Robert Leckie QUOTES

41 " We ate a bowl of rice for breakfast and had the same for supper. Once a marine complained of worms in the rice to one of our two doctors. “They’re dead,” he laughed. “They can’t hurt you. Eat them, and be glad you have fresh meat. "

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

42 " Youth rebels and age conserves; between them, they advance. "

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

43 " 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. "

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

44 " They had not forgotten. "

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

45 " An officers’ mess is one of the surest barometers of military success. So long as the officers continue to pig it with the men, there is danger of defeat. But once the officers’ mess appears — raised almost on the bodies of the foe, contrived of sticks and pieces of canvas or perhaps only an imaginary line like a taboo — once this appears, and caste is restored. we know that victory is ours. "

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

46 " Se volvió a mirarnos: ni siquiera había odio en sus ojos, sólo lágrimas y más lágrimas y la aturdida expresión de súplica del animal que ha sido abatido. "

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

47 " 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? "

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

48 " It was a darkness without time. It was an impenetrable darkness. To the right and left of me rose those terrible formless things of my imagination, which I could not see because there was no light. I could not see, but I dared not close my eyes lest the darkness crawl beneath my eyelids and suffocate me. I could only hear. My ears became my being and I could hear the specks of life that crawled beneath my clothing, the rotting of the great tree which rose from its three-cornered trunk above me. I could hear the darkness gathering against me and the silences that lay between the moving things.
Helmet for My Pillow "

― Robert Leckie

49 " And here is the point in battle where one needs the rallying cry. Here where the banner must be unfurled or the song sung or the name of the cause flung at the enemy like a challenge. Here is mounted the charge, the thing as old as warfare itself, that either overwhelms the defense and wins the battle, or is broken and brings on defeat. How much less forbidding might have been that avenue of death that I was about to cross had there been some wholly irrational shout — like “Vive l’Empereur,” or “The Marine Corps Forever!” — rather than that educated voice which said in a sang-froid that was all at odds with the event, “Well, it’s our turn, now. "

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

50 " Götterdämmerung; "

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

51 " My socks henceforth will be tan. They will neither be soiled, nor rolled, nor gaudy, nor restrained, nor holey. They will be tan. The only other thing they may be is clean. "

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

52 " We were like St. Augustine’s definition of time: “Out of the future that is not yet, into the present that is just becoming, back to the past that no longer is. "

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

53 " Que un centinela se emborrache y luego deserte de su puesto y entregue su arma supone combinar un pecado mortal con un delito imperdonable. "

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

54 " sibilant "

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

55 " cynosure. "

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

56 " triune "

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

57 " This is the terror I mean; this is the terror that strangles reason with the clawing hands of panic. I saw it twice, I felt it pluck at me twice. But it was rare. It claimed few victims. Courage was a commonplace. "

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

58 " Nor was my squad troubled by racial or religious bigotry. We had no “inner conflict,” as the phrase goes. These things happen most often in the imagination of men who never fought. Only rear echelons with plenty of fat on them can afford such rich diseases, like an epicure with his gout. "

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

59 " Monster cloud rising over Hiroshima, over the world — monstrous, mushrooming thing, sign of our age, symbol of our sin: growth, bigness, speed: grow, grow, grow — grow in a cancer, enlarge a factory, swell a city, balloon our bellies, speed life, fly to the moon, burst a bomb, shatter a people — explode the world. "

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

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