Helmet for My Pillow
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Helmet for My Pillow
| Full title | Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Leckie |
| Published | 1957 |
| Pages | 305 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Leckie’s memoir of the Pacific war as a Marine machine gunner and scout with the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu — funny about the Corps, profane about officers, and then abruptly not funny at all once the fighting starts. With Sledge’s With the Old Breed it is one of the two memoirs HBO’s The Pacific was adapted from. |
Helmet for My Pillow
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published on Substack in December 2025, listed under Nonfiction in the Ages 13-99+ band, deliberately paired with Sledge’s With the Old Breed: two men in the same division on some of the same islands, a journalist and a scientist, writing the same campaign differently.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
- Robert Leckie — the author, who enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor and later wrote military history professionally.
- With the Old Breed — the companion memoir on this list, by a mortarman in the same division.
- World War II — the Pacific campaign.
- War — at the level of the individual rifleman.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.