Letter from Harry Massey to Barbara Massey

Letter No. 98. Thursday - 12th Feb Major J. H. Massey 6, Palestinian Corp, The Buffs, M.E.F. My own darling Barbara - You & I seem to be very unlucky people about letters & things. In spite of the fact that you write to me about three times as often as every body else put together, I always have later letters & AGs from other people, for example, your last AG was dated Jan 12th - & yet today I get one from Dick Blackburn dated Jan 22nd; & your last letter was sent off on Dec 7th - & three days ago, I had one from Vera from Dec. 11th. Vera was just recovering from jaundice, poor dear & had been feeling foul. She is very sweet the way she religiously writes to me everry month - & I felt very guilty only replying with AGs, so I made a big effort yesterday & wrote her a [6?] page letter - writing not too small - & which I hope she will appreciate. She said she was a frightful colour, & looked just like a bottle of curry powder. A large part of my letter was taken up in telling her to persuade you to go & live near her, for the spring & summer anyway, & asking her if she could find some rooms & tell you about them. You have mentioned in two letters that you might go up there, & I [do underlined] think that it would be a good place for you. [Calmarvan ?] is a clean & healthy part of the country, & likely to be free from air raids & such troubles; & the town is big enough to provide some shops & cinemas & will not be so lonely & cut off as Noss Mayo. And you like Vera & Martin & their children & they are very fond of you. I really think it would be a good arrangement, if only you & Vera between you can find a place where you would like to live. Your present abode does sound pretty grim & disorganised, & your room

rather miserable. Saturday - 12th Feb. Darling, dearest darling - today it has happened again, & I have written my second application to be posted home on compassionate grounds. The letter about it came in yesterday, & I am now in a complete spin & can think of nothing else - & I suppose that this is how I shall be until I get an answer, which will probably not be for another 5-6 weeks. Whatever happens, my darling, you must not be kept in suspense this time, wondering what is happening. So - if successful, I shall immediately cable you & your reply will be opened by me at Ben-Azi, if unsuccessful, I will send you an AG to tell you so. If, by any chance, you get this before any other word of any kind, you must cable at once & ask me what has happened - & I will reply at once. Oh - but I am hoping & praying for no really good reason, I am much more hopeful this time. But from what I can gather, my last application at least received serious consideration - so this time, they may just feel browned off with me, but I think that more probably, they will realise that I am very serious about it; & Hughes' certificate will, I feel sure, help matters by providing some outside corroboration. And then, I find that the dates are very auspicious! The letter about it from Palestine H. Q. is dated Feb 5th, which is my birthday; the letter from Area H. Q. forwarding the Palestine letter, is dated Feb 9th, which is your birthday; & I have

replied on Feb 14th - & 5 + 9 = 14! I hope to goodness that the whole thing does not depend on such reckonings - but you must admit that the numbers are rather remarkable. There is now a new Area Commander & I am no longer under Col L - but I served under the present one in Haifa, & I think he knows me well enough to know that I am genuine & truthful - & also that I work hard & am at least deserving on that score. Now, darling one, as you will see I am enclosing the correspondence in this case. 1. my first application. 2. the reply, saying that H. Q. Ninth Army are unable to grant a vacancy. 3. my present, ie second application. 4. copy of Hughes' certificate. If this application of mine is turned down again, I do not see how I can apply again - unless there comes about further grounds, which God forbid. Therefore, if & when you get an AG from me to say that I have failed, I want you, if you will, to go to the War Office, & refusing to take "no" for an answer, find out who is the right mn to see. And when you have found him, put all this before him, explain everything, & tell him that as they will not count our case as serious enough out here, you are coming to him, & asking him to secure my posting home. There [is underlined] such a Department, & there [is underlined] such an officer, if you

can only find him. Once found, you will probably find him very evasive & full of the difficulties of things - & he will probably be quite used to having to face such scenes. But he is paid to do this job, & to look into things, & see that a decision is reached, by the [proper people underlined] - so do not be put off. Will you do it, darling? I cannot see what else I can do, unless I ask for interviews, & try & push myself right up to the very top, & I may do that. But it is difficultif, for example, the Area Commander say "no", & I insist, & I am then unsuccessful, he will not be too pleased with me. And what I have to remember, & you too, is that it is mainly a question of shipping space, & so the vacancies are few, & so it is a matter of competition. And I am not informed about the grounds of the successful applicants, as opposed to my unsuccessful one. I do hope they send me home. I am ready to work hard & seriously & be thoroughly useful, as I am perfectly certain I can be - & I am sure you agree with that. But, at least, I want to be somewhere near to you, to see you from time to time, & to make you happy again & free you from worry; & I am dying to see Maxie - it is dreadful never to have seen him at all, & apparently to have no hope of seeing him for months & months, & maybe years. I only want to be somewhere near you so that I can immediately come if anything ever should go wrong. And from time to

time, have a weekend leave - & every few months, to have a few days leave. Surely, they will be able to see that we have suffered enough - & now we deserve some reward. I shall pray & pray & hope & hope. And apart from that, I must try & stop myself from thinking about it until the reply begins to become due. So, if some of my next few letters say nothing about it at all - you will know that I am avoiding the subject on purpose. But you should have a AG first. Sunday - Feb 15th I resume this letter with a strong desire to go on talking about my application & its chances. But I must not, because really nailed down, I just am overt to the fact that I have made it & we are waiting for the result - & in any case, this will probably all be stale news by the time this letter is in your dear hands. I went up to Jerusalem today with Ben, to have lunch with the [Shah?]. Instead of going directly there, we went by way of a place called Ramallah, which is a Christian Arab small town, on top of the Judean hills, north of Jerusalem. We only stopped there for a few minutes & had a coffee in a funny little place, where the proprietor treated us as honoured guests & refused to take any money. They are like that, the Arabs - whereas I have never had anything like that from the Jews, except when I have been to a Kibutz for a meal & look sound with Ben. But I cannot stop now to discuss the Jewish-Arab question - it is so complicated and I am pretty muddled about it, & of course I cannot help being rather biased. In Jerusalem, I first of all went to a shop to