Lionel V. Bolduc

Lionel Bolduc was the third of five Bolduc boys born and raised in the town of Willimansett, near Chicopee, Massachusetts. He attended trade school and worked for the American Thread Company before the war broke out.

Bolduc joined the Marine Corps on September 16, 1942, just a few months after his seventeenth birthday. Unlike many of his comrades, Bolduc began his training at the New River Training Center in North Carolina; graduates of his Ninth Separate Recruit Battalion were assigned to fill gaps in new units arriving from Parris Island and other depots on the east coast. Private Bolduc was assigned to Company A, First Separate Battalion in late 1942; that unit would become Able Company, 24th Marines when transferred to Camp Pendleton, California. He would train – and go on liberty – with the Marines that became his brothers in arms.

About a year after his enlistment, Bolduc was made Private First Class. Although given a brief spell in the brig for “insolence and insubordination to an NCO” in December, 1943, Bolduc proved himself a good Marine in combat on Namur in February 1944, and on Saipan where he was badly wounded on July 6. After returning from the hospital, Lionel was promoted to corporal and placed in charge of a fire team of three other Marines.

Bolduc’s next battle would be his last. He made the February 19, 1945 landing on Iwo Jima, but was killed in action on March 7. The young corporal – closer to eighteen than twenty – was temporarily buried on Iwo Jima.

After the war, the Bolduc family arranged to have their Marine buried in St. Rose de Lima Cemetery in Chicopee, Massachusetts.