Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

  The restaurant was a great barn of a place, with what seemed a gallery or mezzanine running around the single spacious room. This was reached by a stairway to the right. At the end of the room were swinging doors leading into the kitchen. To the left of these was a smaller private dining room, in which I noticed a round table with some stiff-backed chairs.

  We ate our dinner, and began to drink. Chuckler had telephoned his girl, who was coming out by train to meet him; but this would be in another hour. So we drank, as did a half dozen other parties of dungaree-clad marines. Among them was a dark, handsome, slender fellow from E Company—their company barber in fact, the man who would cut hair for a few bob. He was quite noticeably drunk.

  Some of the marines had girls and were dancing with them to the music of a juke box. Through the open front door one could see the pavement of the street glistening darkly in the light thrown from our room. It had been drizzling all day.

  A jeep pulled up outside the door—appearing there so suddenly as to seem placed there—and a quartet of MP’s burst into the room on the run. We scattered like frightened sheep, the effect of panic heightened by the sound of scraping chairs and overturning tables—but there was no sound of a human voice, not even a scream from the girls.

  I darted up the gallery stairs, the MP’s pelting madly after me.

  Light gleamed through an open door, as I ran swiftly down the corridor. I slanted in and slipped the door shut behind me, bolting it. I ran through a room as a hammering started at the door, and came into a bathroom. There stood an Australian, half clad in trousers and underwear shirt, his face white with lather and a razor in his hand. His whole body asked the question: “What’s up, Yank?” Breathing hard, my eyes casting about for exit, I said: “The MP’s are after me.”

  “Oh, the bloody provos, eh? Well, ‘ere’s a go, Yank—over here, now, out the window with you. Out on the roof, see? They’ll never follow you out there. There’s a good lad, now. I’ll take care of the bloody provos!”

  I slipped out on the roof as the hammering continued. I crawled to the ledge and let myself down, hanging there by my hands. In a moment, I could hear the MP’s talking to the Australian, but I could not distinguish their words. There was the sound of the window going up and flashlight beams slicing eerily into the oozing darkness overhead, then only the darkness, silence and the window going down again. The ledge was cutting into my fingers and the flesh strained so beneath my arms I feared it would part and leave only my arms hanging there. But I had to hang on. To haul myself back up on the roof again would have been a superhuman achievement. I could not let myself fall, for the sound would bring the MP’s down on me, and I was afraid to move my head to look for them. I had to hang on, intolerable as the pain might seem, until I heard the jeep cough into voice and roll away.

  Then I let go. It was not much of a drop, and I landed on pavement—for the Australian’s room had fronted on the street. In fact, I might have been visible to the MP’s, had they cared to glance my way. I held the darkness until I was sure they were out of sight, and then, swinging my arms to set the blood running freely again, I made for the shaft of light that came through the open doorway and slipped back into the restaurant.

  I began to drink again, waiting for Chuckler and Runner and the Chicken to reappear. But they did not. Other marines came drifting back, laughing, boisterously rehearsing their escape from the MP’s, but no comrade of mine was among them.

  “Hey, E Company,” I asked of the group which included the handsome now-drunk Barber, “you seen anything of my buddies from H Company? The MP’s get ‘em?”

  “Nope.” Then they laughed. “MP’s didn’t get nobody. They all went up them stairs after you, you simple tool! How the hell’d you get away from them?”

  “I told them I was from E Company, so they took pity on me,” I replied.

  “They’d know that was a crock o’ crap,” someone replied. “You don’t see nobody from E Company hauling ass. They’d know it was H Company right away from the view.”

  We exchanged insults, and there might have been a fight, had not the Barber slipped in stupor from his chair. They bent to aid him and, as they did, the MP’s came charging into the room again. They pounced so quickly there was no escape. I had moved toward the private dining room, but an MP intercepted me.

  “Where you think you’re going?”

  “After my hat.”

  “Hat, hell! C’mon with me, buddy.”

  The other MP’s had the Barber propped between them. His head rolled foolishly. His buddies apparently had escaped, sacrificing the Barber and myself to their retreat. One of our captors jammed the Barber’s hat on his head and began to propel him out the door. I turned to the MP who held me.

  “How about my hat?”

  “Whaddya mean—hat?”

  “It’s in that room there. I’ve got to get it. You’re not going to make me leave it behind, are you?”

  “Okay. But I’m going with you.”

  I approached the other door with the MP crowding behind me. I opened it. Then I kicked sharply behind me, slammed it shut, crossed the room, yanked open the other door, darted through, pounded past the swinging doors, and ran into the kitchen, shouting: “Quick, which way out?” I followed the eyes of a waitress to the rear and lunged through another door. Here a courtyard confronted me, and beyond this a high stone wall topped with barbed wire. But the sound of the pursuing MP’s impelled me across that courtyard like a cannon shot. Up against the wall I flung myself, grasping the ledge with clutching fingers, legs up, up, up, strain and over—and there I was, arching through the dark and moist night. A shot!

  The son of a bitch shot at me!

  The force of my fall sank me to my knees. I felt my hands bleeding from flesh torn by the barbed wire. My coat was likewise torn. But I could think only of the shots and I felt a hot rush of anger.

  But now I must defend myself against a pack of dogs that had gathered silently about me after I landed in their alley. Now they were snapping and yapping—making my progress through this dark lane impossible of stealth. Lights were coming on in the tumbledown houses which stood back to back in the alley.

  I crept along, feeling my way, fending off the dogs, stumbling against fences.

  A light came on in a house to my left. A door swung open and light flowed into the black. I crouched to avoid it. A woman’s voice called out: “Who’s out there?” I would have been foolish to pretend there was no one there. The dogs were growing more ferocious, growling deep in their throats, ringing me round now that they could see as well as smell me.

  “It’s an American,” I said. “I’m a marine. The MP’s are chasing me.”

  “The bloody provos,” she growled, advancing to a back gate, her flashlight in her hand.

  “Here, come over here. Go, you pack of mongrels, get away from here! G’wan! Scat!” She menaced the dogs with the flashlight, as I slipped through the gate. Her light fell on my hands.

  “You’re hurt,” she said quickly. “Come, I’ll fix you up. I used to be a sister. A nurse, you’d call it.”

  I followed her into the house. She cleaned the cuts, put mercurochrome on them, and bandaged them. I watched her. She was a plain, strong-faced woman in her early fifties. She was alone in the house, but it did not occur to her that she should be afraid.

  “What are you running from the provos for?” she asked, bandaging me with precision.

  “They’re after me. They’ve been after me all night. We’re aboard the Manoora and a lot of us went ashore tonight. But we’re not supposed to be on liberty—and we’re never supposed to be in work clothes like this.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “I wondered to see you sloppy like that. Your lads are always so neat—all shined and creased like you’d just stepped out of the clothespress.”

  I followed her through a narrow and dark hall. She made it seem casual, as though she might be doing this night after night. I shrank behind a curtain separating her h
all from her kitchen.

  She opened the door.

  Two shots rang out!

  She slammed the door.

  “Oops,” she said, “they’ve just shot one of your mates!”

  It might have been that it had stopped raining, so calm was her voice. “Oops,” she said, reporting a fact somewhat more than commonplace—that the MP’s had shot poor Barber through the thigh, and with a .45 bullet at that, as I learned later.

  “He was running down the street, and just as I opened the door I heard the shots and saw him fall. Sshh, now—I hear them coming.”

  I shrank back further into the dark and saw to my amazement, that she was cautiously reopening her door.

  “Ahhh,” she sighed, closing the door softly, “they’re going now.” She raised a hand. I listened. There was the noise of a jeep in movement away from us. “Your cobber’s all right, I guess,” she continued. “He’s alive, anyway. They’re taking him away in their auto.” I came forward, and she said, “Do they always do that?”

  “No,” I growled. “I never heard of it before. Did they really shoot him?”

  “Oh, yes. I saw him fall.”

  “They’ll be sorry,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t like to be that MP—not when that fellow’s buddies find out who shot him.”

  “Well, I hope they give him a beating he’ll never forget. Bloody provos!”

  I thanked her and slipped out into the street.

  To my left I could see the shore road and light breaking through the clouds above the water. I walked toward the bay, determined to find Chuckler or Runner and to slip back aboard the Manoora. I had had enough of playing hide-and-seek with MP’s who turned the game into a pig-sticking excursion. I peered cautiously around a building, once I had gained the shore road, and saw the restaurant marked by the beam of light slanting out the front door. There were no MP’s in sight. I crossed the road and descended wooden steps onto the beach.

  Chuckler would be here somewhere with his girl. He had no other place to go, not clad as he was. The sand swallowed the sound of my footsteps so I whistled loudly lest I come upon them without warning and cause embarrassment. Thus whistling, I sat alongside a boat drawn up on the beach. Within ten minutes, Chuckler was by my side, appearing suddenly and silently out of the mist.

  “Where’s Hope?” I asked.

  “Gone home. She took a cab to the railroad station. C’mon. We’d better get moving.”

  En route to the dock, our path crossed that of the Chicken. He grinned when he saw us.

  “Damn, Lucky! I would’ve swore the MP’s had your ass. I nearly split a gut when I saw you tear-ass up them stairs. I was runnin’ myself—but I couldn’t keep from laughing. They got Runner, you know.”

  “Runner!”

  “Sure. He was the first one they grabbed. I seen it just as I took off.”

  Chuckler shouted with laughter. “Well, whaddya know? They finally caught up with old cautious. Runner in the brig at last!”

  “Sure enough, Chuck,” said the Chicken. “Ol’ Runner’s a member of the club now.”

  We fell silent approaching the gatehouse. An ancient Australian, attired in the uniform of the civilian guards, was coming off duty. He motioned us to him, and whispered: “Don’t try it. The officer of the day is watching the gatehouse. He’s arresting your lads as they come in.”

  We thanked him profusely and fell back to take counsel. We decided to climb the fence. We were over it in moments. But then, we found that the wharf was some feet offshore, and could be reached only by entering one of the small boats moored there, casting off and paddling with our hands.

  In the lee of the wharf, I held fast to one of the pilings while first Chicken and then Chuckler shinned up. They did it so well and so silently one could hear the lapping of the water against the pilings above the sound of their going. I called up to them, softly, but got no answer. Fearing to raise the sentry, I did not call again, but secured the boat and shimmied up the piling.

  A strange tableau was presented to my eyes the moment my head came above the level of the wharf. Chuckler and Chicken stood side by side, bodies poised for flight—but their hands held high above their heads while a helmeted sentry menaced them with his rifle. I sought to duck but the sentry had seen me. He motioned with his rifle, and I ranged my person and my hands in the desired attitude. From the sentry’s very bearing we could tell that he was a recruit just in from the States. Almost no veteran would have detained any of his comrades so, nor would a veteran have been less than horrified at the thought of confronting one of his comrades with a rifle. Chuckler spoke softly to him. “That rifle loaded?”

  “Yeah,” said the sentry, carefully watching his interrogator. “Cartridge in the chamber?”

  “Uh-uh. Nope.”

  We breathed more easily, and I, who had inched toward him during the conversation, suddenly broke for the dark hulk of the ship. I counted upon the sentry either not firing or else swinging to cover me, and thus giving Chuckler and Chicken the chance to bowl him over, knock him off the wharf into the water, or to scatter themselves in such a way as to make it difficult for him to aim.

  But the sentry was both quicker and smarter than the three of us.

  He sprang back to forestall Chuckler and Chicken and brought his rifle to his shoulder to cover me. He slammed the bolt home. When I heard that deadly snick of cartridge into breech, I froze. We all froze. We contemplated the sentry in incredulity and consternation.

  “You stupid, chicken boot!” Chuckler hissed. “What the hell do you think we are—Japs? Put that damned rifle down!”

  The sentry surveyed us open-mouthed, as though Chuckler’s angry words had fallen upon some heretofore unsuspected ground of loyalty. His eyes seemed to see us again as different persons, not the abstract transgressors of a moment ago, whom his general orders commanded him to detain—but now flesh-and-blood marines from his own battalion, and he seemed to realize that he was menacing us with a loaded rifle that could kill. He began to lower it.

  But it was too late.

  Across the wharf and out of the great shadow cast by the ship came loping the officer of the day.

  Involuntarily, I hardened the muscles of my stomach, as though bracing them for a bullet, when I saw it was Lieutenant Racehorse. For Racehorse was the most feared, the most capable, the most respected and the most bloodthirsty leader in the battalion. As I stood there with my hands raised, watching his approach, seeing him draw his pistol as he ran, bawling for the corporal of the guard, I saw him dimly in the past—walking along the Guadalcanal hills and practicing drawing his pistol from behind his back, practicing quick drawing and shooting, practicing, perhaps, with that very pistol he now drew and pressed into my belly as he came up.

  He looked out at me from beneath his helmet, but I could read no emotion in that lean confident face with the flaring nostrils and the small wide-set eyes.

  “Search them,” he said, pressing the pistol deeper into my belly.

  “What do you want to search me for?” I asked him. “You know me, Lieutenant. I’m no fifth columnist.”

  “Search them,” Lieutenant Racehorse repeated, and the sentry obliged. He was blushing now.

  “Give us a break,” Chuckler said, and I was surprised to hear it. But then I remembered that Racehorse had come up through the ranks, and presumed that perhaps Chuckler was appealing to this.

  “No breaks tonight,” said Racehorse. His voice was high. “You should have thought of that before you jumped ship and went ashore without leave. And out of uniform, too.” He looked us over coolly. “Sentry, get behind those men and cover them.”

  “C’mon, Lieutenant,” Chuckler pleaded. “Give us a break. We didn’t do any worse than any of the other fellows. Hell! The whole Second Battalion was ashore tonight. We’re just the unlucky ones who got caught.”

  “No, you’re not. I caught dozens of them coming through the gate. And I let them all o
ff. But not you. I watched that whole business from across the wharf. You guys are too smart—and if I had been that sentry you’d all be dead.”

  He marched us to the Manoora and up the gangplank and up to the forward part of the ship and down a ladder and into a whitewashed hole lighted by a single glaring electric bulb. This was the Manoora’s brig. It was not a room at all, rather a seagoing Little-Ease, a vacancy occurring as port and starboard of the Manoora joined to point the prow. The ribs of the ship’s sides were visible. One man could barely turn around, three not at all. We had been stuffed into the place, literally—and when the hatch clanged shut, we discovered a plate fastened to the bulkhead which bore this inscription: “This brig certified fit to contain one able-bodied seaman.” We looked at each other, counted each other—and guffawed.

  Then we fell asleep—Chuckler, being the heaviest, lying on the deck, I on top of him, and Chicken on top of me.

  We awoke to the realization that we had put to sea. The prow rose and fell steadily, and we, stuck away in our hole up high, rose and fell in the exaggeration of our height. Our brig, like a rabbit hutch quivering beneath the hunter’s footfall, shuddered and shivered with the Manoora‘s motions and the throbbing of her motors. We rose and fell, sometimes dizzily, sometimes rushingly, sometimes with that long gliding rise, that fateful pause and dead bottomless drop that is the worst of all. But we were not sick, or even unhappy. The motion of the ship meant that the maneuver had begun, and this, we concluded, would mean that our commanders would be too busy to try us for our misdeeds.

  But they weren’t.

  The bread-and-water cell blazed with good cheer. I entered with Chicken. There had been a deck court-martial before the Battalion Executive Officer. He had removed the Pfc. stripe I had only recently regained, fined me, and withal sentenced me to ten days’ bread-and-water. Chicken fared as badly, though Chuckler had escaped the brig by forfeiting his second pair of corporal’s chevrons.