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Letter No 96 Sunday 1 Feb 42 Major J. H. Massey 6 Palestinian Corp, The Buffs M.E.F. My dearest darling - You are very sweet in your letters, to be sorry for me & to sympathise with my fate, & to admit that my lot must be worse than yours, & that I must be more lonely & miserable than you are. And I really must agree. Before Maxie was born, your condition was incomparably worse than mine was or could ever be. Never, as long as I live, shall I forget those eight months through which you had to go - & I do not suppose you ever will either. But now, you have our Maxie, & relations & your friends. And really I have nothing, darling - completely nothing. God knows how much longer I can stick it, or how much longer I shall be expected to stick it. I feel like screaming, now, this very minute, & banging my fists & even my head, on the wall. But I must be calm & realise that that would not help at all. I must give you a picture of how things are - & then I will wait 3 months, at the very least, to get your sympathy in return - isn't it really [awful underlined], darling? Before I can really tell you about things - I must first of all, tell you about my officer position, which has undergone quite a considerable change during the last week. With the departure of Salaman & Headley, my establishment of officers becomes 7 instead of 8 - the British subaltern not being replaced. I was therefore due one more subaltern & this I duly received from another corp. But they did me rather a dirty one by sending an attached officer, he having been passed to aanother corp which is as yet only half formed. His name is Levoutin, & he is 21 years of age & knows nothing at all. He is rather podgy & unathletic & bespeckled - but seems rather a pleasant young man, & I think he will be alright. The other thing is that I have got rid
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of Flohr. He was too bloody hopeless & useless for me to stand any longer, so I arranged for him to be posted to another corp, where he will get the benefit of the doubt of another opinion; he will be reported on, on March 15th & if the report is adverse, he will be kicked out, wretched man - he should never have been made an officer. The one snag about this transaction has been that it gave the other Corp an idea, & I have also received an officer, under the same conditions. He arrived on Friday & his name is Carsenty, & up to now, he does not make a good impression. Tuesday Feb 3rd I was unable to continue on Sunday as I felt I was going crackers - so I called Ben into my room, & we had a couple of drinks, then listened to the news at 11-45, & then I got into my creaking & very loud camp bed & read "Childhood, Boyhood & Youth" for half an hour. I am enjoying it very much darling, but have not had time to make very much progress yet, & am still in his childhood. I shall get along more quickly now, as I have started the habit of reading in bed for half an hour or so every night, before I turn off my lamp & go to sleep. And last night I went to the camp cinema, to see "Wife versus Secretary", which you & I saw together years ago. The main point of my going was to see Jean Harlowe again, & she was so darned good, & now that she will not be making any more films, it seems a pity to miss her. I am feeling very much more cheerful tonight, thank goodness, & therefore not in quite such a mood, to present all my troubles to you. It is largely my own fault in a way, because I am always longing for more time to write to you, & to read, & to be more dutiful than I am in writing to other people at home. And now that I am cast so
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very much on my own, & go into mess later & leave earlier. Therefore, I should feel that my wishes are being granted. But it is the mood in which I emerge from the Mess which gets me down. Two of them I like - Ben I have always liked , & now I like Kalk too; Levoulin is not too bad, but is very young & funny. But Arkin is such a strong little bastard - Dickman is just a bloody fool, & is qualifying rapidly for being flung out - & Carsenty is a suave idle piece of work. And their table manners! I had hints passed to them through the medium of Ben, but to little purpose - so I just had them all marched in & told them myself. Soup at the end of their spoons, & knives & forks lying wide open. I could perhaps become used to, & even eating jam tart with a knife & fork; but when they eat rice pudding or fruit salad with a knife & fork, I just cannot bear it a moment longer. And then they have started to talk Hebrew in the Mess when I am not there - but I can hear it from my room next door; so when I enter, they have to stop, & when I leave they can begin again. I gave broad hints, to no avail, that I did not like it - And so Ben had a word with them & they all understood, except Arkin, who chose to be awkward. So he had to be marched in, & had the impertinence to say that if it was an order, [ of course underlined] he would obey. And I had to tell him that it was not an order at all, but that if he could not understand that it was a matter of simple good manners, he must understand that it was
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my wish, which is as good as an order as far as he is concerned. The little rat, he is not a good Jew at all, but is furiously jealous of Ben being second 1/c, & he was playing a game in order to be able to say that Ben is anti-Jewish. But I must not give you a wrong impression - even though the officers are pretty bloody, I am feeling very pleased with the Corp at the moment. They are going along v. well & are really v. good in their work. About the enclosed pattern of material - 3 1/2 metres of this are coming along in my next parcel, which should arrive about May. I told you in an AG that I wanted to get some for you & for Maxie too, & your account of the 12 coupons for 6 yds of velveteen made me go to it. I have not been able to find anything for Maxie yet, but I will do. And I do hope you like this stuff - it is supposed to be for a dress, & I was told that in getting 3 1/2 yds, it would be enought to make either a one piece or a two piece affair. It is all wool - & I think you like grey & I certainly like you in grey. I remember so well, your grey suit, which went on for years. You looked lovely & pretty & very attractive in it in September 1934, & you were looking just as adorable & gorgeous & lovely in it in September 1940. I think it is a pretty shade of grey, don't you? And other colours, blue & brown especially, go so well with it. The drawings by Rodin, about which I told you in an AG are also in this parcel. They are all of them
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about naked ladies, & some of them are really pretty nude. I think it would be rather fun if you were to make some nude drawings of me darling - my contribution would be to see if I could remain nude until you had finished the drawing! Nude is really the wrong word, but in any case - if I didn't, I should be very quickly - or else you would not finish the drawing. It is awfully difficult to explain, darling, but I picture our life together, & relationship, as being very different, when we come together again. Having come through this ghastly parting, we shall certainly have more confidence in each other than ever we had before. And that is really quite an important thing - for me to have complete confidence in you, & also the confidence that you have absolute confidence in me. And darling, believe me you know, that I always loved & adored & admired you, & realised your wonderful character, & spirit & intelligence - but I realise that now more than ever before. Partly because I have had so much time to think about you & also because of your letters. Letters must always be a more deliberate form of communication than conversation. And as I have told you before, sweetheart - there is nobody in this whole wide world who could equal your letters to me. They reveal you as perfect, my darling. Even when you are sad & unhappy & when you say you are dull & dreary, - I can feel every word & sentence which you write, & I always read them again & again. And there is myself - I hope to goodness I am not
