Robert Leckie Books In Order

Publication Order of Americans At War Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Landmark Giant Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of U.S. Landmark Non-Fiction Books

Robert Leckie was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 18, 1920 to an Irish Catholic family of eight kids, and grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. He started his career as a writer during high school at the age of sixteen, as a sports writer for “The Bergen Evening Record” in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Robert originally got into writing because he wanted to play football but his dad wouldn’t allow him, and so he began writing about it and covering the sport.

On January 18, 1942, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He served in combat in the Pacific theater, as a machine gunner and a scout in H Company, 2nd Battalion 1st Marines Regiment 1st Marine Division (United States). He saw combat in the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Cape Gloucester, and was wounded by blast concussion in the Battle of Peleliu. Robert participated in all of the 1 st Marine Division campaigns except Okinawa. He returned to the US in March of 1945 and was honorably discharged shortly after.

He was awarded five battle stars, the Purple Heart, and the Naval Commedation Medal with Combat V.

After World War II, he worked as a reporter for The Star-Ledger, the Associated Press, the New York Journal American, the Buffalo Courier-Express, and the New York Daily News.

He married a childhood neighbor, named Vera Keller, and together they had three kids: David, Geoff, and Joan. In 1951, according to Vera, he was inspired to pen a memoir after he saw “South Pacific” on Broadway and walking out in the middle of it. He felt he had to tell the story of how it actually was. Robert felt he had to let people know that it wasn’t any musical.

This led to his first and best-selling book, called “Helmet for My Pillow”, which was published in the year 1957. Upon its publication, it was rewarded the USMC Combat Correspondents Association Award.

He would write over forty books on American war history, spanning from the French and Indian War (1754-1763) to Operation Desert Storm (1991). Besides writing about war, he also wrote books for kids and fiction.

“Helmet for My Pillow” (along with Eugene B. Sledge’s “With the Old Breed”) formed the basis of the series “The Pacific”, the follow on to “Band of Brothers”. Robert Leckie is played in the miniseries by actor James Badge Dale, while Vera is portrayed by Caroline Dhavernas.

Later on in his career, he wrote a book about Okinawa, because his editor and friend (named Al Silverman) wanted a short book on Okinawa. That is just what Robert delivered, and from this came, “Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II”.

He died December 24, 2001 at the age of 81 in Byram Township, New Jersey, after he fought a long battle with Alzheimer’s. He was survived by his two sisters, Vera (his wife of 55 years), his three kids, and six grandchildren.

“Helmet for My Pillow” is a non-fiction book released in 1957. Robert Leckie was just 21 years old when he enlisted in the Marine Corps. In the book, we follow his journey, from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina on to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the fiercest fighting of the entire war went down.

Leckie, who recounts his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu, doesn’t spare any detail of the sacrifice and the horrors of war. Throughout, he paints an unsentimental portrait of how real warriors fight, are made, and how much too often they die defending their country.

From the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to battle to the last man to the live-for-today rowdiness of Marines on leave, Leckie describes just what it’s like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch.

This book is a gripping account from one ordinary soldier that fought in extraordinary conditions and is unparalleled in both its accuracy and its immediacy. It is a book that brings you as close to the blood, the mud, and the experiences of war as it is safe to get. Readers have described this as an epic and grand prose poem, and the theme here is the purely human experience of war in the Pacific, which was written with the graceful imagery by somebody that was able to, somehow someway, survive it all.

“The Bloodborn” is the first novel in the “Americans at War” series and was released in the year 1981. Child of Violence. The relief party showed up at Schenectady’s frontier settlement much too late. They only found the smoldering ruins and the hideously butchered carcasses of women and men. The Indian and French raiders just left a single living being behind: one squalling newborn baby, that came into this world amid all the carnage of battle.

Jed Gill was this child’s name who grew up to be the sort of man that only the untamed land could possibly breed. In a wilderness America that was the prize in some savage war between France and England, Jed fought a war of his own to settle the scores from the past. And to found a family that would carry on his legacy of daring and bravery into the future of America.

“Forged in Blood” is the second novel in the “Americans at War” series and was released in the year 1982. Time of testing. The firestorm of the American Revolution swept well over the colonies from the bloodstained fields of Concord and Lexington to the Carolina marshlands. For Nathaniel Gill, a young and hot-blooded male, it was time to prove his bravery and manhood in battle.

For sophisticated and elegant Dr. Benjamin Gill, this was a time of all-corrupting and overwhelming temptation in the arms of one gorgeous Royalist wanton. While for Daniel Gill, the handsome and brilliant man, it was a time to shape history as General George Washington’s chief aide.

For every member of this passionate and proud American family, it was a time to pick a side and take some risks. It was a time of death or liberty.