Phil Wood's Letters
Letter #24
A Wound Which May Never Heal
To Margretta & Gretchen
April 1943
Monday night[1]
Please return[2]
My Dears,
You have been wonderful through this – the most loyal, comforting, heartwarming mother & sister a boy ever had. I love you both for what you have done and said [and] for the love that you have borne for me.
How do I feel? Older, and tired in some deep, strange way. Tired, not from the exhaustion of having done too much, but tired with the feeling of hopelessness, believing in my heart that I have done everything that was humanly possible, and seen [sic] it all fail. Something drops out inside you when you have wanted some one thing for six years – it has been the one aim of your days, the spur that lay behind every effort, then at last have it promised you, then denied at the last minute. Oh you know, your letters tell me that, I don’t have to tell you.
As you know now, my last letter glossed the whole thing over for you. I still thought – believed with all my heart – that Anne would have to courage to summon up her strength and come to me again. That of course is what hurts the most. I could and did forgive the turning back at Los Angeles, if only because she is frail and her father strong, but she should have come back to me. I pleaded with her through 62 pages of impassioned letters, abased myself, took all the blame for having trusted in just one telegram to have reached them. I tried frantically for two days to get airplane passage out until Mr. Davis told me not to come.
You see, their wire telling me to meet them in LA was delivered to the wrong Wood, and I didn’t get it until it was too late to make a train up there – and my wire to them telling them to come on to Oceanside never reached them. I didn’t know that until 48 hours later, going mad with worry, when I found out that they had stayed in LA five hours, then turned around and gone back, not having tried to phone me or wire.[3] Now I think that that shows lack of faith in me, lack of strength in herself, but then I didn’t care. I sent six wires to the train (none of which got there) then started the phone calls. She wasn’t mad at me, that would have been something, but only heartbroken at the “Fate” which had kept us apart. Then many letters (including the enclosed from “Fate,” which I do want back for my memory book) and Rusty said that she wasn’t able to come right away, sick, exhausted, sedatives, etc.[4] And he had a big trial coming up, couldn’t get away, and she wouldn’t come without him. The last was one of the hardest of all to take.
Then came the announcement which I don’t think you should have done Mother (although it was my fault for not letting you know) – you see, I still believed and I didn’t want to tell this story if it could be helped. I knew how you would feel.[5]
Mr. Davis called me, told me about it, and said that he wanted me to understand that marriage was out of the question now, or rather “at this time.” And that I was to stop writing Anne to come on & marry me, they only upset her, told me that he thought that I had blundered the whole thing and more of the same. I said nothing. Then Friday night, Rusty called – both of them very excited about the announcement, which bothered me not at all. A very nice half hour call, helping on a lot of things, except that I told her that if she expected to maintain relations with you Mother, that she ought to write and explain. She said that she didn’t think it her place to write first, said something about pride. I asked what pride had to do with a situation like this. Didn’t argue, but just told her what the effect would be.[6]
This all sounds pretty harsh, and it is. Rusty’s actions have been hard to take, but every day she has poured forth from her pen an immense love, the one I’m sending is the only one I could spare, the most mundane & practical.[7]
We are in love, and always will be. If I can say that after all this, I think you can see what I mean. This has made a wound which may never heal. I have been deeply hurt by what I can only take as a lack of faith in me, and even more deeply hurt by Anne’s unwillingness to make a sacrifice for our marriage. It would be a big one for her, coming out without her father, but I will never understand how anything could be so great as to bar this, the final happiness.
And before me always is the knowledge of what you and Daddy would have done, Gretchen – and what Mother has done.
I don’t blame you for anything you said in your last letter Gretch. In your place, mine would have been stronger still (Mother’s telegram was quite strong enough though, and secretly I was glad of it.)
Some day – after the war, and when Rusty is mature enough – we will probably marry. I say “probably.” I can’t help having a few little doubts after this, but this whole thing has taken some of the fire from my love. That is the greatest tragedy of it. Some day that portion may be rekindled, but it has to come from some action of Anne’s. I’ve got to be shown – I want passionately to be shown. I long for the beauty and faith that we knew, that sincerity and deep trust that we had for so long, the belief in each other that made us lovers.
I need that to live again.
Your Phil
Footnotes
[1] Letter not dated, but evidently written some time after the previous missive (given the amount of correspondence reported between Phil, Rusty, and the
disapproving Mr. Davis). Most likely late April 1943.
[2] Phil’s handwriting
[3] The communication mix-up was only part of the problem. Phil also drew duty as Officer of the Day, which meant he couldn’t leave base anyway, and had a friend detailed to meet the Davises with flowers and an explanation.
[4] “from Fate” evidently means “from Anne.”
[5] Not knowing of these late developments, Margaretta Wood ran an item in the New York Times announcing the marriage.
[6] Pride or no pride, Anne Davis did eventually reconnect with the Wood family, and corresponded with them for nearly seventy years.
[7] The enclosed letter referenced here was evidently returned to Phil Wood, and has not survived.
The full ugly truth comes out at last. The wedding is off and, in fact, Phil and Rusty will never see each other again.
In the late summer of 1944, Lieutenant James Hazen Hardy – Phil’s uncle on his mother’s side – met Roy Wood at Camp Maui while inquiring about Phil’s death. Roy was only too glad to talk, and Hardy recorded part of their conversation in a letter.
“He told me about Rusty. He said that Phil was not married, despite the notice of his death in the NY Times stating so. He had a worn and sweaty copy of the clipping in his wallet. He said he was to have been best man at Phil’s wedding. He had gone up to LA (I think it was – although on second thought it may have been elsewhere) to make plans for the wedding. Everything was set, but Phil was delayed in getting from camp to LA on the day he was to have met Rusty. Transportation facilities were poor. He was five hours late and when he got to the station Rusty and her father had come and gone. Phil got a telegram from Rusty stating she had returned home and also a letter implying that her father had frowned on the marriage.
“He said Phil seemed to snap out of it in time, although he never had another steady girl. He was happy and buoyant and outwardly did not show his disappointment.”
The announcement which caused all the fuss was, apparently, placed by Margretta without consulting anyone else. It is interesting to note that Lieutenant Hardy, who was married to Margretta’s sister, apparently did not know about the failed marriage; a 1944 obituary also erroneously reported Phil and Anne as married.
Phil references some very strong letters from Margretta and Gretchen, which have not survived. In her memoirs, Gretchen bared her feelings about her brother’s beloved:
I wasn’t carried away by her charm, but it wasn’t until [1941], when Daddy had died and mother and I moved to Swarthmore village (so Phil and I could be day-students, thus cutting expenses) that I began to dislike her. He was so insanely smitten, and she kind of ruled him.
Years later, after one year at Yale Law, and one year of training with the Marines, he finally persuaded her to meet him in California to marry him. You can bet her daddy didn’t like that. But he gave in and accompanied her on the trip from Indiana to California. Well war is Hell, as someone has noted, and as luck would have it, Phil pulled Officer of the Day on the exact day they were to arrive. Of course he had planned to meet them, loaded with smiles and flowers, but you don’t argue with the Corps. He assigned a buddy to meet them with the smiles and flowers, but no Phil. That did it. Daddy won and they turned around and went home. That’s when I stopped disliking her; started hating her.
Anne did send “a very sweet letter” to the family after Phil’s death; she and Gretchen exchanged Christmas cards for decades, but the air was never clear between them. Gretchen held on to her grudge until her death in 2014.
In the end, “Rusty” married Gale Shullenberger and led a full life with a loving family. When she died in 2015, “her college beau Phil Wood” was mentioned in her obituary.