Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

Gun drill and nomenclature. Know your weapon, know it intimately, know it with almost the insight of its inventor; be able to take it apart blindfolded or in the dark, to put it together; be able to recite mechanically a detailed description of the gun’s operation; know the part played by every member of the squad, from gunner down to the unfortunates who carried the water can or the machine gun boxes, as well as their own rifles.

Silhouetted against the gathering dark were the men. In the half light, they seemed to have lost the dimension of depth; they seemed shades. They moved, these weary men, as though chained to one another, with the soulless, mechanical tread of zombies. Behind them, low on the horizon, the reflected sun glowed dully. Despair seemed to walk in desolation. I was glad when night closed in. Then my company was on its feet in turn, plodding up the silent beach in darkness. We took up defensive positions. We scooped out shallow emplacements and turned the mouths of our machine guns toward the sea. We told off a guard and went to sleep, the last sound in our ears the pound Of the surf against that long low coastline. They bombed us the next day. But it was nothing to fear. It was not even the foretaste of how it would be.

To protect vital Henderson Field against an enemy who seemed determined now to fight for Guadalcanal, special nocturnal patrols were required. The first time that my company was commanded to furnish the patrol marked the end of our drinking, and our careers as beachcombers came crashing to a close in tragicomic style. It was the day our liquor ran out. I was among those who joined the other men from our company and marched away from the beach, through the coconut grove, into the kunai, and so to the point we would defend outside Henderson Field.

Our entrenching tools made muffled noises while we scooped foxholes out of the jungle floor. It was like digging into a compost heap ten thousand years old. Beneath this perfection of corruption lay a dark rich loam. We had barely finished when night fell, abruptly, blackly, like a shade drawn swiftly down from jungle roof to jungle floor. We dipped into the foxholes. We lay down and waited. It was a darkness without time. It was an impenetrable darkness. To the right and the left of me rose up those terrible formless things of my imagination, which I could not see because there was no light. I could not see, but I dared not close my eyes lest the darkness crawl beneath my eyelids and suffocate me. I could only hear. My ears became my being and I could hear the specks of life that crawled beneath my clothing, the rotting of the great tree which rose from its three-cornered trunk above me. I could hear the darkness gathering against me and the silences that lay between the moving things.

But within five minutes of that first machine gun burst, of the appearance of that first enemy flare that suffused the battlefield in unearthly greenish light — and by its dying accentuated the enveloping night — within five minutes of this, all hell broke loose. Everyone was firing, every weapon was sounding voice; but this was no orchestration, no terribly beautiful symphony of death, as decadent rear-echelon observers write. Here was cacophony; here was dissonance; here was wildness; here was the absence of rhythm, the loss of limit; for everyone fires what, when and where he chooses; here was booming, sounding, shrieking, wading, hissing, cradling, shaking, gibbering noise. Here was hell.

Lieutenant Ivy-League strode up to our pits in the morning. He sat on a coconut log and told us what had happened. He smoked desperately and stared into the river as he talked. The skin around his eyes was drawn tight with strain and with shock. His eyes had already taken on that aspect peculiar to Guadalcanal, that constant stare of pupils that seemed darker, larger, rounder, more absolute. It was particularly noticeable in the brown-eyed men. Their eyes seemed to get auburn, like the color of an Irish setter.

Our regiment had killed something like nine hundred of them. Most of them lay in clusters or heaps before the gun pits commanding the sandspit, as though they had not died singly but in groups. Moving among them were the souvenir hunters, picking their way delicately as though fearful of booby traps, while stripping the bodies of their possessions. Only the trappings of war change. Only these distinguish the Marine souvenir hunter, bending over the fallen Jap, from Hector denuding slain Patroclus of the borrowed armor of Achilles. One of the marines went methodically among the dead armed with a pair of pliers. He had observed that the Japanese have a penchant for gold fillings in their teeth, often for solid gold teeth. He was looting their very mouths. He would kick their jaws agape, peer into the mouth with all the solicitude of a Park Avenue dentist — careful, always careful not to contaminate himself by touch — and yank out all that glittered. He kept the gold teeth in an empty Bull Durham tobacco sack, which he wore around his neck in the manner of an amulet. Souvenirs, we called him.

Each fresh trial leaves a man more shaken than the last, and each period of tedium — with its time for speculative dread — leaves his foundations worn lower, his roots less firm for the next trial. Sometimes there is a final shattering: a man crouching in a pit beneath the bombardment of a battleship might put a pistol to his head and deliver himself.

So we were glad to see the soldiers when they came trudging up to our pits. They came after another air raid; a very close one. But the Thing had not infected them yet. War was still a lark. Their faces were still heavy with flesh, their ribs padded, their eyes innocent. They were older than we, an average twenty-five to our average twenty; yet we treated them like children. I remember when two of them, having heard of the Ilu, immediately set off for it, picking their way through the barbed wire, like botanists off on a field trip.

Soon we had no need of stealth. The food dump had become the most popular place on the island. The roads became clogged with plunderers like ourselves, pistols swinging at their hips or rifles slung over shoulders, converging outside the fence like a holiday crowd outside of Yankee Stadium. There were now so many holes dug beneath the fence that one might gain entry at any point. Inside, bearded, gaunt, raggedy-assed marines roved boldly over the premises, attacking the cases with gusto, tearing them open to seize what they wanted, leaving the rejected articles exposed to wind and sun with the indifference of pack rats. When a man's bag was full, he sauntered off — contemptuous of challenge from the guards.

So the battle raged, so it ended, as it always does, unresolved. The Marine Corps is a fermenter; it is divided into two distinct camps — the Old Salts and the Boots — who are forever warring: the Old Salt defending his past and his traditions against the furious assault of the Boot who is striving to exalt the Present at the expense of the Past, seeking to deflate the aplomb of the Old Salt by collapsing this puffed-up Past upon which it reposes. But the Boot will forever feel inferior to the Old Salt; he must always attack, for he has not the confidence of defense. The moment he ceases to slash at Tradition with the bright saber of present deeds, the instant he restrains that impetuous sword hand, trusting instead to the calm eye of appraisal — upon that change he passes over to the ranks of the Old Salts and ceases to be a Boot forever. Youth rebels and age conserves; between them, they advance. The Marines will cease to win battles the moment either camp achieves clear cut ascendancy.

Going to the brig in the Marine Corps — especially to the bread-and-water cell — is like going abroad. First you must go to sick bay for a physical examination to determine if you are strong enough to stand such a diet and confinement; then you must visit the company office, to have the black marks entered in your record, and more important, to be sure you are docked in pay for the time you spend imprisoned; next you must revisit your company area to surrender your weapon and your gear to your property sergeant — and then, clad only in baggy, faded dungarees, the livery of the brig, you are ready for the door to clang shut behind you. Back in your company, you are a dead man for five days. Even your bunk is denuded of pad and blankets. You are a cipher — the scapegrace whose picture is turned to the wall. Every foot of the way in these progressions made at an odd, doglike pace, there follows your prison chaser, trotting grimly behind, his rifle at high port, like a canoeist with paddle poised — your shadow and your shame. The large black circles adorning front and back of your costume are almost endowed with weight, you feel them so poignantly; for you know that these are there for the prison chaser to aim at, should you break for freedom. The brig receives you, and you are nothing; even the clothes you wear belong to the brig and bear its mark; your very belt and razor blades have been entrusted to the brig warden — you have nothing — you are nothing.

“What’s the punishment?” “Loss of rank and fifty-dollar fine, same as before.” “But what about the four days of bread-and-water we just did?” “You never did them.” Chicken and I stopped dead, rooted by impotent anger. “The new court-martial merely says that you have been punished by loss of rank and the fine, and when it’s entered in your record book that’s how it will be. There won’t be any mention of the brig.” “Yes, there will,” I said, fighting a losing battle against my temper. “Because I’m not signing. Take me back to the brig and I’ll finish the ten days.” I turned to Chicken. “What about it — are you going back with me?” Chicken looked at me sheepishly. “I dunno, Lucky. I dunno as we can git back. Whut’re we gonna do if the sergeant major says we got to sign? Yuh cain’t fight City Hall, Lucky.” “There speaks a sensible man,” Eloquent said grandly. “You call that sensible?” I blazed at him. “That rotten major makes a mistake and we’re supposed to pay for it! We serve four days we weren’t supposed to serve, and we’re supposed to forget it. Forget it in writing — make the lie official! That’s sensible! Well, I say the hell with you and the sergeant major. You can tell the sergeant major to take his court-martial and your sensibility between thumb and forefinger and at the count of three he can stuff it smartly up his official —”

To the north, one patrol discovered the body of an E Company scout who had been reported missing. The area bore marks of a struggle, as though he had fought hand to hand. His body bore dozens of bayonet wounds. They had used him for bayonet practice. In his mouth they had stuffed flesh they had cut from his arm. His buddies said he had had a tattoo there — the Marine emblem, the fouled anchor and the globe. The Japs cut it off and stuffed it in his mouth. The Commander was angry.

Again — to the north — two Japanese officers had been caught snooping around our positions and had been killed. An E Company outpost, scouting the terrain at their front, had discovered a Japanese force, in platoon strength, sleeping on the ground. Sleeping! They fired into them, into these sleeping supermen of the jungle, withdrawing upon the approach of another enemy platoon. So the enemy was there. But in what strength? If the Japanese platoons had been but patrols, then the foe was in sizable force. The enemy’s actions, too, were mystifying. Sleeping indeed! Could it be they were not aware of us?

I stood among the heaps of dead. They lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out. The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul — does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. For this red-and-yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man, and the thing that energized him, the Word that gave “to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” the Word from a higher Word — this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter-inch of heated metal. The mystery of the universe has departed him, and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved, the mystery is over — because it has changed residences. The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand — that thing exists still, and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm, to clench that fist exactly as it did before.

a malefactor and enemy of humankind, an adversary really, dissolving; corroding, poisoning, chilling, sucking, drenching — coming at a man with its rolling mists and green mold and ceaseless downpour, tripping him with its numberless roots and vines, poisoning him with green insects and malodorous bugs and treacherous tree bark, turning the sun from his bones and cheer from his heart, dissolving him — the rain, the mold, the damp steadily plucking each cell apart like tiny hands tearing at the petals of a flower — dissolving him, I say, into a mindless, formless fluid like the sop of mud into which his feet forever fall in a monotonous slop-suck, slop-suck that is the sound of nothingness, the song of the jungle wherein everything falls apart in hollow harmony with the rain.

He told us the first sergeant back there had killed himself. He grew despondent one night, Eloquent said, and shoved the muzzle of a Tommy gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger: a most messy end of himself. None of us could comprehend it.

The last patrol was a prolonged one of several days. We were taken by landing boat down the east coast, to a place called Old Natamo, and there deposited. The place had once been inhabited by the Japs, but all of their emplacements were now empty. Those of the enemy who were discovered were in the last extremities of ordeal. Some were overtaken crawling on their hands and knees, some so badly decomposed it was as though their feet were rotting off, some weighing perhaps no more than eighty pounds, some without weapons, all without food — and all possessed of that indomitable fighting spirit that was the Japanese Imperial Army’s greatest asset, the one single factor that made a poorly-equipped soldier a first-rate foe. They all resisted, and they were all destroyed, bayoneted for the most part, for it was folly to fire a rifle on patrol in unfriendly, unknown territory. One of these stragglers was strangled in cold blood by The Kid, a youngster who, although already a veteran of Guadalcanal, was hardly acquainted with a razor. He was to go mad two months later. So we mopped up.

There were even a few suicides to suggest how despairing some could find the situation.

Suddenly he broke it off and said, “What did you say you were?” “A scout,” I said, proudly. “I used to be a machine-gunner.” “But that’s no place for a man of your caliber.” Now I was shocked! The old shibboleth, intelligence! Had not our government been culpable enough in pampering the high IQ draftees as though they were too intelligent to fight for their country? Could not Doctor Gentle see that I was proud to be a scout, and before that a machine-gunner? Intelligence, intelligence, intelligence. 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 low-brow 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. But Doctor Gentle seemed not to perceive the pride behind my words, and so I stammered and made some weak joke about it and hoped he would change the subject. “Oh, by the way,” he said. “I have that gun of yours. How would you like to sell it to me? I’d like to send it home as a souvenir.” “Sorry, sir, but I can’t. It’s not mine.” “Too bad,” he said, rising, “but if you should change your mind, let me know. The folks back in Atlanta’d get a kick out of it.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “There isn’t very much to be done about that enuresis of yours. A corpsman ...

We were advancing again. Our objective was Bloody Nose Ridge. This was the high ground visible from across the airfield. It gave the enemy perfect observation. Advancing across the flat table of crushed coral on which there was hardly a single depression, we were as easily sighted as clay ducks in a shooting gallery. But there was no other route and we had to take it. Grass-cutting machine gun fire swept the airfield. Mortar shells fell with the calm regularity of automation. It was as though they had determined at what rate they could kill the most of us and were satisfied with it, unhurried in its application. Marines fell. They crumpled, they staggered, they pitched forward, they sank to their knees, they fell backwards. They kept advancing.

Monster cloud rising over Hiroshima, over the world — monstrous, mushrooming thing, sign of our age, symbol of our sin: growth, bigness, speed: grow, grow, grow — grow in a cancer, enlarge a factory, swell a city, balloon our bellies, speed life, fly to the moon, burst a bomb, shatter a people — explode the world. So it rose and I shrank in my cot, I who had cringed before the body-squeezing blast of a five-hundred-pound bomb, hearing now this strange cold incomprehensible jargon of the megaton. Someone had sinned against life, and I felt it in my very person.

But then I, too, sinned. Suddenly, secretly, covertly — I rejoiced. For as I lay in that hospital, I had faced the bleak prospect of returning to the Pacific and the war and the law of averages. But now, I knew, the Japanese would have to lay down their arms. The war was over. I had survived. Like a man wielding a submachine gun to defend himself against an unarmed boy, I had survived. So I rejoiced.