A grand and epic prose poem . . . The purely human experience of war in the Pacific written in
the graceful imagery of a human being who somehow survived. Tom Hanks See Robert Leckie's story
in the HBO miniseries The Pacific Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever
to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in
January 1942 shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we
follow his odyssey from basic training on Parris Island South Carolina all the way to the
raging battles in the Pacific where some of the war s fiercest fighting took place. Recounting
his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal New Britain and
Peleliu Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war painting an unvarnished
portrait of how real warriors are made fight and often die in the defense of their country.
From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against
an enemy determined to fight to the last man Leckie describes what war is really like when
victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie s hard-won
eloquent and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight.
Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy Helmet for My Pillow will leave no reader
untouched. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud the blood and the experience of
war as it is safe to come.
