Robert Leckie (1920–2001)

Robert Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific is a memoir of a Young 21 year old Robert as a Marine recruit as he enters basic training. His first wartime experience is at Guadalcanal as a machine gunner . After Guadalcanal, he served in New Britain, ending his wartime service at Peleliu, where he was wounded and was undergoing rehabilitation when the bombed was dropped. This with E.B.Sledge's With the Old Breed: From Peleliu and Okinawa, while vastly different in tone are the 2 finest personal accounts from the war in the Pacific.… (mehr)

Leckie’s memoir of his experiences in the Pacific campaign of WW2 is one my favorite memoirs. Why? Because it is so well written. His vivid descriptions of combat impress on the reader a true sense of reality, of being there in that foxhole.

“I think of Judgment Day. I think of Götterdämmerung; I think of the stars exploding, of the planets going off like fireworks; I think of a volcano; I think of a roaring and an energy unbelievable; I think, of holocaust; and again I think of night reeling from a thousand scarlet slashes and I see the red eye of hell winking in her wounds—I think of all these, and I cannot tell you what I have seen, the terrible spectacle I witnessed from that hillside.”

Leckie's emotional descriptions and writing style, rather than the storyline, are the primary reasons for my 5 star review. This is not your everyday ghost-written war memoir, describing a litany of deeds written in essay style. Leckie lyrically emphasizes his objection to war, maybe not realized while experienced, but certainly at the time of writing.

The Epilogue poignantly describes Leckie's experience of the end of the war in the pacific and is asking us the question if the end really justified the means: Leckie answers in his final sentence, "... dear Father, forgive us for that awful cloud." … (mehr)