Leckie, Robert - Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Leckie Robert

Author:Leckie, Robert [Leckie, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780553593310
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-02-02T06:00:00+00:00

Our new encampment accommodated the entire First Regiment. It was set on the slope of one of the hills, which a land pitifully poor in altitudinous earth has called the Yuyang Mountains. But they were no more than hills; gentle, rolling rises, with here and there a narrow brook. Poor Australia. Here, too, nature has withheld her favors. There are no rivers as we know them: only brooks, and one of them flowed at the foot of the hill on which our tent camp was located.

Of course it was raining, and of course there was mud. The food was a slop of mutton and soggy vegetables. For fuel, there was a ration of split logs for the wood-burning stove in the center of each tent. For recreation there was an occasional weekend liberty, and a slop chute a mile down the road where they served the greenest, foulest beer I have ever drunk—brewed, I am sure (if the word is not concocted), in the PX officer’s own lister bag, and served to us in our canteen cups in a room fit to hold twenty people, but filled every night with at least two hundred.

The weeks went by in night marches and night problems and daily drill in the fields, no different from the days as a New River recruit; more boring, perhaps even galling, because it was expected of us—the celebrated victors of Guadalcanal.

Sometimes we would be issued a handful of rice, or the equivalent of what a Japanese soldier lives on, and be ordered to maneuver at night and make forced night marches of thirty miles or so, and sleep by day. I remember sleeping in a field, and being awakened by a huge gentle-eyed cow which nuzzled me in meek reproof for having chosen the tenderest pasture for my couch. From night problems we learned one lasting lesson: when a map and a compass come into contact with a second lieutenant, prepare yourself for confusion.

Throughout, there had been an insensible drawing in of discipline, like a rider slowly pulling back on the reins. But there came a sudden rearing halt when they reshuffled the companies.

Sergeant McCaustic had taken charge of H Company as First Sergeant. He was a slender man hardly above the minimum height requirement, possessed of filthy tongue, twisted by an openly sadistic temperament but saved from being a monster by an excellent sense of humor and a quick brain.

In Sergeant McCaustic I had found my personal hair shirt. We had come to an understanding within a day or two; that is, we had agreed that we were incompatible. When the time for reshuffling came, Sergeant McCaustic disposed of me with gleeful dispatch.

I expected it as I walked to the company tent with the others at the fateful call. It was raining, but Sergeant McCaustic ignored the raindrops plastering his thin locks against his narrow skull. He spoke with unconcealed glee as he stood there, surrounded by grinning, smirking platoon sergeants and buck sergeants, while the men half encompassed them in a crescent.

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