Robert Leckie, a World War II the United States Marine Corps veteran, novelist, and military historian, wrote Helmet for My Pillow as a personal memoir. The novel begins with Leckie’s enlistment in the United States Marine Corps shortly after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and it was first published in 1957.
Leckie was inspired to write the book after witnessing South Pacific on Broadway in 1951 and walked out halfway through it, according to his wife Vera. “, he explained “I have to speak the truth about what happened. I need to make it clear that the war was not a musical.”
Helmet for My Pillow, along with Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa and the personal story of Medal of Honor recipient Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, was adapted in major part for the HBO miniseries The Pacific (2010).
The story starts with boot camp at MCRD Parris Island, South Carolina, and follows Leckie through basic training, then to New River, North Carolina, where he is temporarily stationed, and finally to the Pacific.
Leckie is a member of the 1st Marine Division and has served at Guadalcanal, Melbourne, Australia, New Guinea, and Cape Gloucester before being evacuated from the island of Peleliu with wounds. Helmet for My Pillow is written from the perspective of an enlisted man; according to a reprint edition, the book is about ‘the booze, the brawling, the loving on 72-hour liberty, the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the United States Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, across the Pacific.’
The Old Breed, by E.B. Sledge: At Peleliu and Okinawa, as well as Helmet for My Pillow, served as the inspiration for HBO’s The Pacific, the follow-up to Band of Brothers.
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