HELMET FOR MY PILLOW: From Parris Island to the Pacific/WITH THE OLD BREED: At Peleliu and Okinawa/ISLANDS OF THE DAMNED: A Marine at War in the Pacific
2011; The MIT Press; Volume: 91; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Intelligence, Security, War Strategy
ResumoHELMET FOR MY PILLOW: From Parris Island to the Pacific, Robert Leckie, Bantam Books, New York, 2010, 305 pages, $16.00. WITH THE OLD BREED: At Peleliu and Okinawa, E.B. Sledge, Presidio Press, New York, 2007, 352 pages, $16.00. ISLANDS OF THE DAMNED: A Marine at War in the Pacific, R.V. Burgin, NAL, New York, 2010, 304 pages, $24.95. War may be, as Oliver Wendell Holmes asserts, an experience, but this has not precluded soldiers from trying to communicate their experiences. War memoirs and stories date back to Thucydides, with Caesar's memoir being perhaps the most famous. Some generals write their memoirs for the simple reason that they need the money (as Grant did) or for political and nationalist purposes (as De Gaulle did). In contrast, soldiers' memoirs provide real insights into what fascinates readers most-the incommunicable experience. This review compares and contrasts three important contributions to communicating the incommunicable. All three will enrich the lives of those who read them. The three books reviewed here, Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow, E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed, and R.V. Burgin's Islands of the Damned are powerful examples of soldiers' memoirs. The authors each served with the 1st Marine Division in World War II. Leckie tried to enlist in the Marine Corps the day after Pearl Harbor but was turned down because he was not circumcised (apparently a qualification back then). He duly had the procedure performed and enlisted on 5 January 1942. After his training, Leckie joined the 1st Marine Regiment as a machine gunner. He fought at Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Pelelieu, where he was wounded. Leckie spent the rest of the war in an Army hospital in West Virginia. Sledge and Burgin served together in the 60-mm mortar section assigned to K Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Burgin enlisted in November 1942 when the draft caught up with him. Burgin preceded Sledge in the 5th Marines and fought on New Britain, Pelelieu, and Okinawa. Sledge enlisted in a Marine officers commissioning program in December 1942. He wanted to go into the military immediately, but his parents preferred he serve as an officer, so in the summer of 1943 Sledge reported to Georgia Tech where he attended college and trained to become a Marine officer. He became increasingly concerned that he would miss the war, so he and 90 others intentionally flunked out of Georgia Tech so they could get on with becoming a Marine. When asked about his academic performance, Sledge told his academic review officer that he hadn't joined the Marine Corps to sit out the war in college. Sledge caught up with Burgin and K Company in time to fight at Pelelieu and Okinawa. After the war, Leckie went home wounded, and Burgin, who had accumulated sufficient service points to rate a discharge, returned home. Sledge did not have enough points for a discharge and served several months in China before returning home to Alabama in 1946. The three authors share Oliver Wendell Holmes's experience of war. Each communicated to those who have not shared the experience of war a glimpse of what he had felt and witnessed. Together the memoirs express honor and dishonor, compassion and savagery, beauty and ugliness, and, most of all, service and dedication. The three authors took different paths after the war: Leckie worked as a journalist and published Helmet for My Pillow in 1957, the first of more than 30 works mostly about military history. Sledge earned a doctoral degree in microbiology and taught at the university level in Alabama. Burgin returned to Texas where he made a career with the U.S. Postal Service. The three books are as different as the authors are, yet they relate many of the same experiences. Not surprisingly, Leckie's book is the most literary. …
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