Read Online Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie - Free Book Online
Book: Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie
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Authors: Robert Leckie
Tags: United States, General, History, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, World War II, Military, World War, 1939-1945, American, Biography, Autobiography, Campaigns, Personal Narratives, Military - World War II, Veterans, Military - United States, Pacific Area, Robert, 1920-, Leckie
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the motion picture screen; condemned men; souls in hell.
Soon the spate of sixty-two-hour liberties was ended. Mid-May of 1942 saw me home for the last time. My family would not set eyes on me again for nearly three years.
The Fifth Marine Regiment left before we did. It departed during the night. When we awoke, their regimental area was deserted, picked clean, as though not even a shade had dwelt there, let alone thirty-five hundred exuberant young men. Not so much as a shredded cigarette butt or an empty beer can remained.
Clean.
My own First Regiment followed the Fifth within weeks. We packed our sea bags with all our excess clothing and personal gear. Each bag was carefully stenciled with our company markings. Then all were carried off on trucks. I never saw mine again until I returned to the States. From that day forward—save for brief intervals in Australia—we lived out of our packs, the single combat pack about the size of a portable typewriter case.
We were under orders to carry only our weapons and a prescribed amount of clothing; specifically, no liquor. A day before we left I managed to get into Jacksonville, where I pawned my suitcase for enough money to buy two pints of whiskey.
The two flat bottles were in my pack, hard and warm against my back, when we clambered aboard the train. We finished them that night, when the porter had made our beds and all was dark in our Pullman car. Yes, we traveled by Pullman and we had a porter. We ate in a dining car, too, and the porter could be bribed to fetch us a turkey sandwich at night. It was a wonderful way to ride off to war, like the Russian nobleman in War and Peace who dashed off to the fray in a handsome carriage, watching Borodino from a hillock while his manservant brewed tea in a silver samovar.
We had a jovial porter. He loved to josh the Texan, newly arrived in our platoon. Once, he overheard the Texan making one of his tall Texas boasts.
“Hell,” the porter laughed, “dat Texas so dried up a rabbit doan dare cross without he carry a box lunch and canteen.”
A roar of laughter rose around the blushing Texan, and the porter retired grinning happily.
Our spirits were high and our hearts light as we rode across America. Our talk was full of the air-sea Battle of Midway, which had just been fought, and we were full of admiration for the marine and navy pilots who had stopped the Japanese.
Mostly we played poker or watched the countryside flowing past. To me, who had never been west of Pittsburgh, almost every waking moment was one of intense excitement. This was my country. I was seeing it for the first time and I drew it into me, here in its grandeur, again in the soft beauty of a mountain like the curve of a cheek, in the vastness of its plains or the bounty of the fields. I cannot recall it all and, now, I regret that I took no notes. There are only blurs and snatches … disappointment at crossing the Mississippi at night, only the impression of a great wetness and the gentle sway of the railroad barge beneath us … the beauty of the Ozarks, green woods swelling to a fragile blue sky, with the White River leaping straight and clean like a lance beneath them, and the one hill with the cross at the crest, stretching its gaunt arms like an entreaty … the Rockies (Where was the grandeur? Were we too close?) seeming like peaks of vanilla ice cream down which coursed great runnels of chocolate sauce, but no grandeur, only when we had reached the heights and could look back, gasping … ah, but here it is, now, here is the splendid West, here is the Colorado River thrusting through the Royal Gorge in one white, frothing instant … up, up, up in Nevada, the train climbing like a great dignified roller coaster, and then the sweeping ascent into California and the sun.
But we lost the sun in the San Francisco mists. We were at the waterfront and surrounded by the brown hills of Berkeley. The great curving bay, like a watery amphitheater, was before
Soon the spate of sixty-two-hour liberties was ended. Mid-May of 1942 saw me home for the last time. My family would not set eyes on me again for nearly three years.
The Fifth Marine Regiment left before we did. It departed during the night. When we awoke, their regimental area was deserted, picked clean, as though not even a shade had dwelt there, let alone thirty-five hundred exuberant young men. Not so much as a shredded cigarette butt or an empty beer can remained.
Clean.
My own First Regiment followed the Fifth within weeks. We packed our sea bags with all our excess clothing and personal gear. Each bag was carefully stenciled with our company markings. Then all were carried off on trucks. I never saw mine again until I returned to the States. From that day forward—save for brief intervals in Australia—we lived out of our packs, the single combat pack about the size of a portable typewriter case.
We were under orders to carry only our weapons and a prescribed amount of clothing; specifically, no liquor. A day before we left I managed to get into Jacksonville, where I pawned my suitcase for enough money to buy two pints of whiskey.
The two flat bottles were in my pack, hard and warm against my back, when we clambered aboard the train. We finished them that night, when the porter had made our beds and all was dark in our Pullman car. Yes, we traveled by Pullman and we had a porter. We ate in a dining car, too, and the porter could be bribed to fetch us a turkey sandwich at night. It was a wonderful way to ride off to war, like the Russian nobleman in War and Peace who dashed off to the fray in a handsome carriage, watching Borodino from a hillock while his manservant brewed tea in a silver samovar.
We had a jovial porter. He loved to josh the Texan, newly arrived in our platoon. Once, he overheard the Texan making one of his tall Texas boasts.
“Hell,” the porter laughed, “dat Texas so dried up a rabbit doan dare cross without he carry a box lunch and canteen.”
A roar of laughter rose around the blushing Texan, and the porter retired grinning happily.
Our spirits were high and our hearts light as we rode across America. Our talk was full of the air-sea Battle of Midway, which had just been fought, and we were full of admiration for the marine and navy pilots who had stopped the Japanese.
Mostly we played poker or watched the countryside flowing past. To me, who had never been west of Pittsburgh, almost every waking moment was one of intense excitement. This was my country. I was seeing it for the first time and I drew it into me, here in its grandeur, again in the soft beauty of a mountain like the curve of a cheek, in the vastness of its plains or the bounty of the fields. I cannot recall it all and, now, I regret that I took no notes. There are only blurs and snatches … disappointment at crossing the Mississippi at night, only the impression of a great wetness and the gentle sway of the railroad barge beneath us … the beauty of the Ozarks, green woods swelling to a fragile blue sky, with the White River leaping straight and clean like a lance beneath them, and the one hill with the cross at the crest, stretching its gaunt arms like an entreaty … the Rockies (Where was the grandeur? Were we too close?) seeming like peaks of vanilla ice cream down which coursed great runnels of chocolate sauce, but no grandeur, only when we had reached the heights and could look back, gasping … ah, but here it is, now, here is the splendid West, here is the Colorado River thrusting through the Royal Gorge in one white, frothing instant … up, up, up in Nevada, the train climbing like a great dignified roller coaster, and then the sweeping ascent into California and the sun.
But we lost the sun in the San Francisco mists. We were at the waterfront and surrounded by the brown hills of Berkeley. The great curving bay, like a watery amphitheater, was before
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