The stunt man straightens up. Trys to smile. Wayne does not smile. “My trailer, now.” Three minutes later, the stunt man is standing in front of John Wayne in the trailer doorway. Charles Wilcox is sitting on the couch with the photograph face down on his knee. He does not look up. Wayne closes the door behind the stunt man.
“Eighth Marines. That’s what your letter says.” The stunt man swallows. “What unit was Lieutenant Wilcox in?” “Tell the man.” The stunt man stutters. He picks a number. He picks the wrong one again. Wayne is quiet for 1 second. 2 3. Then he reaches past the man and opens the door. “Get your gear. Don’t come back.
Don’t write any more letters.” The stunt man tries to speak. Wayne puts a hand flat against the door frame between them. “Tonight.” That is the last anyone on the set sees of him. He’s on a bus to Los Angeles before sundown. He has a black eye that nobody on the crew remembers giving him. Charles Wilcox is still sitting on the couch when Wayne comes back inside.
He has not moved. He has not opened his eyes since the door closed. Wayne sits down across from him. He does not ask him for the $300 in his coat pocket. He does not bring up the letter. Mr. Wilcox? Yes. Your son was fighting fifth. Yes. I am going to find a man who served with him. I’m going to put him on a plane.
He is going to come here. You are going to talk to him. You are not paying anyone anything. Is that all right? The old man does not answer. He cannot answer. He just nods once. Wayne goes to work. He picks up the telephone on the wall of the trailer. He makes three calls. The first call is to Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
He asks for a casualty records officer he has known since the sands of Iwo Jima premiere in 1949. He gives the man a name. Lieutenant Daniel Wilcox. Chosin Korea, February 1951, first battalion, fifth Marines, Charlie Company. The officer says he will call back in two hours. The second call is to a Marine Reunion Association in Camp Pendleton, California.
Wayne asks for any active member of Charlie Company who survived the Yalu River campaign. The clerk gives him three names. One is dead now. One is in a VA hospital in Texas. One is in Hartford, Connecticut. The third call goes to Hartford. A man named Walter Sullivan picks up the phone. Sergeant, twice wounded.
Worked at the post office for 15 years after the war. Has not spoken to a Marine outside of his family since 1953. The line is quiet for a long time after Wayne tells him why he is calling. Then Sullivan says one sentence. I have his tags. Wayne pays for the plane ticket out of his own bank account. He pays for the hotel.
He pays for the meal Sullivan eats at the Durango airport that night. Have you ever had someone finally understand what you went through? Not just listen. Actually understand. That moment changes everything, doesn’t it? By Tuesday morning, Sergeant Walter Sullivan is sitting in trailer one across from Charles Wilcox.
He is 38 years old. He has not slept on the flight. He is wearing a simple gray short-sleeved shirt and a small silver Marine Corps lapel pin. In his right hand, he is holding a small dented metal tin the size of a tobacco can. Wayne stands by the door. He does not sit down. “Mr. Wilcox, this is Sergeant Sullivan.
He served with your son. He has something for you.” Sullivan opens the tin. He takes out a single set of stamped metal dog tags on a black cord. The cord is stiff with old sweat. The tags read Daniel J. Wilcox, USMCO 1647 and a blood type and a religion. The W is misspelled. Daniel had been complaining about the misspelling in his last letter home 2 weeks before he went down.
Sullivan reaches across the small table. He puts the tags into the old man’s open palm. He closes the old man’s fingers around them. He does not say anything. The old man does not say anything. They sit like that for 1 minute, 2, 5. Then Charles Wilcox starts to cry. He has not cried since the Marine Corps officer rang his doorbell in February 1951.
He has not been able to. The tears come slow at first, and then they do not stop. Wayne could have signed the autograph the production manager had asked him to sign that morning and walked back to his trailer. He could have left the old man in the sun by trailer nine where the stuntman had set him up to be left.
But instead, he made three phone calls and put a man on an airplane and gave the old man back his son. Wayne steps quietly out of the trailer. He closes the door behind him. He does not come back inside for 2 hours. He sits on a folding chair in the shade and reads a Louis L’Amour paperback he has read three times before.
When he goes back in, Sullivan has finished telling Charles Wilcox what he came to tell him. The old man has the tags around his own neck now. He has put on Sullivan’s lapel pin, too. He is smiling for the first time in 17 years. On the drive back to the Durango airport that night, Wayne asks Sullivan one question.
He asks what he told the old man. Sullivan is quiet for a long time. Then he says that Daniel Wilcox was the rear guard at the Yalu River crossing in February 1951. The lieutenant pulled three men out of a frozen ditch before the Chinese came over the ridge. He told the three of them to go ahead.
He said he would catch up at the South Bank. He did not catch up. Sullivan was one of the three men. He is the only one of the three still alive in 1968. He has carried the tags in a dented tobacco tin sewn inside the lining of his work jacket for 17 years. He has not been able to mail them. “Some things you give to a man in his hand,” Sullivan says, “or you do not give them at all.
” Wayne does not answer. He keeps both hands on the wheel and lets the desert pass 7 days. Three phone calls. One airplane ticket. 17 years of silence closed in 7 days. Charles Wilcox stays in Durango for two more nights. He has dinner with Wayne and Sullivan at a small cafe on the edge of town. He does not say much. He listens to the two younger men talk about Korea.
He asks Sullivan one question, only once, and Sullivan answers it. The old man does not ask it again. Some answers are enough. Wayne pays Sullivan’s flight back to Hartford. Wayne pays for Charles Wilcox’s bus ticket home to Pennsylvania. He hands the old man an envelope at the bus station the next morning. The envelope has $300 cash in it.
