At Sea
January 28, 1944
Dear girls,
At sea at last! I had actually 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 - 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 - weeks at a time - the days pass without number almost - they are all alike - we see nothing but ourselves, the ships, 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 langorous tropical heat, but we in the Agony Quartette decided that we could not stand it, and decided to sleep on deck - which we do every night.
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 [1st Lt. Theodore K. 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 quartette - I can at least carry a melody, and the other three do the variations on the theme. “I can hear their voices singing… they seem to say, they seem to say.”
Remember! 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 Marsailles,” 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. For instance, there is a boy in my platoon who has nothing to look back to - I got some letters from his father a little while ago telling me 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, 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.
Some have just been married, others leave a trail of divorce and babies dependent on their families, 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 I want to feel and do - lead a married life and have children, above all - 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. 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 think I have a chance to get this mailed.
Your Phil
***
Somewhere in the Pacific
February 13, 1944
Dear girls,
Well, we left San Diego just a month ago today – and we have now started back - not all the way, but to a rest camp. Rest Camp isn’t exactly and accurate term – more like a prizefighter’s training camp, where you go to put on weight, get back in trim. We need some of that – a lot of new equipment to replace all that was lost or damaged, and a chance to relax the boys’ minds – they’ve been under a tension for a long time now. All they – we- want to do is get back to some safe spot and eat and sleep and loaf in the sun – and see some green hills and foamy cold beer, and see a buxom open-faced country lass.
The only change in me is a heavy brown tan – my hair has gone yellow again and a slight scratch on the heel of my hand – so slight that it won’t even leave a scar that I can point to and tell my children that that is as close as Jap bullets ever got to me.
The whole battle only lasted 36 hours, and while it was the most exhausting day and a half that I ever spent, we haven’t done a Hell of a lot since - we camped right in the middle of our own company battlefield and had to clean it up, and it was a mess, but the ocean was only a few yards away and there was a steady breeze to blow the stench away.
That damned sea - beautiful but deadly and treacherous - about a week ago I went swimming with three of my boys from the Mortar section - it is waist to chest deep for a hundred yards out, until the point where the waves break on the big jagged sections of the coral reef, where it drops sharply off - we had no intention of going all the way out - were twenty five yards from the danger point, when suddenly all four of us were caught in a terrific undertow and carried out. A couple of the boys were really powerful swimmers, but they were as lost as I - we were sucked out to where the enormous waves rolled in and smashed onto the reef – thrown in and sucked out for what seemed to be an eternity – way over our head most of the time – gasping for air and getting only foam and water – thrashing and twisting in an infinity of dazzling white pure clean foam, tossed about like a chip by a vast impersonal malevolent force - finally too weak to fight any longer, just trying to breathe and thinking that it was all over, what a silly way to die, of home and you, but over and over again – what a silly, pointless way to die – and finally when the ocean was through with us one enormous wave picked us up and vomited us into the shallow water, washed clean of any strength or thought or feeling - the four of us held on to each other and staggered in and collapsed on the sharp but dry coral rock - three of us passed out - it was a horrible experience, one which I will never forget.
Namur Island must once have been a lovely spot - it and Roi are the largest of a chain of a thousand or more islets strung on a thread of coral around a lagoon – the water is all shades – bright green, robin’s-egg blue, a deep, satisfying cobalt blue - you can walk, hip deep, from one island to another and I went to four or five and they were idyllic – soft rich brown earth, mangoes, breadfruit and coconut crowding each other for a chance at the sunshine, forming glades of shade roofed over by the vivid green leaves. The steady breeze keeps it always cool – no mosquitoes - the only sound being the hissing of the surf.
But Namur ahs been touched by war and there is nothing tropical or lovely left. It looks as though someone with an imagination of his own had tried to make a Hollywood set for Journey’s End. Namur is a dry, hot, fetid version of the worst section of No Man’s Land that France ever had to offer – no living green thing, blasted tree trunks, huge gaping shell holes - disemboweled trucks, heaps of concrete and lumber that were once fortifications - bodies by the thousands – parts of bodies – so disfigured that they beggar description – horrible.
I wish I could tell you the full story of this operation, but we aren’t allowed to tell the tactics that were used or the names of the casualties that we suffered.
Some of them hit pretty close to home and it is almost impossible to make yourself believe – it is a sad voyage back – the long voyage home. And actually, by percentages, our casualties were comparatively light.
In a lot of ways though I find myself more collected than I had expected. I have seen, felt and done a lot and all I feel is more experienced - a little wiser, perhaps, than before. Maybe it was so short – a violent but very brief shock which did not give war time to waste the nerves and resistance away and produce another “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The boys want to go into it again - what they would like is a short rest, reorganize, and a chance to pitch one good liberty, then go at it again. And that’s probably what they’ll get.
Not from the feeling that they relish fighting and killing – they don’t particularly, for its own sake – yet it is now their profession - the profession which most of them have trained longest and hardest for, and killing shows proficiency in that profession. After the first few minutes of tight stomachs and drawn white faces, acting on the quick nervous reaction with blank mind - This is it – this is it – the squeamishness soon passed with action and they – we – soon found that killing was practical and a necessity. I killed – yes, several times – I did not enjoy it. I had to force that single motion of my index finger up from my belly the first time, but then it became the natural reaction to a situation of danger. It was easier too, since they didn’t seem to have personalities - they all looked and dressed the same – their personal possessions and dugouts were the same – their actions and tactics in any given situation were the same. They were not individuals, but a type – a very dangerous and undesirable type – an animal with a capacity for organization and an inexplicable taste for aesthetics. Formalized, clean and brave, if you can call their inbred disregard for life bravery.
We have spent a lot of time aboard ships now. It’s a monotonous life, cramped, and a Helluva way to fight. I’m very, very glad I didn’t join the Navy. It’s amazing how radically different the two services are.
Sea and clouds and sea and ships and sea – a vast perimeter with nothing in it but the line that divides the sea and the sky – a smooth line, satisfying in its length and immutability, but never exciting, as a broad green vista, suddenly come upon, can be; or a cool wooded vale, exquisite in its balance and planning – the intimacy of the rocks and trees – the smell of shade and moist dead leaves.
No, I don’t like the sea - its vast spaces only bore - they stultify the imagination.
Time goes on, and it is almost – no, just exactly a month since I have had any letters from home - that is a long time, but I think that it will be several weeks yet. It worries me – too much can happen in that time.
Write soon and often – even if I do get them all at once, think of what a joyous day!
Love
Phil