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A review by desertjarhead505
Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie
4.0
A solid memoir. Leckie describes his experience from the time he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps just after Pearl Harbor to the end of the war. During that time he fought in the battles of Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu, in the last of which he was badly enough wounded that he spent the rest of the war in a hospital.
Writing in a flamboyant style, Leckie is unsparing of himself and others in his account; he fought well, but he was a disciplinary problem and had real trouble dealing with authority. Having seen both sides as a former junior Marine and a former officer, my take is that he did have run-ins with some bad leaders, but he generalized that too much - no other account I've read carries near the bitterness toward officers and senior NCOs in general, and based on those accounts and my experiences I can't believe he didn't have a lot more good leaders than he acknowledges.
The problems of military caste and privilege and abuse of rank he portrays exist, but not to the extent he portrays. If they did, Marines and soldiers wouldn't follow their leaders into life-and-death situations or mourn them the way, for example, Eugene Sledge and R.V. Burgin relate in their own memoirs of service as Marines in the same war and sometimes the same battles.
So as a leader, I kept finding myself annoyed at Leckie's attitude, but that didn't make me want to stop reading. If he'd been in my unit, I suspect I'd have been writing him up both for medals and on disciplinary charges at different times.
Writing in a flamboyant style, Leckie is unsparing of himself and others in his account; he fought well, but he was a disciplinary problem and had real trouble dealing with authority. Having seen both sides as a former junior Marine and a former officer, my take is that he did have run-ins with some bad leaders, but he generalized that too much - no other account I've read carries near the bitterness toward officers and senior NCOs in general, and based on those accounts and my experiences I can't believe he didn't have a lot more good leaders than he acknowledges.
The problems of military caste and privilege and abuse of rank he portrays exist, but not to the extent he portrays. If they did, Marines and soldiers wouldn't follow their leaders into life-and-death situations or mourn them the way, for example, Eugene Sledge and R.V. Burgin relate in their own memoirs of service as Marines in the same war and sometimes the same battles.
So as a leader, I kept finding myself annoyed at Leckie's attitude, but that didn't make me want to stop reading. If he'd been in my unit, I suspect I'd have been writing him up both for medals and on disciplinary charges at different times.