Phil Wood's Letters
Letter #41
Where We’re Going, There’s Going To Be Action
To Margretta & Gretchen
January 1944
At Sea[1]
Dear girls,
At sea at last! I actually had gotten to believe that this was never going to happen, that they didn’t actually plan ever to use us. When I last wrote you, we came back in again – it was still only a maneuver – and that seemed the final straw. But we are under way at last, for which all of us, of course, are very thankful.
It’s a funny feeling being cooped up on board here for days [and] weeks at a time. The days pass without number, almost; they are all alike. We see nothing but ourselves, the ship, and the sea; do the same things: calisthenics on the deck, a lot of reading, and a minimum of card playing because there is really very little money left. The lucky few are cutting each other’s throats for the spoils; the rest of us stand
around and watch. I haven’t played very much because I didn’t bring hardly any [money] aboard. And Sleep – with a great big capital S – sleep all hours of the day whenever there is nothing else to do, which includes everything but mealtime.
Our compartment is unbearably hot and stuffy – lie on your bunk in the nude, sweating and smelling. If it wasn’t so close, it might be bearable under the head of languorous tropical heat, but we in the Agony Quartet (see picture) decided that we could not stand it, and decided to sleep on deck – which we do every night.[2]
Then the Pacific becomes lovely, in the evening with the cool, mild night breezes, long slow swells, the sound of the bos’un’s pipe, and the thrumming of the motors. There are stars out here of incredible brilliance and beauty – several that actually flash alternate red and blue lights, unbelievably enough – and when the rigging is threaded with these and the ship is dark and quiet, then the Pacific is beautiful indeed.
We do a lot of singing, some evenings sitting out on deck for two or three hours at a time. Harry [Reynolds] and Ted [Johnson] can, between them, remember the words to all the old and middle-aged songs. “Dear Old Girl,” “I Wonder What’s Become Of Sally,” lullabies and college songs. We really do make up a damned good quartet. I can at least carry a melody, and the other three do the variations on the theme. I hear their voices singing… they seem to say, they seem to say….[3]
Remember! Gretch, when Daddy used to come into the room before we went to sleep, and sing to us in the dark as he stood in the doorway – he always ended with “Good Night, Ladies.” I remember him singing most of the old songs, Victor Herbert and Stephen Foster, particularly, ones like “Santa Lucia,” “La Paloma,” “Le Marseilles,” and, above all, “Moonlight Bay.”
This is a peculiar time, though. A lot of thinking, dreaming, and remembering – and all of us go into this with so many different things to remember. Harry Reynolds, for instance. On our last liberty, Harry saw that I was sorta indecisive – I didn’t want to go up to Los Angeles or San Diego for a conventional liberty – and he renewed his invitation to come up with him. I went up and was very glad I did. His was a very peculiar setup in some ways, but right. Alice lives in Laguna. She’s not divorced yet, and Harry lived with her for several months, but somehow there was nothing wrong in it. They made a home out of it – she’s a very lovely girl. Wellesley, looks just like Veronica Lake, has refinement, taste, and is a tomboy in a lot of ways, and they are very much in love. They chop wood together, swim together, decorate the Christmas tree, cook, and entertain all their friends. They both like me, and I like them a lot – and envy them tremendously.[4]
[PFC Dale] Owings (a boy in my platoon) has, on the other hand, nothing to look back to. I got some letters from his father a little while ago telling why. He was injured about a year ago, and was told by the doctor that he would be blind by this coming summer, so he broke off with the girl he was to marry in a month without telling her why – joined the Marine Corps, and has been trying to get into action ever since. His father didn’t know it and had just found it out, and wrote a heartbreaking, illiterate letter begging that I keep good care of his boy who is the only thing the father has left in the world.[5]
Some have just been married, others leave a tangle of divorce, babies dependent on their family, but all of them have jobs and homes and someone they love. They are not afraid of what is coming, but they don’t want to miss all that Home means to them. They are not afraid of pain or death, only the lack of living – they have only begun to taste the joys of mature life.
Lots of things that I want to feel and do. Lead a married life and have children, above all; Rusty taught me how much I want that. Realizing ambition’s fruit of hard work; repeat the thrill of getting High Honors and the Law Journal; doing things for others; buying that watch for Daddy and seeing him cry over it – a lot of loving and living to do.
We know where we’re going – there’s going to be action, and more than enough of it, and of course preparations are going apace – planning down to the last iota, and all that gives rise to all of this.
We’ve seen something of the tropics already, and I like it, if only for the fact that it is far away (remember that book that Daddy read aloud, to the tune of Aunt Allie’s blushes). As you said, Gretch, I’m pretty damned lucky in my choice of places. Exotic, strangely beautiful, traditionally romantic – and hard, sharp, but short fighting.
More later; I might have a chance to get this mailed.
Your Phil
Footnotes
[1] Written aboard the USS DuPage, en route to the Marshall Islands. Postmarked 28 January 1944, four days before the landing on Roi-Namur.
[2] Phil’s new singing group, which included First Lieutenants Harry D. Reynolds, Jr. (A/1/24th Marines, exec officer), Theodore K. “Ted” Johnson (C/1/24th Marines, exec officer), and Frederic A. “Fireball” Stott (D/1/24th Marines, liaison officer).
[3] A riff on the chorus to “Moonlight Bay”:
We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay
We could hear the voices ringing, they seemed to say:
“You have stolen her heart,” “Now don’t go ‘way!”
As we sang love’s old sweet song on Moonlight Bay.
[4] Although Alice was evidently an important figure in Phil’s social circle (as indicated in a letter she later sent to him), few other details are known about her.
[5] Dale Leroy Owings, of Rock Island, Illinois, got the action he sought on Namur and Saipan, where he was badly wounded.
The 4th Marine Division is finally heading out for combat. For a detailed description of the battalion’s final days in California and life aboard the DuPage, read “Not Afraid Of What Is Coming.”
Dale Owings’ strange story is still a bit of a mystery today. Owings was a railway worker from Rock Island, Illinois – but his real calling was baseball. During the summer season, Owings would travel to Richmond, Virigina to catch for a professional team. In his last season, a hard pitch hit Owings in the face, breaking his nose and causing some ocular damage – not enough to cause blindness, but enough that he had to wear glasses and faced the end of his baseball career.
For reasons unknown, when Dale Owings was inducted into the service, he claimed to have no living relatives – in reality, he had a father and two siblings at home in Rock Island – and named a “friend,” William Lanaghan, as his beneficiary. His medical paperwork noted his broken nose and a “bad heart,” but cleared him for service. Despite his eye problems, Owings qualified as a rifle sharpshooter and carried ammunition for one of Phil Wood’s 60mm mortar squads.
Owings survived Roi-Namur without incident, but suffered a blast concussion on Saipan that eventually led to his discharge from the service. The official reason was given as “war neurosis.” Interestingly, when news of his wound reached Rock Island, Mr. Lanaghan claimed to have no acquaintance with Owings – and expressed surprise that he was listed as the young Marine’s emergency contact.
Owings intended to return to baseball after leaving the service, but this never came to pass. He moved to California, was married, divorced, and employed by the Singer Sewing Machine company and a trucking firm. At some point in the 1950s he legally changed his name to Samuel Allen Ford, married again, and started a family.
“Samuel Ford” died on 4 October 1976, when a train hit his car near Fort Morgan, Colorado.