Phil Wood's Letters
Letter #25
The Hell With It – All Of It!
To Margretta & Gretchen
14 May 1943
Friday Night
[May 14, 1943]
Dear Girls,
Oh, hell. I feel terrible about not having written you in so long, but you know how I feel – just an immense lethargy about everything but actual physical work and hard playing (and I’ve been doing a lot of both).
And you’ve been so sweet with your letters – they have meant so much, you’ve no idea. I’ve been pretty homesick this last month. 3,000 miles is a long way from home, especially when you’ve got a hurt, and especially when your home is so good and comforting.
There’s so much to comment on – your job, Gretch, I think you’re doing it the wise way. Don’t go off in a huff unless you’ve got something else lined up, but go somehow, if you are dissatisfied. And Kitsy and Bill, and Mother as an air raid warden, and spring in The City.
But I’ve only written Rusty two short letters in the last couple of weeks – not cold, just sad – instead, I’ve been out for a good time on the weekends. I got two other boys in on the house with me, and we week-end there, drink a lot, bathe in the surf and get all the dates we can.[1] I have one tomorrow with the president of Mortar Board of Pomona College.[2] Trying to be gay and sometimes succeeding, but not with the girls so far – trying to find out if I can find any reality in any other woman. Nothing like it yet.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I should play the melancholy Dane & brood and save my money – but somehow, I just can’t. The hell with it – all of it! I can’t sit and wait and work for no goal at all, and I don’t trust the one I have now. Maybe it’s been empty all these years! I don’t know, and I refuse to figure it out. If Anne is the right one, then we’ll come back together again, if she isn’t then we won’t, it’s as simple as that.
Simple in the stating, but I will never go to sleep at night without dreaming of her.
All love
Phil
Footnotes
[1] Fittingly, Phil’s would-be married home became quite a popular hangout spot for the other bachelor officers in his battalion.
[2] The National Mortar Board Society (of which Pomona’s Associated Women Students Mortar Board was a chapter) is a national honor society for college seniors.
