Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific »

Robert Leckie was the author of more than thirty works of military history as well as Marines, a collection of short stories, and Lord, What a Family!, a memoir. Raised in Rutherford, New Jersey, he started writing professionally at age sixteen, covering sports for The Bergen Evening Record of Hackensack. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor, going on to serve as a machine gunner and as an intelligence scout and participating in all 1st Marine Division campaigns except  Okinawa.  Leckie was awarded five battle stars, the Naval Commendation Medal with Combat V, and the Purple Heart.  Helmet for My Pillow (Random House, 1957) was his first book; it received the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association award upon publication.

Robert Leckie, one of America's greatest military historians, was both an eyewitness and participant to some of the greatest battles in the Pacific. Helmet for My Pillow is his vivid account of combat and survival in World War II.

In January 1942, in the aftermath of the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. From boot camp in Parris Island to the bloody war in the Pacific, Robert Leckie experienced it all - the booze, the brawling, the loving on sixty-two-hour liberty; the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, island by island across the Pacific to the shores of Japan.

New York Times Book Review

A powerful book that pulls no punches.