The Letters of Philip Emerson Wood., Jr.
Company A, First Battalion, 24th Marines

“I sat over my hatful of letters for an hour and a half, reading every word and thinking of the memories evoked by every phrase, chuckling, then laughing aloud. There is nothing like it for pure pleasure and to realize just how much I love my family.“

For most of his life, Philip Emerson Wood Jr. never dreamed of being a Marine.

He was raised in a theatrical family by parents who witnessed the darker side of war in France and military hospitals. Bookish and academic, he finished high school two years early and went to Swarthmore, emerging in 1941 as a magna cum laude double major in History and English. He traveled the country on undergraduate peace missions, then enrolled at Yale Law School hoping to hang out his shingle – and secure a future for the family he wanted to start.

“It’s here at last,” he wrote in early 1942 as the country scrambled to mobilize and the Yale Daily News reminded all eligible students to register for Selective Service. “All our vague hopes of my being able to stay out are gone. I feel sure that I will be called by summer, though not before the end of the semester, certainly. I still refuse to volunteer, though there are some boys here who are going to.” Much to his family’s surprise, Phil did volunteer and was accepted as an officer candidate by the Marine Corps. This decision drastically reshaped his life and perspective – and, ultimately, led to his death in action at the age of twenty-three.

Phil’s evolution from aspiring academic to combat platoon leader is recorded in 76 surviving letters, postcards, and V-Mails, the bulk of which were sent to his “Dear Girls” – mother Margretta and sister Gretchen. Their contents range from the prosaic to the cathartic, with mundane military details and moments of triumph and heartbreak rendered in a gifted writer’s prose. Mostly, they show the inner workings of a decorated war hero whose hopes, dreams, fears, uncertainties, and celebrations are at once unique and universal.