Phil Wood's Letters

In the late summer of 1937, a gangly sixteen-year-old Phil Wood was on the train to Swarthmore College for freshman week. He chanced to sit beside a young lady from Indianapolis; her name was Anne, but everyone called her “Rusty” because of her red hair. “Little and lively with a burst of laughter and a peppy line of chatter that identifies her everywhere,” Rusty was as vivacious as Phil was awkward, and he was completely smitten before they arrived at school.

Swarthmore senior year photos and bios from the 1941 Halcyon yearbook.

Rusty and Phil were an item for most of their time at Swarthmore, and showed every sign of being together for the long haul – a fact that concerned members of both families.

Gretchen Wood was suspicious of her big brother’s first serious belle. “He must have invited girls to the school dances, but he certainly did not have a girlfriend [in high school], unless he led a secret double life,” she wrote. “I wasn’t carried away by Rusty’s charm, but it wasn’t until 3 years later… that I began to dislike her. He was so insanely smitten, and she kind of ruled him.”

Nor was all well in the Davis camp. Anne’s mother died in childbirth; she grew up very close to her father, Paul Gray Davis, a well-known Indianapolis lawyer. Mr. Davis was quite protective of Anne, and was not convinced that the scion of an impoverished actor’s family could provide security for his daughter. Phil’s growing concerns over family and personal finances seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by a desire to prove himself to Rusty’s father as a provider. It is also possible that his decision to practice law – a field for which he showed little interest in undergrad – was made in the same vein.

For now, at least, the rumblings of discontent were kept largely hidden. At the very least, both families could could appreciate that Phil and Rusty hadn’t paid a visit to the Post chapel, as some of Phil’s classmates were doing.

At this point, there is a gap of about a month between letters. Over the next two weeks, Phil’s company finally finished their training. The pinnacle of fieldwork was a mock amphibious landing and assault (while aircraft buzzed overhead and dropped sacks of flour to simulate bombs), then a fighting retreat back to the shoreline. The class yearbook concluded, rather grimly, “that in weeks, months, and years to come [the officers] will have an opportunity to work further ‘problems’ where a wrong answer will bring a swift death – and the correct solution will send the hellions of Hirohito to their doom, and turn back the Hitlerian legions of the damned.”

Final class standings were posted, graduation attended and diplomas received. There was a brief respite as the administrative machine determined which man should go where. On December 10, 1942, Second Lieutenant Philip Emerson Wood, Jr. received orders for his first post. He was headed for New River and the Fleet Marine Force.