and an ENSA* show, ‘Music Makers’, who rendered popular classics, and gave a thoroughly good evening, though the audience thinned out when ‘legs’ did not show. We get a Film Show every Saturday; whatever the weather, it is held in the open air, the audience (stalls) sitting on petrol tins, while those in the gallery sit on top of the vehicles, many of which come several miles for what is usually the only event of the week. I have sat in the pouring rain with a groundsheet over me. I have sat with a gale bowling me over literally while Barbara Stanwyck (in The Great Man’s Lady – she was a brunette) bowled me over figuratively. We take our fun seriously, and when we can get it, though I always think of the Open Air Theatre at Regent’s Park, seeing Midsummer Night’s Dream on a brilliantly lit sward, with a pre-war searchlight dancing in the sky above us.
I did not go to the commercial cinemas in Cairo – I was a bit horrified by the prospect of being solicited as I sat in the 15 piastre seats (as not infrequently happens, I am told).
George Formby has done a lot of talking since his trip here, but not a word (publicly) about losing ten bottles of beer from the back of his charabanc. Some chaps I was with at the time did the pinching and subsequent drinking, so I know!
Have just been on my first ‘charge’ (crime), having been caught, with eight others including my brother, for dirty rifles. This is usually a serious offence, and is very easily framed. We were lucky and got ‘admonished’, which is like a ‘minor offence’ in the PO and is wiped out after three months. Being ‘tried’ was just like a Court of Law, without the wigs. I have been very fortunate in my Army misdemeanours which have been ingenious rather than numerous.
Our OC is not a bad chap as such, but is very ‘La-de-dah’; he has a race-stick and the other day he was seated on it watching a football match when – it broke. Our side all wanted to stop the match and laugh.
Consider my earlier comments upon ‘rebounds’, but let me have you full and frank and enjoyable. Keep away from an anatomical examination of me. Tell me what you think. I’ll revert to blustery Barkerisms at your request.
Best wishes, Friend (The Lord Forgive Me),
Chris.
27 February 1944
Dear Bessie,
Letters take such a long time, and I am so keen on remaining in good touch with you that I have decided to write you fairly regularly, irrespective of the replies received, until such time as I detect that you are disinterested, or it appears that our present happy association is not so happy.
So on to our pigs – yesterday came the day for the male (boar) to be sent away for slaughter. Half a dozen of us were detailed to hold various parts of the massive, dirty, unfortunate creature, while the man who knows all about pigs got a bucket firmly wedged over the poor thing’s head and snout. I was originally deputed to take hold of the right ear, but in the opening melee found myself grasping the right leg, which I held on to firmly as it lumbered out of the sty, and heaved on heavily as, somehow, despite a terrific struggle and the most heartrending screams, we got it on the lorry, which was to be its hearse. In the afternoon it met its man-determined fate, and this morning as I came away from dinner, I saw its tongue, its heart, liver and a leg, hanging from the cookhouse roof. I had my doubts about eating it in the days when it was half the eighteen stone it weighed at death. But now I have none. I certainly can’t help eat the poor old bloke. The sow lives on, she has a large and sore looking undercarriage, and will be a Mother in three weeks. I suppose we shall eat her progeny in due course.
I recently made application for ‘The Africa Star,’ which most chaps here are wearing. I have first heard that I am to get it. When you know that I arrived out on April 16th and the hostilities ceased May 12th, you can see how very easily medals are gained. It is the same very often with awards supposedly for gallantry.
My Dad, a thorough going old Imperialist, will be delighted that he can talk about two sons with the medal, and mentally they will be dangling with his – EIGHT altogether, though his nearest point to danger was really the Siege of Ladysmith (in a war maybe you would have condemned?). Since the war, my Dad has had medal ribbons fitted on most of his jackets and waistcoats, and goes shopping with them all a’showing! My Mother comes in bemoaning the fact that there is no suet to be had. Dad comes in with a valuable half-a-pound he extracted from a medal-conscious shopkeeper. I can tell you plenty about my Dad, who has many faults and the one redeeming virtue that he is all for his family, right or wrong.
I have just seen a Penguin, Living in Cities, very attractively setting forth some principles of post-war building. I always think how well off we suburban dwellers are compared with the people who live in places like Roseberry Avenue or Bethnal Green Road, and die there, too, quite happily since they never knew what they missed.
I saw a suggestion for a new house to have a built-in bookcase, or place for it, and thought this a rather good idea. I have often sighed for some shabby volume in the short time I have been away from home. I carry with me now only an Atlas, a dictionary, Thoreau’s Walden (ever glanced at it – a philosophy), Selected Passages from R.L. Stevenson, and The Shropshire Lad, by Housman.
Do you remember when we did some electioneering? Was it at Putney? I would have enjoyed being at Acton lately, as I read in the local Gazette (sent to the other chap in our tent) that one of the candidates (later withdrew) was walking around with a steel helmet bearing slogans on it, and a big notice urgently advising electors to buy potatoes and store them under the bed. Did you vote in 1935 (I did) and with what result? Maybe we can get together for a bit of postwar canvassing?
Cheerio, friend.
Chris.
6 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
I hope I am not guilty of indecent haste if I commence another letter only a week after my last. I cannot claim that anything special has happened (in fact, thank Goodness it hasn’t) but I am brimming over with many things to tell you, my confidante, and it will be a long (and I hope a pleasurable for both of us) time before I have really unloaded my cargo of news, ideas, tales, things that have occurred since I left the country on February 24th last year, and also some of the things that occurred before then.
I have just come away from the pictures, the mobile van, screen at the bottom of a slope and projector at the top, with the audience seated in the dip. Not bad tonight; two news reels only six months old and Girl Trouble, Don Ameche and Joan Bennett, fair entertainment as films go, quite a little smart talk which I rather enjoy.
This afternoon I was just going off to sleep when my Sergeant woke me and (despite my protests that I was on night duty tonight) told me I must report at 3 o’clock for the ABCA (Army Bureau of Current Affairs) Spelling Bee. I went along there and suggested it be abandoned in favour of a discussion on ‘strikes in wartime’, and we did discuss strikes, fairly interestingly. The strange thing about most of these affairs is that so very few people can open their mouths to any effect in public. I am always congratulated on my contribution and looked at with greater respect afterwards by my companions – this ‘Gift of the Gab’ as it is called, is a dangerous thing for the welfare of the people. I am very suspicious of good talkers, very attentive to the stutterer.
From the pictures, I had intended going straight to the other farce out here, The Egyptian Mail,
