Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

  When we entered, there were delighted cries of welcome—“Look who’s back!” and “Welcome aboard, mate!” It was like a class reunion. Almost everyone had been in before, and everyone knew everyone else. Even the guards were alumni.

  Our appearance interrupted an election. This was a regular occurrence, the election of a mayor of the brig—and it was the most fairly conducted contest in my memory. Only two things qualified a candidate: frequent incarceration and length of service. Elections had to be held as often as the present mayor’s time expired and he happily vacated his office.

  One of the candidates was concluding a windy oration, dark with dire promises of vengeance upon the officers, bright with pledges of innumerable blossoms for the incarcerated lotus-eaters. Our own Oakstump was his rival. His speech was solid.

  “He’s a bloody short-termer,” Oakstump said of his opponent. “It’s only his second time in.” He thumped his massive chest. “I’ve got another fifteen days to do—and it’s my fourth visit.”

  Oakstump was elected by acclamation.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Mayor,” I said to him, but his beaming reply was cut short by the arrival of the bread box. Everybody leapt—I lunging with them—so easily did men accustom themselves to privation.

  Oakstump drew a canteen of water from the faucet. He tore a huge length of bread in two, surveying the halves thoroughly. “Guess I’ll make a sandwich,” he said.

  I snorted, “What the hell with—air?”

  “Salt,” he said. “I always make a salt sandwich.”

  He stooped, grabbed a handful of salt from the box, and deposited it on one half of bread, smoothing it carefully. He patted it and placed the second half upon it.

  “Just right,” he said dreamily. “Just enough salt for this sandwich.”

  He began to munch, pausing to slip the water, so satisfied it seemed sinful. Had I not recalled Oakstump on Guadalcanal, mixing his wormy rice with the contents of a stray can of peanut butter and smacking his lips over the mess, I might have pronounced him mad. But this was Oakstump of the oxen back and matching brain and unconquerable palate—and I ask you, how can such men be defeated?

  That night, our own H Company took over the guard. Runner was the bread-and-water sentry. Though he had been caught by the MP’s during the Manoora episode, his luck had held—they had let him go.

  When darkness fell and we had thrown ourselves down on our blankets, Runner slung his rifle, dug out a cigarette and lighted it for me. Soon, other cigarettes glowed in the dark.

  “How about some food?” I whispered.

  “Where? The galley’s closed.”

  “Out at the kiosk by the main gate. You can get hot dogs.”

  “Okay—as soon as I get off guard. Keep it to yourselves, though, or the whole damn brig’ll want hot dogs.”

  I fell asleep, happily anticipating a reawakening by Runner.

  It was close to midnight when Runner awoke me. He had a brown bag filled with kiosk food. I awoke Chicken. Runner slipped out of the cell.

  We devoured the food. What a banquet! Here was the lowly hot dog, but it was spiced with risk, flavored with prohibition and washed down with the nectar of a watering mouth.

  He feasted us again the following night, and would have done it the next night, too, had H Company not relinquished the guard.

  But the fourth night there came a stranger awakening.

  A flashlight played impudently on my face.

  “That’s him,” a voice said, and I was commanded to arise. So was Chicken.

  We were taken outside, fearing, of course, the worst. But we were being freed. We were placed in the custody of a tall, gaunt newcomer to the battalion known as Eloquent, both for his passion for the polysyllable and for his expressive hands.

  He marched us down the corridor toward the battalion sergeant major’s, and we were startled to see men still going out on liberty. It was only nine o’clock, but we had been asleep two hours already.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked Eloquent.

  “You were improperly confined,” he replied.

  “How come?”

  “The Exec was a bit too enthusiastic. He wanted to throw the book at you, but he threw too big a book. On a deck court-martial you may reduce a man in rank or fine him or confine him. But you can’t do all three, as he did to you.”

  “You mean I get my rank and money back?”

  Eloquent gave me a pitying look.

  “Don’t be a dreamer. The sergeant major has a nice new court-martial all written up for you two.”

  “What’s the punishment?”

  “Loss of rank and fifty-dollar fine, same as before.”

  “But what about the four days of bread-and-water we just did?”

  “You never did them.”

  Chicken and I stopped dead, rooted by impotent anger.

  “The new court-martial merely says that you have been punished by loss of rank and the fine, and when it’s entered in your record book that’s how it will be. There won’t be any mention of the brig.”

  “Yes, there will,” I said, fighting a losing battle against my temper. “Because I’m not signing. Take me back to the brig and I’ll finish the ten days.” I turned to Chicken. “What about it—are you going back with me?” Chicken looked at me sheepishly. “I dunno, Lucky. I dunno as we can git back. Whut’re we gonna do if the sergeant major says we got to sign? Yuh cain’t fight City Hall, Lucky.”

  “There speaks a sensible man,” Eloquent said grandly.

  “You call that sensible?” I blazed at him. “That rotten major makes a mistake and we’re supposed to pay for it! We serve four days we weren’t supposed to serve, and we’re supposed to forget it. Forget it in writing—make the lie official! That’s sensible! Well, I say the hell with you and the sergeant major. You can tell the sergeant major to take his court-martial and your sensibility between thumb and forefinger and at the count of three he can stuff it smartly up his official—”

  “Whoa, now, take it easy,” Eloquent interrupted. “You can’t take on the whole United States Marines. You’re absolutely right, the major’s absolutely wrong. But unfortunately you’re a right private and he’s a wrong major.”

  There was nothing to do but glower at him. He had put it well: a right private has no chance against a wrong major.

  “Don’t think I don’t admire your spirit,” Eloquent was saying. “It probably would have been appreciated more in the Middle Ages. But I would advise you to conform and sign the court-martial.”

  “C’mon, Lucky,” said Chicken, “sign the silly thing, so’s we can go out and get somethin’ to eat. Yuh cain’t fight City Hall.”

  I signed the court-martial, while the sergeant major sat wordlessly behind his desk. I signed it stiffly, detesting the very letters that formed my name.

  I was relieved to get out of the office and to find that Eloquent could spare a pound until payday. We took it and slipped off to Richmond to devour steak and eggs, to drink beer and curse the major.

  As far as the U. S. Marines are concerned, Chicken and I never served those four days. Nor were we ever reimbursed for the four days’ pay we were docked while imprisoned.

  “Let’s face it, Lucky,” said Chicken, chewing his steak with audible relish. “They got us on a one-way street.”

  Our days in Melbourne were drawing to a close. “When are you leaving?” the girls asked. “They say you lads will be leaving soon,” said the people who invited us into their homes. They knew. They always seemed to know before we did.

  Now we could not get enough pleasure; there were not enough girls; we could not drink enough. It was going to end soon. Drought would soon dessicate this torrent of delights, and we would be back on a desert. It was as though we were trying to store it up.

  Then, one day in late September 1943, they marched us from the Cricket Grounds to the docks and onto the ships and back to the war.

  Crowds of women had gathered dockside. There may have been
men among all that vast and waving throng, but our eyes could see only the girls, squealing their good-bys as they had squealed and hugged themselves in greeting nine months before.

  “Look at them, Lucky,” said Hoosier. “Don’t kid yerself they’re out just to say good-by. They ain’t only wavin’, they’re waitin’—they’re waitin’ fer the first boatload of doggies coming into the harbor.”

  “So?” shrugged Chuckler. “You’d do the same if you was them. You’re just jealous.”

  “Hell, yes, Chuckler,” Hoosier said, replying with eagerness. “Ah’m just beefin’ because Ah’m on the wrong boat.”

  Just then, as though to fit the Hoosier’s estimate of the farewell scenes, as though to summarize the Great Debauch now lying behind us, that period receding ever faster with the ever widening water between the docks and our stern, the men aboard the ship took to a farewell gesture of their own.

  They dug from their pockets and wallets those rubber balloon-like contraptions for which they had no longer any use, and they inflated them. These they set adrift on the currents of wind whipping about the fantail. Soon the space between the docks and our departing transport was filled with these white and sausage-shaped balloons—dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of them—dancing in the breeze, bouncing up and down, seeming to flutter even on the wind of noise raised between the ever-separating camps, the hoarse and vulgar hooting of the marines and the shrill and pseudo-shocked shrieking of the girls—answering one another like rutting beasts in the forests, counterpointing one another like the coarsest concerto grosso.

  In the diminishing distance we could still see the balloons.

  Hail and farewell, women of the West. We who are about to die insult you.

  1

  Like all Liberty Ships, our vessel was anonymous. Oh, it had a name, but not one you would remember for longer than it took to pronounce it. Squat, dark, uncomfortable, plodding ship, it served only to take us from place to place, like a ferry, without character, without interest, without adventure—anonymous.

  It was the first Liberty Ship within our experience, although it would not be the last, and of this unlovely brood, the Runner expressed our contempt. “You know,” he said, gazing in disgust upon the crowded decks, talking above the ship’s shuddering rattle, “they make these things on a weekend. They get a lot of people who have nothing to do and get them all together in one place. Then they get them drunk. On Sunday night they have another one of these.” He waved his hand to embrace not only our bovine beauty but that entire cowlike line of transports plowing north along the Australian coast.

  We ate on deck, and we also attended to our necessities on deck. A galley shed had been constructed above decks and there were also topside heads. In a strong wind, we fought to keep our food down on those unmanageable instruments of exasperation we called our mess kits—or to keep it down in the stomach, once the wind blew from the heads.

  We had resumed taking atabrine pills. When one arrived at the end of the line, canteen cup of coffee in one hand, meal and mess kit balanced precariously in the other, an officer waiting there commanded one’s mouth to open. Whereupon a medical corpsman flicked a yellow atabrine pill into the cavity.

  “Open your mouth, there.”

  “Ah, that does it.”

  “You missed, you fool!”

  “Hey, there—watch your food. Ugh! You clumsy … watch it, watch it! …”

  “I can’t help it, Lieutenant—the damned ship rolled …”

  “Damn it, men, be careful of those canteen clasps. You’re spilling your coffee. Come on now, move on. You there, what are you blinking at? Move on, you’re holding up the line. Careful, now, corps-man. You’re missing too many of them. Careful, I tell you.

  CAREFUL!”

  “Oops, I’m sorry, sir.”

  “It isn’t a bad burn, sir—not even a second degree, I don’t think.”

  “Damn it, corpsman! I told you—”

  “Watch it, sir. She’s rolling again. Ugh, smell that head. Watch it, sir! He’s turning green. Watch it, sir.”

  So we plied our way up the Australian coast, sailing inside the Great Barrier Reef. We had the reef to starboard and shore to port. It was a natural protective barrier, and as we sailed at night, we were permitted to smoke on deck. No enemy undersea raider would risk snubbing its nose in such a submarine labyrinth.

  We had no notion where we might be going, except to be sure that we were headed north and therefore back to war. By this time, the Japanese had been cleared from the Solomons, and most of New Guinea, and we had launched our northward, island-hopping progress across the watery wastes of Oceania. The frightful losses of Tarawa were uppermost in our minds.

  But, as veterans, we would talk more and joke more about the place we were going than the condition of life we would enter; of the latter, we had no doubts. Conjecture kept our tongues wagging and our minds occupied during those days of ennui, when we would sit gossiping on the greasy canvas covering the hatches. Sometimes it would become a word game, or a slogan-inventing contest.

  “Keep cool, fool, it’s Rabaul,” someone might say of the impregnable Japanese fortress on New Britain. Or: “The Golden Gate in Forty-eight,” meaning that we still had five years of war confronting us before we would see San Francisco again. “Will you be on the roster when we get back from Gloucester?” was a macabre reference to Cape Gloucester on the further end of New Britain, while the prospect of invading Korea presented the incipient Freudians in our ranks (and there were many) with an unrivaled opportunity to rhyme Korea with that word which stands for one of the consequences of Freudianism in action.

  Idle, immobile, bored—a man is easily irritated. Even the prospect of food exasperates, because to eat, it is necessary to assemble mess gear and to arise and get in line; and after the meal, it is necessary to clean the mess gear and to stow it away and perhaps face the infuriating prospect of another person encamped upon your place on the sunny side of the hatch.

  There is candy to be bought from the ship’s canteen; but this is even more infuriating. To get it, one must stand in line, perhaps for three hours, while the storekeeper attends to the wishes of the sailors in the ship’s company, and then, when the time has arrived for the troops to make their purchases, risk the exasperation of an exhausted stock. The supply of candy seemed to give out each day, just as the marines prepared to buy, and then, miraculously, as though associated with the mysteries of some awesome sun god, to be replenished for the ship’s company with a new sunrise. (But at night, we could perceive the votaries of the canteen deity sneaking from bunk to bunk down in the hold, offering to sell the marines five-cent bars of candy at a dollar a bar. They also sold us sandwiches at somewhat unfriendly prices.) Mostly, we gazed over the rail on the fantail of the ship, looking deeply into the wake boiling and churning in a pale green froth. Sometimes the screws would whirl frantically when the prow of the ship dug too deeply into a wave, lifting the stern free. It was as though the propellers felt naked in the sunlight and were hastening to reclothe themselves with the sea. Here on the fantail, mesmerized by the wake, lulled by the turning of the screws, you sank into a pleasant torpor. You need not think, you need not feel, you need almost not be, except to become integrated with the wave or to flow with the motion of the ship—and it was only when the prow plunged and the stern rose and the water fell out of sight that the movement of the blue sky swinging across your vision and the whir of the freed propellers served as reminders of reality and the moment.

  We were permitted on deck at night, although we were forbidden to smoke once we had left the protection of the Great Barrier Reef. There were dark nights that suggested security similar to that of the Reef, but then there were starry nights that cast a pale and enchanting glow over all the world, seeming even to profit from the danger inherent in their illumination.

  We sailed through narrow seas fringed by green jungles crowding down to steep banks in riotous luxury. We were coasting New Guinea. Sud
denly, we were in a harbor, and our motion had ceased and we were unloading. One of the other transports seemed to have run aground about half a mile to our starboard.

  “They can send that skipper home,” said Chuckler.

  “Yeah,” Runner said. “He’s probably one of those twenty-one-year-old captains they get from the Merchant Marine Academy.”

  But there was no more time for talk. We were going ashore. The crews were swinging the landing craft free of their davits and lowering them into the water, prodded by the bumptious urgings of the bosun’s mates, come into their own now that there was an unloading to be done. We were drawn up on deck, and then, at the command, were clambering over the side, down the cargo nets, into the boats, and so ashore.

  We saw quickly that this was no uninhabited island. There were no buildings, of course, but there was a harbormaster on the beach bellowing through his megaphone to direct the unloading, and there were lines of olive-green trucks waiting to carry both us and our stores away inland. But first we turned to unloading our ship, and in one of the intervals granted us, we took to swimming.

  From the beach I saw a half-sunken fishing schooner about fifty yards away, and decided to investigate. I swam out, pulled myself aboard and made my way up to the point of the prow, which was out of the water. I was some fifteen feet from the surface when, on impulse, I dived off.

  Falling, I saw to my horror a coral reef only about three feet submerged. I strained my body so as to make my dive as shallow as possible—but even so, I scraped the reef the length of my torso, and when I had swum hastily ashore and emerged on the beach, blood was streaming from a number of abrasions in such quantities as to startle a native who squatted there smoking a stick of tobacco.

  But the cuts were superficial and were quickly dressed—with iodine, of course, probably only because it burns better. As I stood there, hands clenched and teeth on edge, a voice said: “That was a close call, Lucky. You’re well named. Does it hurt much?”