not a ticket for an air journey home. I am writing these particular words at midnight 13.3.44 – I could have breakfast with you on the 14th, if only one or two people would co-operate. It might be a little late, but what matter. Here am I, wondering when I last saw you and what you look like. I have an idea, I wish I could confirm by personal investigation. Do you still smoke? – a bad habit.
Expectant, willing, and compliant as you are, I seem to have discovered you anew. I find you very warm and appetising. I rejoice at our intimacy for the present. I simply wallow in your friendly sentiments which I feel as keenly as if a couple of seas and a continent did not separate us. You have smashed my perimeter defences, I am all of a hub-bub, and as I write my cheeks are red and I am hot. When I finish one letter to you, I want to start again on another, as today. I hope that I shall often have something to comment on, rather than initiate my own discussions. I know this strange unity of expression and understanding cannot last, for I feel just as though I was sitting at your feet. This is bound to peter out sooner or later. You say ‘here’s to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’
You are a terrific love-maker by letter. I can but wonder what you are like at it in the soft, warm, yielding, panting flesh. Please pardon the rub-out, and the re-writing hereabouts. Truth is that with the morning I became timid and decided on deletion. Let me go back a few lines, say that I can but wonder, and warmly do.
I must avoid writing one whole letter slobbering, however pleasant it is for both of us, I must make a pretence of telling you all about our camp. ‘Jeannie’, for example, has had seven pups, two of which have been drowned in order to give her a better chance. She had them on Friday, and on Monday she was racing about after her bête noire – desert rats. The other mother, the sow, has hardly energy to move. At least eight are expected shortly. Our picture on Saturday (luckily I was on duty) was as childish as the previous two I have described earlier. Stars Over Texas. Stage Coach holdups, and pistol duels. We are getting more than disgusted.
Having interposed that sentence I can return to our new thrilling relationship, to be fully enjoyed while it lasts, and unlamented when it is done. I am ‘all for you, dear’ and the prospect of soaking in you, luxuriously for a while, of touching you where you will let me, from here, is absorbingly, naturally, before us.
Chris
15 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
I suppose that Spring out here has the same effect on a young man’s fancy as it is popularly supposed to do at home, because I sent you a LC on the 13th, an a.m. Letter on the 14th, and here again, for the third day running, I am putting pen to paper to relieve my rushing thoughts, which are all about and of you. Unfortunately we only get one green envelope and one LC a week, but the latter is censored in the unit and therefore not suitable for my purpose. We only get one of this LC type monthly, and here I am spending two months’ supply in three days. What does your Father think of your several letters, and do tell me that it is still you I am writing to, and not you, plus Iris, plus Cliffie, plus –?
For goodness sake disregard everything I have said that sounds the least endearing. This is a fever that I have which makes me hot and dispossesses my mental faculties whenever I think of you, which is more and more often. It is irrational, illogical, nonsensical. I am hopelessly lost in contemplation of YOU – and I last saw you – when? Yet I have heard from you – applauding, approving, invigorating. I feel a King. I think I made a mistake about you years ago and I rush to make amends – yet I cannot rush physically to you though I positively ooze appreciative emotions and impulses.
Tonight I have to speak for fifteen minutes in that ‘Woman’s Place is the Home’ Debate. I should be deciding what I am to say, and how. But here I am, improvidently assuring you of my poor surgings. In a month or two, I may revert to brusque bonhomie. For the present I am entirely ‘gone’ at the thought of you being in the same world. You suggest in your LC that men are less emotional than women. I, at least, am as emotional as you. I revel in your sentiments, I return them in full. Whatever the reason, for whatever the period, at this moment, you have me. To be sensible, I should withhold all this, to avoid your inevitable later disappointment. But I simply cannot.
I was quite OK before I got your first letter. I was rational, objective. But now that you have my ear – I must give you my heart as well! No doubt it is wrong, certainly it is indiscreet, to blurt out such things when the future laughs that only present conditions make me like this. But I am like this. I am always consulting my diary to see how soon you will get my letters, wondering how soon I will get yours. I feel that you are doing exactly the same, and share my upset. I can’t do anything without wanting to put my hand out to you, to touch you. I know you would encourage me. I find you wonderful, you delight me and thrill me and engross me. But as I said earlier, disregard these purely Spring emotions. I might mean it very much today, but it is tomorrow that matters in such affairs, and I am certain to revoke a dozen times in the long tomorrow. This is a real sane note to end on, as I sit here, hot-faced and desirous, ready for you as you are ready for me.
I am but a miserable sinner!
Chris
19 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
Here again to greet you, four letters in four days – and really wanting to write four each day. Stupid and silly, but since my thoughts are around you and I am pulsating still, I am going to follow Oscar Wilde’s advice ‘The only way to resist temptation is to succumb to it’. Really, you should reply to me that I am an ass, and that you have been kind enough to burn my words before I want to eat them. But I am sure that you won’t, and that almost for certain you are down with the same ailment, wanting me the same as I want you.
I want to say I’m sorry for Abbey Wood and the opportunity I missed. I want you to say you’re sorry I’m miles and time away from you, that you fully welcome me, and glory in my present affected state. I warn you of the transient nature of my emotions. I cannot say I love you, because tomorrow I shall be sorry for doing so.
Do not tell me anything you do not feel. And of what you feel, please tell me everything. Discard dignity and discretion and live knowingly. Tell me what you think, in your letter that is not liable to be censored like this one. You delight and thrill and excite me. I want to touch you, to feel you, to possess you.
Now to the impersonal part: The Debate took place OK. Everyone was there, forty in all. The proposer was a decent chap, a Scottish signalman. His seconder was a Major, mine was a Lieutenant, jolly good chap, also a Scot. I had heard that my opponent was a good speaker, and I had wondered if I would fail to shine. I need have had no doubts. He had written his speech word for word and read it from the paper, which he held in his hand. I’ve a bad memory, and at present, anyhow, I am more concerned with the possibilities of you. After the almost grim speech of my opponent, I just got up and sparkled. I made them laugh when I wanted them to. I just had them in my hand. I had to stop at fifteen minutes, but I could have gone on for fifty. Imagine how cockahoop I was – I was far and away the best speaker there. After all this – and we were overwhelmingly argumentatively superior – the vote ended 35 for 5 against. In other words, man’s deep prejudice was undisturbed by argument.
This afternoon I visited our hospital, some fifteen miles off. At an exchange a couple of hundred miles away there was a chap with a very high-pitched voice, just like a nagging wife; I had not heard him for a couple of days, and on enquiring his whereabouts was told he had collided with a grenade. So I thought I would pay him a visit and cheer him up. He was very lucky, and only got badly sprinkled
