Excuse my occasional failure to start the letter off properly. Oh for a place where I can write you fully and privately.
You ask me about the chaps who have been abroad, whether they are depressed as much as a newspaper article says. My comments on this if in full would require to be censored. I have no desire to talk of âblooming old newspapersâ as though they were benevolent Uncles. Apart from Reynolds and a rare exception elsewhere, they are owned by people who would chain my body and cloud my mind for ever. The regulations do not permit denunciations, so how can I say much? âI want to go homeâis everyoneâs chorus out here, although the reasons are not always the same. YOU are my main one.
I love you.
Chris
* The âletter cardsâ were folded in a particular way so as to contain both a public area visible to all and a private internal space. Chris and Bessieâs intimate exchanges were necessarily contained within the latter.
* A khamsin is a hot, dry, sandy wind.
4
Nuts
28 September 1944
Dearest,
In the last six months (and it is not much more than that since we turned to each other in gladness and relief, for comfort and security), we have seen much of what is in the otherâs mind. I see you more clearly. I love you more dearly. From having a hazy idea, I have a clearer outline. I have learnt to respect you, I think a little more, because, although there are things to be straightened, there is so much evidence of our mental suitability, and that, whether it is my mind or not that is the clearer, we are nearer each other than we thought. I do not want to think of you as a fool, and I have had no reason to do so during this period. My every glance at your letters tells me of your intelligence. I want you to believe that. I want you to know that I think it. I want to tell you that I am proud of you.
You know that, before I left the desert, I had to destroy most of your letters. I kept a very few, I felt that I must because youhad said so much to me in them. I kept your surface mail of the 1st January â âI plonked up the blackout, slightly lopsidedly and with hat over one earâ â âI am wallowing ⦠in the past, and having a wonderful timeâ. You asked me what I had that âother blokes hadnât gotâ. I knew I had nothing, but I knew that you had always thought I had. I canât understand why my reply took 12 days to write, but it did. Yet I really think that 7th February, the day I got your letter, was the day I started wanting you, since when I have grown to want you much more. Remember a letter where you said you were alive between the legs, that you were damp, that I had made you so? I kept that. Because I glory in your dampness, because you make me damp. Because I am interested in your body and between your legs. Remember writing of âall guards downâ, of being attuned to me, of sharing my upsets, of your lower regions aching with desire for me? I kept that.
I stare at your photographs: I donât know how I got on without them. But the day will come, the years will go by, and I shall be at your side, to do your will.
I love you.
Chris.
1 October 1944
My Dearest Elizabeth,
It has been raining hard for nearly twenty-four hours, and things are pretty damp around here. This does not affect me very much at present (my main concern is the dampness of the latrine seat!) as we are in a big house and the rain does not get in, but of course most of us react to weather very quickly, and it is miserable to have leaden skies where once was blue, and to see everyone wet and miserable and bedraggled. I didnât have any mail yesterday from you (though three from home with the good old newsy items about my brotherâs romance, the wireless breaking down, and so on) and none came for anyone today, so my one hope of cheering up through the general depression has gone. I am having a very easy time just lately and doing
You ask me about the chaps who have been abroad, whether they are depressed as much as a newspaper article says. My comments on this if in full would require to be censored. I have no desire to talk of âblooming old newspapersâ as though they were benevolent Uncles. Apart from Reynolds and a rare exception elsewhere, they are owned by people who would chain my body and cloud my mind for ever. The regulations do not permit denunciations, so how can I say much? âI want to go homeâis everyoneâs chorus out here, although the reasons are not always the same. YOU are my main one.
I love you.
Chris
* The âletter cardsâ were folded in a particular way so as to contain both a public area visible to all and a private internal space. Chris and Bessieâs intimate exchanges were necessarily contained within the latter.
* A khamsin is a hot, dry, sandy wind.
4
Nuts
28 September 1944
Dearest,
In the last six months (and it is not much more than that since we turned to each other in gladness and relief, for comfort and security), we have seen much of what is in the otherâs mind. I see you more clearly. I love you more dearly. From having a hazy idea, I have a clearer outline. I have learnt to respect you, I think a little more, because, although there are things to be straightened, there is so much evidence of our mental suitability, and that, whether it is my mind or not that is the clearer, we are nearer each other than we thought. I do not want to think of you as a fool, and I have had no reason to do so during this period. My every glance at your letters tells me of your intelligence. I want you to believe that. I want you to know that I think it. I want to tell you that I am proud of you.
You know that, before I left the desert, I had to destroy most of your letters. I kept a very few, I felt that I must because youhad said so much to me in them. I kept your surface mail of the 1st January â âI plonked up the blackout, slightly lopsidedly and with hat over one earâ â âI am wallowing ⦠in the past, and having a wonderful timeâ. You asked me what I had that âother blokes hadnât gotâ. I knew I had nothing, but I knew that you had always thought I had. I canât understand why my reply took 12 days to write, but it did. Yet I really think that 7th February, the day I got your letter, was the day I started wanting you, since when I have grown to want you much more. Remember a letter where you said you were alive between the legs, that you were damp, that I had made you so? I kept that. Because I glory in your dampness, because you make me damp. Because I am interested in your body and between your legs. Remember writing of âall guards downâ, of being attuned to me, of sharing my upsets, of your lower regions aching with desire for me? I kept that.
I stare at your photographs: I donât know how I got on without them. But the day will come, the years will go by, and I shall be at your side, to do your will.
I love you.
Chris.
1 October 1944
My Dearest Elizabeth,
It has been raining hard for nearly twenty-four hours, and things are pretty damp around here. This does not affect me very much at present (my main concern is the dampness of the latrine seat!) as we are in a big house and the rain does not get in, but of course most of us react to weather very quickly, and it is miserable to have leaden skies where once was blue, and to see everyone wet and miserable and bedraggled. I didnât have any mail yesterday from you (though three from home with the good old newsy items about my brotherâs romance, the wireless breaking down, and so on) and none came for anyone today, so my one hope of cheering up through the general depression has gone. I am having a very easy time just lately and doing
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