WWII Medal of Honor Recipients: Marine Lieutenant Jack Power

  By Michael D. Hull Outside City Hall in Worcester, Mass., stands a soldier who has been on guard duty since 1947. Atop an eight-foot granite pedestal, he never flinches in the hot August sun or when February winds whip along busy Franklin Street. Square-jawed under a combat helmet and with an M-1 carbine slung over his shoulder, he stands with one leg slightly forward and a hand lightly clasping his long trench knife. He looks life like, this young U.S. Marine, of muscular build and slightly below average height, right down to the wristwatch on his left arm and the globe and anchor insignia on his shirt pocket. For the citizens of the central Massachusetts city, he is a daily reminder of those critical years, 1942 to 1945, when a generation of young Americans went forth—reluctantly but gamely—to help save the world from fascist tyranny. The eight-foot bronze statue is a striking likeness of a hero, Marine Lieutenant John Vincent Power of Worcester, one of those thousands of Americans who went to war but did not return. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism while serving as a platoon leader with the 4th Marine Division on Namur Island in the bloody Marshall Islands campaign on February 1, 1944. Lieutenant Power was the first Massachusetts serviceman to gain the nation’s highest honor in World War II and one of two Medal of Honor winners in that conflict claimed by Worcester. The other was Navy Chaplain Joseph T. O’Callahan, a Colleg