Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie Read Free Book Online Page A

us four, it became clear that Chuckler’s word was going to carry the most weight, simply because he could rely on Runner’s support.
    So Chuckler became the leader, a fact which neither Hoosier nor I ever admitted and which Runner indicated only by his deference to him.
    It is odd, is it not, that there should have been need of a leader? But there was. Two men do not need a leader, I suppose; but three do, and four most certainly, else who will settle arguments, plan forays, suggest the place or form of amusement, and generally keep the peace?
    This was the beginning of our good times here in the boondocks. We slept on the ground and had but a length of canvas for a home, but we had begun to pride ourselves on being able to take it. Under such conditions, it was natural that the good times should be uproarious and, often, violent.
    A day’s training could not tire such young spirits or bodies. If there were no night exercises, or company guard, we were free from after chow until reveille. Sometimes we would gather around a fire, burning pine knots and drinking from a bottle of corn liquor bought from local moonshiners. The pine knots burned with a fragrant brilliance, as did the white lightning in our bellies.

    Wilber “Bud” Conley (“Runner”)
    We would sing or wrestle around the fire. There would be other fires; and sometimes rival singing contests, which soon degenerated into shouting matches, developed. Occasionally a luckless possum would blunder into the circle, and there would arise a floundering and a yelling followed by a frantic shucking of shoes, with which life was pounded out of the poor little animal. Then the men who loved to sharpen their blades would whip out these razor bayonets and skin the beast. Its tiny, greasy carcass would be consigned to the flames, and a pitiful few mouths it was that ever got to taste of the poor thing.
    At other times, Hoosier and Chuckler and Runner and I would gather after chow and walk the two miles from camp to the highway, the sound of our going muffled by the thick dust underfoot; sometimes silent in that violet night with the soft pine wood at either side; sometimes boisterous, dancing in the dust, leaping upon one another, shouting for the sake of hearing our voices flung back by the hollow darkness; sometimes sober, smoking, talking in low voices of things at home and of when or where we would ever get into action.
    The highway was a midway. It was lined with honky-tonks. To reach it was to sight a new world: one moment the soft dark and the smell of the wood, our shoes padding in the dust; in the next, cars and military vehicles hurtling down the cement strip, the crude shacks with their bare electric bulbs shining unashamed, their rough joints plastered with Coca-Cola and cigarette ads.
    There were no girls, though. Sex was farther up the road, in Morehead City and New Bern. Here it was drinking and fighting. There was a U.S.O. at Greenville, but marines from the boondocks, clad in their dungarees, rarely went there except at the risk of being picked up by the M.P.’s for being out of uniform. Chuckler and I chanced it, once, and were rewarded with delicious hamburgers.
    The Green Lantern became my battalion’s hangout, probably because it stood closest to us on that garish highway, on the corner where the dirt road met the concrete and seemed to slip beneath it. It had the attraction that banks advertise, conveniently located.
    Fights were common in The Green Lantern. They were always just ending or just beginning or just brewing no matter when you arrived. Every morning at sick call the evidence was plain: gentian violet daubed with a sort of admiring liberality over bruised cheekbones and torn knuckles.
    We had our first adventure in another of the shacks. It was on a weekend and we were in full uniform, having come back to the huts and been given a rare liberty. The four of us were en route to Morehead City at night and drinking along the way. We