Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

The man who has had it roughest is the man to be most admired. Conversely, he who has had it the easiest is the least praiseworthy.

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.

Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned—you cannot say that it will not. It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed. I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew—no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know.