HELMET FOR MY PILLOW; Robert Leckie's World War II Masterpiece

To all fans of HBO's The Pacific, do yourself a favor; get ye to a bookstore (or an online bookseller) and buy a copy of Robert Leckie's magnificent memoir Helmet For My Pillow. You will not regret it.

Leckie, who after World War II became a writer for the Associated Press, the Buffalo Courier- Express, the New York-Journal-American, the New York Daily News, and the Star-Ledger was a master of the English language, and a storyteller in an almost mythic sense. Tom Hanks referred to "Helmet" as a piece of prose that reads like an epic poem; and I cannot disagree. Imagine a memoir of the war in the Pacific as told by Joseph Campbell, and you'd get the the gist how this book reads. If you're looking for a scholarly history of the war, with names and dates, this is not your book. But if you want a verbal slideshow of war from the typewriter of a true wordsmith who painted abstract pictures of the surreal world he was thrust into at Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, and on Parris Island, and in Melbourne, Pavavu, and of subsisting on bread and water in the brig, then make this memoir a gift to yourself.

Leckie doesn't use real names in his narrative, all names are nicknames or in some cases are descriptive of a characteristic of the individual. We have Lt. Commando, Loudmouth, Chicken,  The Artist, Liberal, and Souvenirs (he had a dentist's light and tooth extractors for yanking the gold out of dead Japanese soldiers mouths). And his buddies Runner, Chuckler, and Hoosier (respectively Wilbur "Bud" Conley, Lew Juergens,  and Bill Smith)  are a large part of the story, Staying with Leckie from the battle of the Tenaru River on Guadalcanal until all four were wounded and shipped out from Peleliu, we get a sense of the friendship that kept them going in the worst of times, and of the "not giving giving a damn" days and nights when they could break away from the war and let loose in Melbourne.

Some scenes from The Pacific involving Leckie were obviously the work of the series' writers; for example, the conversation Leckie had with Eugene Sledge on Pavuvu might not have happened - there is no indication that such a a talk took place in "Helmet". But then again, it could have; they were on Pavuvu at the same time awaiting the assault on Peleliu.. But most of the events that occurred in battle involving Leckie occurred as portrayed in the series, and are dealt with in greater depth in Leckie's book.

A drunk Leckie did relieve Chuckler while Chuckler had guard duty so he could go to the head, and Leckie did point his gun at "Lt Ivy League" (really Lt. Hugh Corrigan). It earned Leckie five days in the brig on bread and water. The treatment of military prisoners then and now are a stark contrast; smoking was forbidden in the bread and water cell, and in one instance the floor of the cell was hosed down so the prisoners would have to sleep on a wet floor.

And during an AWOL night on the town Leckie and his guys were pursued by MP's brandishing their M1 rifles; one man was shot in the leg trying to escape. Imagine a military policeman discharging his weapon in a residential area of a foreign ally in the present day! There would be a congressional investigation tomorrow.

Of course, Leckie depicted the horror of war, with all of its bloody revulsion, but he wrote of even the most horrific scenes in such an elegant manner  it was like poetry. Below, a passage from page 286 describing the Battle of Peleliu.  Leckie was in a crater, getting reading to get out and advance.

"I turned to go, and as I did, nearly stepped on someone's hand. 'Excuse me', I began to say, but then I saw it was an unattached hand, or rather a detached one. It lay there alone- open, palm upwards, clean, capable, solitary. I could not tear my eyes from it.The hand is the artisan of the soul. It is the second member of the human trinity of head and hand and heart. A man has no faculty more human than his hand, none more beautiful nor expressive or productive. To see this hand lying alone, as though contemptuously cast aside, no longer part of a man, no longer his help, was to see war in all of its wantonness; it was to see the especially brutal savagery of our own technique of rending, and it was to see men at their eternal worst, turning upon one another, tearing one another, clawing at their own innards with the maniacal  fury of the pride-possessed."   

Bob Leckie mentioned warriors of the Greek classics in "Helmet". He talks of Achilles, Hector, and Agamemnon, all figures in The Iliad and The Odyssey, and of the Roman god of war, Mars. He titles the fourth chapter of "Helmet" as Lotus-Eater- it details his adventures in Melbourne. In Greek mythology Lotus-Eaters lived on an island near North Africa where they ate the narcotic plant; it was a land where Odysseus visited with his crew, who did not want to return to their ships to leave for Ithaca.

And in The Pacific, it is where Bob Leckie met the beautiful Greek Australian Stella. But the real Bob Leckie had no Stella; Stella was an homage to the classical Greek references found in "Helmet". In the series, Stella's mother left her Greek city in Anatolia (Asiatic Turkey) with little more than the clothes on her back, much like the refugees from Troy after it was destroyed by the Greeks. In The Aeniad, the refugees from Troy went on to found Rome (according to Virgil). Stella and her family followed a similar path, with Bob Leckie on his own own version of The Odyssey.

Bob did have a few brief romances in "Helmet"; he refers to one woman as "Molly", another as "Sheilah". Also, he met a woman early on he called "Gwen", and another only called "the drink waitress" with whom may have had a fling.

But Stella...she was fiction, but a nod to the classical references in Leckie's memoir.

The book for first published in 1957, and was said to been prompted when Leckie and his wife saw South Pacific. Bob Leckie wanted to tell the world that what went on in that theater of the war was not a Broadway musical.

And he succeeded in doing so, very well indeed.

THE PACIFIC, Episode 7; The Taking of Peleliu

Welcome to my review and comments about the latest episode of HBO"s THE PACIFIC. To those who may be reading this blog for the first time, my practice is to watch the episode on Sunday on its first airing, and watch it a second time a day or so later before commenting.

The United States Marine action at Peleliu in September and October, 1944 is one of the forgotten battles of World War II. It was originally conceived to protect General Douglas MacArthur's flank while the US Army continued its retaking of the Philippines from the Japanese invaders. The airstrip on Peleliu was supposedly of value in MacArthur's campaign. As it turned out, it was never a factor in those actions; the Marines fought, suffered, and died on Peleliu in a two month long battle for a spec of land in the Pacific that in the end had little strategic value.

Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazello) and most of the other Marines fighting on Peleiu reach their breaking point. The days were either excruciatingly hot or are a torrent of rain. One of the more memorable scenes of Episode Seven was when Captain Haldrane talked to Sledge and the other men during a heavy rain, when he tells Sledge that he can't "dwell on it"- the loss of life and the horror he sees everyday. And then "The Skipper" tells his men to get some sleep, while the rain pounds and soaks them.

Japanese soldiers are driven out of their fortifications by burning them alive with flame throwers. Marines are shot and blown to bits. The Japanese attack the Marines at all hours of the day, and especially at night when they generate near panic and terror. The battle goes on for weeks and months- the Marines are malnourished, exhausted, and near collapse. Some do snap mentally, and not only the young troops; the grizzled World War I veteran Gunny Haney is among those who succumbs to the sight of death and destruction he saw daily.

This episode dealt heavily with the moral ambiguity men in combat feel. After awhile the combatant starts to feel a certain loss of humanity, sometimes wishing for his own death to be quick and relatively painless, while dealing with death he has caused as a fighting man. Sledge starts to go over to a point of darkness; after the death of Captain Haldrane from a sniper's bullet, Eugene was sitting with Snafu, when Sledge decides to take the gold out of a dead Japanese soldier's teeth. Snafu, who has done the same on occasions, stops Sledge, telling him that the dead man has too many germs. In reality Snafu is telling his friend in a subtle way that he, Snafu, has crossed over to a darker place; he doesn't want Sledge to do the same.

In a moment of dark comic relief of sorts a Marine goes into a cave to relieve himself when he is attacked by a sword wielding Japanese; he chases the Marine, pants down, to the area where the rest of the Marines are. The Japanese soldier is shot and killed, but not until the poor young Marine makes a "deposit" in his own pants, to the amusement of the troops watching and laughing.

At the end of the episode the island is captured, and Sledge and the others are evacuated to Pavuvu. At Pavuvu the Marines are given orange juice by female Red Cross workers. Sledge and Snafu stop and get some juice, and the exhausted men pause to look at the beautiful young women pouring the refreshments. They are told to move on by a fresh looking first Marine officer in a clean pressed; the worn out Sledge turns and gives a cold stare to the officer who got the message- leave him alone, he and the others have lived through hell.

Joe Mazello did a subtle and convincing job in his portrayal of Eugene Sledge; the character seemed to age 10 years in the span of two. We first saw Sledge as a teenaged boy at home in Alabama. When we left him, as he was swimming naked in the ocean at the end of the episode, he was now a world weary veteran, forced to grow up hard and fast. He personified the story of tens of thousands who went off to war not far removed from childhood, and who returned as men.

On a small sidebar plot, we saw John Basilone (Jon Seda) on a bond tour in front of an organization that appeared to be Shriners, with actress Virginia Grey in tow. We later see Basilone at a driving range, flanked by dozens of reporters. Basilone started hitting bucket after bucket of golf balls, into the night, to a point where his hands started to blister and bleed. All the time Basilone is shown to have mental flashbacks to Guadalcanal, and to the the death of his buddy Manny Rodriguez.

Basilone's story will continue in Episode Eight, as the United States starts to zero in on the Japanese home islands.

But first they must take the last stepping stone, a small island within range of the Japanese homeland.

Iwo Jima.

The PACIFIC, Episode Six; The Fight For Peleliu Continues

Above- Joe Mazello as Eugene Sledge


Peleliu is sometimes called "the forgotten battle" of World War II's Pacific theater. Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa are part of our collective American historical psyche. But it was at the two months long battle from September to November, 1944 that the Japanese strategy had shifted from trying to overwhelm the Americans and the allies with "human wave" attacks to allowing them to land and then trying to inflict as many casualties as possible, even if it took the life of the last Imperial Japanese soldier.

Historical Background, Part 6: Peleliu Airfield

With Part Six of The Pacific the character emphasis starts to shift away from Bob Leckie (James Badge Dale) and towards Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazello). The episode began in Mobile, Alabama. Its late at night in the aristocratic Sledge household, when a car pulled up- the butler told Mrs. Sledge that its a man in uniform. The dignified Southern lady's face instantly turned to one awaiting sorrow; she's sure that the man in uniform was coming there to tell her that her son had been killed in action.

All are relieved when the young Marine turned out to be Sid Phillips, who came for a visit. Sid told them that Eugene is in good hands with the First Marine Division- all are good men, and he thought Eugene would be in good company.

Eugene and his comrades were on Peleliu. After being fired on by artillery from the hillside, the Marines had to cross the airfield to get to higher ground. On the airfield hundreds of Japanese were waiting to cut them down. Water was scarce, and the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees. In a scene that resembled a kind of Holy Communion, Sledge, Snafu, Oswalt, and the other Marines shared what little water they have left by drinking from the same canteen before their run across the airfield....some of them would not get out of the situation alive.

The run across the airfield resulted in heavy casualties; among those killed was Oswalt. Leckie's pal Runner was seriously wounded. In order to save his buddy Leckie ran back across the airfield to find a corpsman and a radio. Leckie was knocked unconscious by a bomb blast. Hours later he awakens on a hospital ship (at the end of the episode he was reunited with Runner).

While spending the night in a secure area, Sledge admitted to Captain Haldane about how scared he was crossing the airfield. Haldane told the Sledge that the only Marines who weren't scared were either crazy or dead. Sledge had gained the trust of the combat veterans, including the battle hardened Snafu, who started calling Eugene "Sledgehammer". While approaching an entrenched Japanese mini-fortress, the Marines spend the night, trying to keep it quiet to avoid a Japanese bayonet attack while most of them are sleeping. One Marine started screaming and thrashing about, and wouldn't be quiet....in order to save the others a Marine hit the guy on the head with a shovel, a blow that kills him. Sledge rationalizes the next day that it had to be done...if the man wasn't silenced, all of them could have been killed.

Sledge and his comrades watched Captain Haldane ride off to attempt to get a change of orders; they didn't have sufficient numbers to overtake the Japanese stronghold, and an attack would have led to needless and unacceptable casualties.

On board the hospital ship we see Leckie and Runner, reunited and wounded, both sailing out of the South Pacific, and probably out of the war.

Notes

Once again for those who may be reading my comments for the first time, I always watch an episode of THE PACIFIC twice. On the second viewing I start to make notes on anything that stood out, and look for little things that I should have picked up on in the first look, but didn't.

John Basilone (Jon Seda) was no where to be found in Episode Six. But he will be back, probably in Episode Seven and almost certainly in Episode Eight.

And in closing....my Mom always told me that she had a cousin who died in the Pacific theater during World War II. I always thought he died at Iwo Jima, but that was wrong.

Mom told me he was with the Marines at Peilelu, and was killed by a sniper. So I had a cousin who died in combat in that little piece of hell, one who was killed years before I was born. I know he is buried somewhere in South Jersey.

I think I owe it to him to find out where.....and to pay him a visit this Memorial Day.

THE PACIFIC; Episode Four

James Badge Dale as Robert Leckie in HBO's "The Pacific"

So the boss yelled at you at work, your kid is screaming for a new cell phone, your wife is still ticked off about the cheap anniversary present you got her, and its April 8 and you haven't done your taxes.

And you think you've had a bad day?

The fourth episode of The Pacific will put it all into perspective for you.

It opens with Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazello) in training as part of a Marine mortar team in December, 1943, and shifts to a troop transport with Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) on its way to Cape Gloucester, New Britain to seize the island for its airstrip from the Japanese occupiers. This episode answered a question I always had about the men in the Pacific theater; how did they find the courage to keep on island hopping again, and again, and again. They had multiple D-Days, and when they landed in the Pacific they had two enemies- the Japanese and the savage tropical environment.

The answer to that question is that some just men just weren't emotionally capable to return to the hellish fighting and situation they were in. On New Britain the Marines wore the same clothes for months at a time, with mud up to their knees and an enemy trying to kill them in attacks that could happen at anytime. In this episode we saw fighting men descend into madness, with one Marine slowly manually strangling a wounded Japanese soldier and smiling about it, and another Marine taking his uniform off and blowing his brains out. At one point in a torrential storm Leckie cries out for someone to shoot him to end his misery.

Leckie contracts enuresis and his buddy "Runner" catches malaria. When both are shipped to the island of Pavuvu Runner asks Leckie to read his letters home to Vera. Leckie ends up in a hospital for his illness, but is sent to a psych ward because the regular hospital is overflowing. He questions his own sanity being in such a place after all he has endured, and sees some of the emotional damage done to other patients, among them his old platoon mate Gibson. Dr. Grant, a physician and psychiatrist, eventually gains Leckie's confidence. After a few days in the hospital Leckie decides he needs to return to his friends....he "bribes" Grant to sign his release papers by giving him a Japanese pistol he acquired in New Britain.

The final scene shows Bob Leckie leaving the relative normalcy of the hospital and the area behind the lines to join his company as they prepare for the bloody assault of Peleliu.

Some may see this episode as one where little happened....but I think this was an important bridge to the middle of the story, when in the summer of 1944 the Americans began a chain of successes on their way to the Japanese home islands, but with heavy costs. And as bad as Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester was, its going to get much, much worse as these Marines move on to Peleliu, then Iwo Jima, and finally Okinawa. The hostile environment is a constant, but the ferocity of the Japanese defense will be amped up to a level no American fighting man had ever seen before or since. And that's why this episode was as important as it was....the Bob Leckies might have been wounded, ill, or both but they managed to get back and do it again. This episode gave a glimpse of the stuff these children of the Great Depression were made out of, a toughness and resolve that just may have served them in that theater. But that is not to say there weren't heavy casualties, not just dead or wounded physically, but those scarred emotionally. There probably lots of Gibsons and "Captain Midnights" who were never truly able to cope again, during and after the war.

Like Dr, Grant said in the episode, his job was not to cure, but to access....and move on.

Thanks for waiting for this latest installment, several days late....I'll try to be more current with the posts now that my life is back in a more normal rhythm again.