Letter from Harry Massey to Barbara Massey

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Letter written by Harry Massey from the No. 6 Palestine company at the Bluffs to Barbara Massey.

This is a scanned version of the original image in Special Collections and Archives at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt.



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Letter No. 95. Tuesday. Jan 27th

Major J.H. Massey 6 Palestinian Coy. The Buffs M.E.F.

My sweetest darling.

It is a wonderful thing, & very fortunate too, that you love me & are interested in all that I do, & that without fear of [boring ?] you, I may write about the past & the future. Because the present is so dull & uninteresting, I am so glum. My last letter, in reply to yours on the same theme, was mostly about my love & faithfulness to you. I hope you did not remark that I said nothing at all about your love & faithfulness to me. But, sweetheart, you have told me to believe you & believe in you - & I do. I cannot bear to think about you not loving me - far less to write about it - & being unfaithful to me. And I cannot think for a moment that you would be unfaithful to me unless you were also to stop loving me - in which case it would hardly be unfaithfulness. And you always, or nearly always, tell me that you love me & you would never say such a thing unless you meant it. So, darling dearest, let me talk no more about that awful subject & only talk about love. I am more lovesick about you than in love with you just now. The news has been depressing the last few days. I nearly wept when the news came through that we were being heavily counter attacked in Lybia & more or less coming back again. Perhaps & I hope to God it is so, we shall contain this counter attack & then carry on again & finish off the Nazis & the [Saps?] in N. Africa. But if not, I cannot help thinking, of course, about how the end is

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2/ going to be so much longer delayed again. And then again the Far East is so grim. In time we in the U.S.A. + China + the Dutch will smash Japan to pieces. But if only this had not happened just consider how we could have concentrated on Germany, how all our & America's supplies would have come to the U.K. + M.E. + Russia. Why couldn't those dirty little yellow bastards see that for them to go to war was useless + hopeless. All they have done is prolong the war + cause everybody to lose more lives + property + cook their own eventual goose. And Churchill has spoken in the H of C today- he seems to have been magnificent, but terribly serious + realistic, + looking forward into 1943 + onwards. I feel like you, darling, a cold lump in my stomach when people like him talk like this. I just cannot see myself away from you for more than another year - it's impossible + I feel as though I have borne enough already, + I am quite sure you feel the same. Oh God, darling Barbara, what have we done to deserve all this misery? If only Lisa were alive + you had our darling & Maxie too- I could feel miserable + miss you to bursting point, but I could still feel that we had so much to be happy + thankful about + so put up with things. But this is prolonged misery & torture, & it comes on top of the biggest blow which you & I, together, possibly could have been called upon to suffer. But you know all this as well as I do, & it does not help you for me to write in this way - I will try to be more cheerful & interesting.

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3/ I did have an interesting evening on Sunday I was invited + Ben came too - by Burstein, to dinner in Tel Aviv + then to the Habima Theatre. You would have liked this. They are the national Dramatic Society of Palestine (the capitals seem misplaced, being my description & not the official title) of Palestine, being a small country. Habimah is the Hebrew word for stage, the company started in Moscow. There they had considerable troubles on account of their Zionism & also their Hebrew language. But they survived those troubles because they had the ardent support of Stanislavsky, who was a friend of Lenin's. (Did he write about them in his book, which you read? In 1928, the company came to Palestine - not because of their troubles, but because of their Zionism. On Sunday, they did "Twelfth Night", which was a little unlucky for me, because apart from not being able to understand a word, I have never seen "Twelfth Night" in English, & am not exactly a Shakespeare expert. (Though I really should be, after your tour which I followed round, but I was so engrossed in you, darling.) Burstein said that they made a Russian play of itthe costumes were very good, the scenery rather deftly done with a small revolving stage in the middle of the main stage, & which the players worked themselves. And the acting was enormously jolly, full blooded, & they certainly enjoyed it. And the audience was very enthusiastic. One man, who took the part of Fabian, the servant of Olivia - has been in a concert party for the men here in the Corp. He took off the different types of

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Jews in Palestine - a Russian, a Yeke, a German, a Yemenite, & an American. It was frightfully good, for I did not understand a word of Hebrew, again, but I could tell exactly what he was doing. The theatre was small & rather shabby - & reminded me what a really good little theatre the Civic at Bradford is, that place was really quite important to us, wasn't it? And I expect it will be again when we return. Thursday Jan 29th After my long letter about the Gergel suicide case & about the Corp, I expect you will be wondering how things are. I'm pleased to be able to reassure you that everything is pretty well, (for there is no need at all for you to picture me as a lowly Britisher amongst a pack of unruly & bitter foreigners. I'm afraid that my letter painted an unduly gloomy picture from some points of view.) The process by which I have arrived into a better frame of mind is quite odd & peculiar - & have been helped by good fortune. The latter, because, at the time I had two platoons out on detachment, which meant that the Corp being split up, there was a great deal of misinformed talk & speculation, which was difficult to know about & to control & guide. Fortunately, those detachments were relieved two weeks ago, & so I had the whole Corp together again, & so have been able to go to work on them & influence them. The odd & peculiar part is that behind the scenes there has been a tremendous amount of talk going on from the men of the Corp when on weekend leave, to the Jewish Agency & the Jewish Soldiers Welfare Committee, & most of which has been repainted back to me. It is difficult to imagine this, & there is certainly no possible

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British parrelled counterpart. And in addition to this, the average intelligence of the Jewish soldier is so incomparably higher; by which I do not mean that man for man, the Jew is more intelligent than the Englishman, but in those units you just happen to have a very much better educated class of man. Anyway, the gest of all the talk seems to have crystallised into the conclusions that I am a hard Major, but that I am fair, & that I like the Jews. (That I am the only Major in all the Corps who is a "gentleman" (!)) And in addition, I am the only one who is making a serious effort to train them & make them into soldiers, then work into one fit to fight - & so perhaps, the hardness & the way they are driven is in a good cause. (Also, it seems, I get credit for my private life! And all the men know that I spend all my spare time in writing to you, reading your letters, & when I am not doing either of these things, the far away look in my eye indicates that I am thinking of you - & the Jews, being home loving as a race, & monogamistic, appreciate this in others.) Ben's appointment as second 1/c has also helped because even though they classed him with me as hard & unsympathetic, & blamed him for supporting me - their inferiority complexes & introspective natures are qualified by this - they also appreciate that I am the one who has brought it about. Also, their esprit de corps has begun to work, as we are the first Corp to have a Jewish i/c, & have therefore taken a march on the Corps senior to ourselves. The only actual pandering step which I have taken is to increase their leave a bit. Apart from that I

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