the way over the sandbags from outside the wire. But there it was, in the mud somewhere, sputtering. Petty Officer Lewis, as related in his citation, “in complete disregard for his own safety” then did throw himself upon the grenade and “smothered the explosion with his own body.” In so doing, Petty Officer Lewis saved the four Marines and earned the decoration known as the Navy Cross.

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