Phil Wood's Letters
Letter #57
Just Absolutely Cold Blooded
To Katharine “Kit” Wood
30 March 1944
30 March
Dearest Aunt Kit,
You all have been simply wonderful to me. Letters are the focal point of every day out here, and yours are always an event – letters that capture your spirit and tell of home and the people and places that I love – my second family. And the pictures! Bless your heart for the pictures. I have made them into a little album that always sits on my desk.
Yes, I have a desk – we’re really very comfortably set up here. Tents, to be sure, but they have concrete floors and lights. And we have our Officer’s Wine Mess, and good chow and open air movies every night. In fact, it feels like heaven when we get in from our regular bi-weekly two-day maneuvers. It seems to rain, with painful regularity, every time we go out, so that we have to sleep in a couple of inches of water. That is really a hell of a feeling; I know of no way to be quite so acutely uncomfortable. Field work, long hikes, inspections and guard duty fill up our days so regularly that we’ve been here almost a month and a half.
In a lot of ways, I resent the swift passage of time in the service. It seems like time wasted, when I could be getting on with the business of living. I’ve gotten a lot out of these two years: experience, training in self-discipline, learning to tell others to do things and automatically expect it to be done. It’s all good; I’m glad I was forced to do it, but I don’t see how the next two years can be as productive.
It will be two years too, Aunt Kit. No use kidding ourselves. The Central Pacific looks good now, but there the emphasis is on sea & air – when the war gets back on solid land instead of coral, it will move very slowly again. They’re dogged little devils – they will not give up, no matter what the odds. Nothing could have been more hopeless than their last hours on Namur, but they still fought very well, groggy as they must have been after that bombardment. They organized two strong counterattacks that night, which is hard to do under the very best conditions. One of them charged out of a pillbox we were storming, armed only with long pikes which they use for bayonet practice. Their weapons had apparently been destroyed by the bombing.
We found some evidence of hari-kari [sic] and a few tried to surrender (unsuccessfully), but on the whole they fought to the last, trying to attack whenever they could. It will be an incredibly long and hard job to root them out of every hole between here and Tokyo, even if we do get complete air & sea mastery.
Funny about the surrendering business. They seldom try it because they’re afraid they will be tortured by us – and we’re fearful of their tricks and don’t like to take chances. So we don’t take any. Our Battalion didn’t take a one, though at least fifty offered themselves.[1]
These boys aren’t bloodthirsty – just absolutely cold blooded. Surprising, for they are all so young – much younger than the Army. I imagine it’s simply because they don’t want to take unnecessary chances.
This is truly a beautiful spot, Aunty K. If you and Uncle Ham ever decide to do any extended traveling, you must come here. The earth is fabulously rich – these tropical plants grow strong and thick, the jungles are friendly and cool and dripping with enormous sprays of snow white orchids, bamboo forests, breadfruit, mangoes, banyan, guava, banana – all producing all year round – and thickly tangled up & down these hills, fed by innumerable cold little streams.
Our tent sits under a tremendous, shapely tree that is now bearing a cloud of huge flame-colored blossoms with waxy petals and a scent as heavy as that of the gardenia. The sea lies below us – several miles away, but it looks as though it’s right at our feet – and we can see two glorious mountain ranges at our backs; a light purple, flecked with the shadows of clouds.
You would all love it here.
Your Phil
Footnotes
[1] Phil may or may not be exaggerating for Aunt Kit here. Only about fifty of the approximately 4,000 Japanese and Korean troops on Namur survived to be taken prisoner; it is unclear if any were captured by the First Battalion. In a later letter, Phil recounts an anecdote from a POW but this may be repeating a rumor rather than firsthand information.
Phil Wood has a quite prescient assessment of the upcoming battles in the Central Pacific. There are fewer coral atolls in the Marine Corps future; many more long, drawn-out battles lasting weeks or months instead of days. He is also quite correct in his opinion of the Japanese fighting spirit of fighting to the death, and the “surrendering business.” The Japanese disdain for surrender, and a propensity for fatal tricks, were first learned by Marines on Guadalcanal. The average rifleman was far more apt to shoot first and ask questions later – secure in the knowledge that he would face no blame from his buddies or censure from his officers.
A few First Battalion veterans mentioned instances where prisoners were deliberately shot; one man was so notorious for killing unarmed prisoners that he was permanently banned from guarding them. There is at least a grain of truth to Phil’s statement that “we don’t take any” – although this will change in future battles, and was certainly not indicative of the mindset of the entire unit.
Indeed, Phil will ultimately lose his life in an attempt to rescue a large group of civilians – Chamorro and Japanese alike – rather than see them harmed.