Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

It is an American weakness. The success becomes the sage. Scientists counsel on civil liberty; comedians and actresses lead political rallies; athletes tell us what brand of cigarette to smoke.

“Out of the future that is not yet, into the present that is just becoming, back to the past that no longer is.”

A soldier’s pack is like a woman’s purse: it is filled with his personality.

I turned to confront Father Straight. I knew before I turned that it was he, for his was the only gentle or cultivated voice I had encountered in the Marines. Father Straight was our Chaplain — the first, in fact, that the Second Battalion ever had. He had joined us in Australia just as we shoved off. I saw him our second day out when I noticed a crowd of marines encircling an elderly-looking man. They had such a respectful air, such a hungrily respectful air, and the man was so obviously not one of us, that it was easy to conclude his calling.

Someone had sinned against life, and I felt it in my very person.