John Wayne's Lieutenant Rusty Ryan insists that the P-T boats, equipped with guns and torpedo tubes, could slip into the Japanese harbors. His temperament stands in sharp opposition to Lieutenant John Brickley (Robet Montgomery), a calm, rational, and efficient commander. Wayne gets increasingly frustrated: the disbelief in the boats' potential and the lack of action bore him to death.
Challenged by Brickley, "What are you aiming at, building a reputation, or playing for the team" Wayne replies, "for years, I've been taking your fatherly advice and it's never been very good. From now on, I'm a one-man band." He become even more frustrated upon learning that the boats are assigned to messenger duty, claiming he is "bored to death running messages." Later, when the boats are assigned to destroy a Japanese cruiser, he is eager to go out, but instead is rushed to the hospital for treatment of an infected arm. He arrives at the hospital screaming and when the nurse suggests, to calm him down, that they go dancing, he yells, "Listen, sister, I don't dance-and I can't take the time out now to learn. All I want is to get out of here."
Wayne states firmly, "a service man is supposed to have a funeral-that's a tribute to the way he's spent his life. Escort, firing squad, wrapped in the flag he served under and died for." Wayne even recites poetry--awkwardly--in honor of one of the casualties who "was always quotin' verse."
After his boat had been sunk, Wayne is ordered to fly back to Washington to organize new P-T Boat squadrons, but he loathes leaving. He tries to get off the plane, offering his place to another officer. When the latter asks him to call his wife, Wayne explodes, "Phone her. I got business here and you got business back in the States." All he wants is to be at the battle zone. But once again, it is Brickley who brings him into line, "Rusty, who're you working for Yourself"
Wayne's demand for revisions was based on strong instincts as to the elements that best suited him. He asked Ford, for example, to make changes in The Were Expendable, because he did not like the humiliatiion involved in the evacuation scene from Bataan. Thus, a new scene, in which he was willing to disobey orders and sneak off to a jungle guerrilla, until a superior officer orders him back aboard, was added. By contrast, he liked the scene in which he loathes leaving the battlefront, "I got business here," because it was congruent with the independent and rebellious streak in his screen persona.
