In the annals of the U.S. Marine Corps, slight, wiry Sergeant Albert Luke Ireland of Cold Spring, N.Y. is a man of great distinction: he holds more Purple Heart citations than any other marine on record. Last week, after the Marine Corps had finally got around to giving his combat wounds their due, Ireland was the owner of a white-striped purple ribbon with eight gold stars.
Ireland, 35, who also has eight battle stars, a Bronze Star and two individual citations, began his military career in 1941 by enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Five days after Pearl Harbor, he joined the U.S. Marines.
While helping man a machine gun on Guadalcanal in January 1943, he got his first wound: two slivers of Japanese shrapnel ripped into his back and lodged in his left lung. Considering that a "scratch," he stayed up front with his platoon; but malaria finally laid him low. In the spring of 1945 he was back in action. He was wounded in the arm and leg by grenade fragments, in the face and in the hip by shrapnel, then in the face again by a sniper's bullet.
After his discharge, Ireland spent a year as a Veterans Administration patient. When the U.S. got into the Korean war, he promptly reenlisted in the Marines. Since the corps has a rule against sending men with more than two Purple Hearts into combat, Ireland needed special authorization to get into a front-line unit. The word came down from the Marines' commandant, General Clifton B. Gates: "If the sergeant wants to fight, let him fight."
In Korea, Ireland led an infantry rocket section, and in due course he got shrapnel in the neck, leg and hand, mortar fragments in the face. That was too much for the Marine Corps, which in December 1951 sternly shipped Ireland home, despite his protests that he was still able and willing to fight.