Rest Camp in the Pacific
February 27, 1944
Dear girls,
Just a short one before it gets dark again. And this will have to go slow freight, as the Regimental Post Office is sold out of Air Mail stamps – 20,000 of them, and all the ones of other denominations, too. The boys are really pouring out the letters to home – which is great – I approve of all the family affection involved, except that it keeps me from writing my family. I have to censor the damn things. It’s an hour or two out of each day, and we don’t have much spare time before dark. As soon as twilight falls, though, the movies go on – they are incredibly old and bad, but no matter – there are women in them. Reminds me of Tris’s war diary – every other entry ended with “to the movies with Phil.”
We had our first liberty yesterday. It wasn’t very long – 7 in the morning to 10 at night, but it certainly felt good to get away from the routine – even if only for a little time. We went to the biggest town here, which can at least boast of two small but clean hotels. Four of us took a room, for the sole purpose of taking our first hot shower since we left the States – and it was worth every penny of it. We found a wonderful little drinking spot – summery tables around an open sunny patio – warm, dripping with tropical flowers. If only there’d been some pretty native girls there to further brighten the scene. But as usual, we arrived here after other service outfits, and now when the Marines start for town, the local fathers lock up their daughters and drive their female goats up into the hills.
Bought some presents for you, but we can’t send anything out of here yet.
I wish I could describe this place to you – there is a lot to tell – the scenery here is fabulous – breathtaking in its beauty – strange and exotic plants and people, but censorship rules may be relaxed soon.
Of course we drank like fish in the few drinking hours that we had, and as a result I don’t feel exactly in top form today. We went roller-skating, and I performed much more brilliantly than I ever did sober. It wasn’t our first beer binge since leaving the States, though – the day that we secured the island, some of the boys located Jap beer and Sake, I only had comparatively little, but I was terribly tired, had only had a half a canteen of water and one D-ration chocolate bar in 36 hours, and soon was very quickly and quietly looped. Helped clean up the last few snipers with a bun on – a funny story for the grandchildren, and historically quite correct – the victors drunk on their spoils, and pillaging if there had been anything left to pillage. Except that I didn’t feel like any part of the grand stream of history. My feelings were all intensely personal, as I remember.
Life here is not bad at all – they call it a rest camp, and strangely enough they almost mean it. We didn’t do anything the first week except get squared away, and now we have a light training schedule – with the emphasis on athletics and recreation. Our tents are pretty comfortably set up, and our Officer’s Wine Mess just went into operation. We have a good bit of time to ourselves, to write or read or walk around the place, or to censor mail, damn it. The climate is very comfortable, except for a lot of rain, but we’re almost at the end of the season, they say.
Mother, I should have thought of this sooner, but would you save the various clippings on the action? I’d like to see them some day. More pictures, of yourselves, anything. The ones I have are so well thumbed you can hardly see them.
Love,
Phil
***
Rest Camp in the Pacific
March 3rd, 1944
Dear girls,
In my last, which went free by slow freight, I explained that we were only allowed to send one air mail letter a week, but since I have found out that I’m the one that has to enforce the regulation – well, here we go.
Things are quiet and actually restful. We had our first liberty a few days ago, and though the town is small and quiet, it felt wonderful to get away for a few hours, and do just exactly what you want to do. Gee, a woman. The first woman white or black in almost two months. That’s just about as close as you can get to them around here, too – just see them.
There have been many changes made in our outfit – most of them caused, not by casualties, but by Col. Hart’s belief that we have been too long in our present jobs, and need a change – new faces. Also the fact that Headquarters Washington has changed the organizational setup of a company. What used to be a separate heavy weapons company – heavy machine guns – is now a part of our rifle company – to that new platoon is added my section (3 squads) of light machine guns. And my mortar section has been slightly increased – my command now consists of the mortars, and Company Headquarters personnel. Which suits me fine. Our Battalion Commander wanted to make me T.Q.M. – a job peculiar to the Marine Corps, concerned with Combat loading and unloading of ships. I would have had charge of all the supplies for the Battalion. A responsible job and all that, and someone has to do it, but I didn’t want it. It meant leaving my men, and the Company, and I like working with the mortars – and it’s too far behind the lines. So the Captain and I screamed like wild Indians, and I stayed. But most of the rest were juggled, and they were all very unhappy about it. I think it’s a Hell of a theory myself.
Today is March the fourth, and my thoughts are with you, Mother. So much has happened since – to all three of us – but somehow that relationship which he founded has not changed, but only grown in strength – your love for him – and from it our feeling of family, of unity and love.
If he were living – I’ve said that a thousand times – he’d be in this with me, and we’d be so proud of each other.
All my love,
Phil
***
Rest Camp in the Pacific
March 9, 1944
Dear girls,
Got in yesterday from my first long hike since Pendleton, and find that I’m all out of shape, of course. It won’t take too long to get back in again, but I’m stiff and sleepy today. We bivouacked overnight out in the Jungle. It was the first time I’d ever seen jungle – we had none on Namur, of course – and it is really and amazing experience. This of course is a sterilized version – no snakes, or malaria, or thick swamps. All the beauties and riotous vegetation without any of the discomforts. Seemingly endless stretches of bamboo forest – green stalks so close together that even I have to wiggle to get through them – incredibly tall, and soft leaves underfoot. Sudden cliffs opening out onto lovely vistas – miles of matted treetops – banyan, mango, bananas, coconut, guava.
I went out with a squad of my mortar men yesterday morning, just to see what we could see – walked for a mile or two over hills and through thick growth, finally came to the edge of a valley that looked impossible to enter – the sides were almost sheer for 150 feet – we went down just because it looked tough, holding onto roots, wandered up the valley and came to what is positively the most beautiful spot I’ve ever seen in my life. There, hidden away from all but the most prying eyes, was a fifty-foot waterfall, spilling into a deep, clear, cool pool. The sides were round and went straight up for at least a hundred feet, and were covered by a blanket of thick green ferns that dripped down into the water. At the top of the waterfall there was a cut that led back into a quite inaccessible valley a few feet wide and hundreds of feet deep – offering just a glimpse of green, private loveliness. Slanting morning sun fired part of the fern wall into green iridescence. The boys were almost reverently quiet as they undressed, but the icy water made them shout and laugh till the walls of the valley rang.
Of the places I’ve been, and they are beginning to mount up, this island is by far the most exciting. I want you to see it someday. It would make a perfect place to come and stay for a long vacation after the war. I have many ideas – all of them fantastic, about what we’ll do then.
I had one of the fruitcakes a week ago, stowed it away in my sea bag, and it tasted wonderful.
All my love,
Phil
***
Rest Camp in the Pacific
March 14, 1944
Dear girls
Your letters today saying that you got my first since Namur, on the 24th, I am glad for that much, but there is a 20 day gap – half a dozen letters probably fluttering home by way of Cairo. Glad to hear it because I know just how very much your letters mean to me. I’ll never forget the tremendous kick I got out of that pile I got when we arrived here – and I still re- and re-read them, and chortle over the ones that are coming in. Yours may be brief, Mother – nothing will ever change that – but their frequency is very comforting, and somehow, in spite of the length, they speak of you – sound like you. And Gretchen, you’re wonderful – positively my favorite author – more sketches – I love ‘em, as you know. As the current phrase goes that my platoon is writing home, “You write, I’ll fight.” Another goes, “Don’t get nervous in the service.”
Matter of fact, it’s amazing the language that becomes current in a group that is isolated as we are. A small percentage of them are, of course, heavy with obscenity – but humorously so – it even extends to ways of thought on communal subjects, such as the way the fighting went on Namur – who did what wrong and what happened – I’m quite convinced that if you should ever see two members of the same Marine outfit leaning over a bar together thirty years from now, odds are they will be talking about the campaigns they fought together. There isn’t even the slightest sign of slackening yet. And life in the camp – orders, opinions about commanders – what seem like arguments are usually just violent agreements. Our lots and natures and futures are so very much the same that there is very little room for disagreement – on strategy of the war (nobody is doing anything but the Marine Corps, though the Navy does somehow manage to get them from one fighting spot to another). “Dugout Doug” [MacArthur] is called any number of foul names, and is almost as much of a publicity hound as we are. Italy is a disgrace, and China is the only one of the Allies that we can trust and ought to help. England is all right, but she ought to be able to provide for herself now, with the shipping lanes open – and politics, as unanimous in denouncing anyone who smacks of isolationism, strongly pro-Roosevelt, and can’t understand why he’s getting such a riding in the press – and naturally, no mercy for the strikers who are lucky enough to be at home and earning some money.
This group of servicemen, having been together longer than those in the last war, and more numerous, are going to play a big part in national policy when they get home, the dominant part, not because of any organization or Legion they might have, but because they know each others worth and think the same way. I’m afraid though that it will be too easy to lead them – they’re being accustomed to it so young.
Like to go on, but chow down, and I’ve got to chop chop over there.
Love,
Phil
***
Rest Camp in the Pacific
March 16, 1944
Dear girls,
Experience? YES, Gretchen, you’re right. I’ve had a lot now at the ripe old age of 23. More than most, and built on a foundation of a solid and happy childhood. I like it – if there’s anything I can’t tolerate, it’s intolerance – and nothing gives wisdom and broadmindedness as readily as does experience. I’d like someday to be in a position to advise people- be an old sage because I had done and seen it all myself. I don’t know, thought, nobody ever takes the advice of others – anyway, that’s what I’d like to feel able to do when I finally do settle down. Be able to help other people, if they want it. Remember when I used to be the family conservative, Mother – maybe I still am in some ways, but I’ve gotten so that I welcome a change – in place and in experience – new things. And somehow I’ve gotten around to where the thought of just going out on my own hook, and looking for any kind of job without the security of special training doesn’t worry me at all as it did when I left college. In other words, though I think – know – I could do well in lay, and would like it if I got in the right branch, it doesn’t look up as the one thing that I can do. I have enough confidence now in my own ability to think that I should have no trouble in making a go of it in any one of a lot of fields. And two more years of Law School – still preparing to live – before I make my own way doesn’t sound attractive at all. I figure that I’ll be at least 25 before I get out of this – I don’t see how the war can end and I get mustered out in less than a year and a half or two. I’d be 27 by the time I started. That’s not good. But I’m not worrying about it. As I said, I’m confident about it all. And it will work out, as you always say, mother.
Thanks for the letter from Eleanor – quite nice of her, I thought. You know sometimes your letters get to me in as little as six days! Others take two weeks – ten days seems about normal.
Another of Aunt Kit’s swell letters – a boy never had a sweller aunt.
We missed our liberty, because we failed to pass Col. Hart’s inspection – things are very G.I. around here – I expected a relaxation on that stuff on the theory that all hands are tired, to some extent at least. But Hell no – it’s worse than it ever was. And it’s the petty stuff that I can’t stand. The one thing that makes it positive that I won’t stay in the Corps in peacetime.
That is pretty harsh punishment – it makes it 19 days with no liberty – not that 9 AM to 10 PM is much liberty time anyway, but the boys cry for all they can get, naturally.
One of my corporals and another man have a perfect setup – what I want to find. He struck it up with a native, and was invited to his house – very clean and nice – the old boy has three daughters – two of them very pretty, and they organized a barbequed pig picnic for the two Marines. The girls played and sang and did their native dances – long flowing black hair and decked in flowers – the old man insisted that they come again next liberty, piled them with fruit to take back to camp. They’re the two most envied men in the Company. Sounds like Nordhoff and Hall, doesn’t it?
This won’t effect my Captaincy at all, mother – in fact, that reorganization that I told you about calls for fewer Captains in the Corps - I won’t make it for many months now. Hope for it, thought, because it might mean a trip back Stateside to train new men – that’s what they used to do, anyway. I would like very much for that to happen shortly after our next operation.
Love,
Phil
***
Rest Camp in the Pacific
March 31, 1944
Dear girls,
My very dear girls! God, but I get homesick easily these days – happened to be looking through Esquire the other day and came on a fashion plate showing Fifth Avenue and Radio City – it brought back the whole feeling of New York, God bless it – and Sunday, and you two dressed up for an excursion – up to the Modern Museum, then hunt for tea – in vain, usually – or a stroll up as far as the park – our outings to the botanical gardens and the Cloisters. Thousands of places in the city that I have grown to love – remember how I used to hate to go to the city, Mother? – claimed I got headaches from the car exhaust – probably all constipation. Your one mistake in raising me – other than that you couldn’t have improved on your product – was that you never emphasized athletics at all – you should have – I always feel like a million now that I’m active.
I’ve got a lot of plans about how I’m going to raise my boys – I think about them a lot – three boys and one pretty little girl that I can spoil to death – Swarthmore, of course, for two – the artistic one I want to educate myself. And they are to work together, for each other, like the Rapps.
I’m going to build my own home – I’ve got half a hundred designs – most of them drawn out, complete with interiors. I guess I get that from you, Mother.
A couple of little wrinkles, though – getting a wife being one – as time goes on, my field of availability seems to be narrowing. That really was a bit of a blow about Nancy. You’d better start lining up an address book of possibilities for when I get back.
It’s raining again. It rains fully half the time. I fully expect Jeanne Eagles [star of a popular 1922 play set in the South Pacific – and titled “Rain”] to come swinging into the tent – and it rains with a painful regularity every time we go out into the field. And that is no fun, let me tell you – hiking in wet feet – crawling on your belly in ankle deep mud – sleeping in two inches of water, and the mosquitoes.
And when we are not out on maneuvers we are being inspected by Colonels and Generals – and they are never satisfied – we had one liberty day taken away for it. And washing gear and clothes – then trying to get them dry. In fact, the maneuvers are designed to get our gear dirty so that we’ll have something to clean for the next inspection.
But after all, the rain does make these things grow that make this island so beautiful – I want you to see it someday – it’s the perfect vacation land – I would like to spend a year or so loafing here after the war – incredible breathtaking beauty – stirring purple blue mountains – tall trees burdened down by enormous flame-colored blossoms – jungles dripping with orchids – white and purple ones in gigantic sprays – miles of bamboo forest – breadfruit trees so thick that sunlight never gets through to the ground, and roots that spread above the ground – banana trees growing wild in the valleys - red bananas, ripe and sweet – guavas, yellow with red meat inside. And innumerable streams, clear and cold – we sleep under two and three blankets every night.
I’m sending the Marine Corps Gazette. They have a set of good pictures of Namur – the one in the upper right hand corner is “A” Co., coming back down the beach just after the battle – the island had been secured about 20 minutes before. We spent a week right there where the picture was taken. I’m just out of sight at the head of the column. Save the picture.
Corporal [Arthur B.] Ervin – my ex-machine gun squad leader – up for the Navy Cross – is back from the hospital, and I nabbed him for my mortar section leader. A Hell of a good man – we work well together. And he’s squaring the section away in fine shape.
Some more sweet letters from Aunt Kit – as wonderful an Aunt as ever anyone had – one from Kitsy – and a lot from you all – more, I love them.
Love, and a couple of kisses,
Phil