Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific, A Marine Tells His Story

by Robert Leckie

They wounded his assistant. They blinded him. But he fought on. The Marines gave him the Navy Cross and Hollywood made a picture about him and the Tenaru Battle. I guess America wanted a hero fast, a live one; and the Indian was dead.

And when he gets to Heaven To St. Peter he will tell: One more Marine reporting, sir— I’ve served my time in Hell.

the cartridges gleamed above the earth. Chuckler and I lifted our gaze from the cemetery to encompass the entire level plain sweeping back to the hills. Chuckler raised his eyebrows sardonically.

Chuckler hastened to explain. “I wasn’t being wise … I meant, had you ever heard of the place before you got here?” His astonishment startled us. An idea was dawning, gladly. “Y’mean …” “Hell, yes! Guadalcanal. The First Marines—Everybody’s heard of it. You guys are famous. You guys are heroes back home …” We did not see him leave, for we had both looked away quickly—each embarrassed by the quick tears. They had not forgotten.

angel. I ran for a tram speeding up Wellington Parade, leapt for the platform, missed it, grabbed the handrail and was dragged for two blocks until a pair of strong-armed Diggers were able to pull me aboard, like a drowning man. Wavering, I came erect and thrust out my chest: “Tha’s nothin’,” I said. “Las’ night—I got hit by one!” There was laughter until I reached my stop and got off.

This is how the Marines train their men. Keep them mean and nasty, like starving beasts, says the Corps, and they will fight better. When men are being moved from one place to another, spare no effort to make it painful; and before they have arrived at their destination, dispatch a man ahead to survey the ground with an eye toward discomfort. For sustenance give them cold food, and for tools a machete, and if the Commander has any influence with the gods of the clouds, he must see to it that it rains.

“Take it easy, Father,” I said. “We’re going to rustle up some chow.” “That’ll be swell,” he said, boyishly. “Where?” “Tell you in confession.” Father Straight laughed, “You can’t steal from yourself, you know.” “Right. We’re going to speed up the distribution process a little.”

Keep it up, America, keep telling your youth that mud and danger are fit only for intellectual pigs. Keep on saying that only the stupid are fit to sacrifice, that America must be defended by the lowbrow and enjoyed by the high-brow. Keep vaunting head over heart, and soon the head will arrive at the complete folly of any kind of fight and meekly surrender the treasure to the first bandit with enough heart to demand it.

White-Man was the third replacement. From the hills of Virginia, White-Man was a bigot from the tip of his blunt-toed feet to the top of his high and narrow and brindle-haired head. “Lucky,” he said to me once, “know whut weah gonna do after the war? Weah gonna clean up them niggahs. And when weah finished with the niggahs—weah gonna staht on the Catholics!”

But we have the men who say: “This is too weak. I cannot kill upon a casuistry. I must know my cause to be just. I will always fight to defend my country against an invader or to suppress an aggressor or chastise a tyrant. But I must know that this is so, and, turning to my account your own demonstration of the impossibility of ever knowing—I say with a logic as compelling as yours, a logic that does not require the blood of my brothers—I will not go.” But sacrifice says: “Not the blood of your brother, my friend—your blood.”