Letters from World War II : J.H. Massey

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common sense, there would have been no Court Martial at all.

Wednesday Aug. 24th. I did not finish after all yesterday - today came your 50th letter & in the afternoon for a change - & so your nos. 48 & 49 are missing & will come later. Isn't it annoying? I always have the feeling, when I am hurrying up to find a letter, that my haste is quite powerless & it doesn't really matter whether I post it this week or next. The only thing that matters is that I should write enough. But then there must be regularity at one end in order to avoid redoubling the irregularity at the other end. And so I push on - & think that perhaps I might miss a boat or a plane. I also had a letter from Judy, posted on the same date, July 18th. She said it was a relief to her to know that Max was safely born & you alright - & so she knew how I must have felt. Judy is really very sweet, fond of you & me. Her news wasn't too interesting & was written in that appalling hand of hers, even the address. The war does not seem to be having much effect on them. Parsh & Eilleen are now in N. Ireland, & very happy. Judy says! My God, & I should think so too - the lucky devils. Why ever did I go on the reserve in 1939.

Your letter enclosed the photograph of Lisa's gravestone. It is beautiful, my darling, & to me seems very very good. I can well believe that you were pleased with it - & it is almost unbelievable to think that it is your first attempt at relief carving. It has wonderful feeling & spirit, & though it made me cry at first, it gives to me a deep feeling & sensation of contentment. The child has the attitude & look of Lisa, the angel gives me a deep impression of care & tenderness & love - & she looks capable & competent of looking after & caring for or guiding the child to safety. It is wonderful work.

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& I am so pleased that you have done it. I always wanted you to, as you know - & you wanted to do it, but could not bring yourself to begin. I feel now that with this stone which you have done with your own hands & heart - we have now done all we can do for our darlings little body left forever here on earth. And it gives such a perfect & sincere idea of what we hope & pray exists. & that she has been guided into safety & happiness & will be looked after there as well & as lovingly as we keep her in our minds & heart.

I think it is perfect, my dearest & makes me understand art & the feelings behind it, more than anything else has done before. As you said in an earlier letter Lisa would have been wonderful with Max - she would have been thrilled to the very core of her little being - & would also have been pricelessly bossy & methodical in looking after him. And I suppose she would have been giving her own dolls enormous feeds from her own little bas. The sweetheartwhat tremendous happiness it would be for everybody.

You said in your letter that Peter must make a big difference to my life - he most certainly does & I hardly know what I should have done without him. I spend many evenings alone in my room, & although he sleeps, the very presence of a live being has a great affect & during the day, although he spends a great deal of time roaming round barracks, he always seems to manage to be on hand when I go out or set off on a tour of barracks myself. He is a very friendly little chap, but never leaves anyone in doubt that he belongs to me - he has a very pleasant way of coming along, giving me a nod, often just brushing his nose against my knee or hand & then flopping down on the floor & watching for my next move. And he

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has very definite dislikes. All people in uniform are alright to him; all civilians are objects of suspicion & every Arab makes him wild - I don't know why, but he can spot them a mile away, barks his head off. His elbows & knees & joints are one mass of bruises or scabscaused by going round corners too fast chasing cats - & also by hurling himself headlong at Alsations & Mastiffs, & bouncing back off them onto the hard ground. He is no respecter of big dogs & will get into awful trouble one of these days. Does this sound like my writing about Simon? Oh & I have forgotten to tell you one of the funniest things of the war. Peter spends much of the day popping in & out of my office to see if I am there. So on the day of the General Court Martial, I gave [Choinatzki?] strict instructions to keep Peter in hand. But in the afternoon he got away - & as the door was opened to let out a witness, my little friend rushed in, looked furiously round for me, went up to the bench & carefully smelt the legs of one Brigadier, four Majors, glanced round at everybody else occupying his master's office, turned round & gave the Court a long dirty & suspicious look, & marched out. It must have been too funny & I wish I had seen him coming naught for the [pomp?] & dignity of a G.C.M.

I'm afraid this question of friends is a hopeless case. I was thinking this evening that I would like to show the photo of Lisa's gravestone to someone. And I found that Beu is the only one to whom I would dream of showing it - he is away on detachment for a

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I am quite friendly with most of the others, particularly Jim Headley - but that is very far from having a friend among them. Salaman, my new 2 i/c is doing pretty well, - I get on very well with him - but his intellect is extremely limited. & if the conversation goes away from Coy affairs, it is to hear rather boring accounts of his times as a Corporal in the Black Watch, & some party, or some girl he knew. And of course this C.O. & major business does not help. The few people I know outside, whom I like, & who approximate into my exalted rank, all spend far more money than I would do or want to - & so I skip out of all their invitations & suggestions. It does not worry me at all darling, really & truly - except that I would like someone to go off with & see the country. 90 into Syria, where officers are now allowed to go on leave. Mosearity is leaving me shortly, posted to some special job on account of his banking experience. I am not sorry really. He is a very nice fellow, but he talks too much to the point of & beyond boredom. I have been very blunt & rude to him at times to shut him up. He is really very good looking - fair hair & good features, not at all Jewish & an English moustache - & apparently he enjoys a reputation for good looks & knows it. And so he is rather [?] with himself & effects terrific charm. He is very pleasant in many ways, & when I am away from him I feel very sorry he is going - but later when I meet him, & he treats me to a winning smile & begins to flag some trivial matter to draft - I feel that it is just as well. My new one, Halr, is getting me down, I'm afraid. He

Letter No. 70. Sunday 7 Sep. Major J H Massey, 6th Palestinian Coy, The Buffs, M.E.F.

My own sweet Barbara,

It is now Monday - I did not progress very far yesterday as sleep overtook me in the afternoon, & I had to work most of the evening. I had run into a man who was on the Duchess of York, & we had rather a large & long lunch session, for which he insisted on paying. Your No 52 came today - so,recently, I have had nos 44, 46, 47, 60, & 52. Nos 45, 48, 49, & 51 being still missing - I cannot think why this should be.

Thank you darling for your sympathy about my rash, I sent you an A.G. the other day to say it was better, thanks to a specialist I was sent to. And if it ever comes back, I have the right stuff to stop it at once. Sweetheart, the question of purity - I hope you did not misunderstand me, or that I did not sow a seed of doubt in your mind. I'm sure I did not, I cannot have done - but this long range correspondence is so difficult, & it must be quite easy really to say something in not quite the right sense, & then have it taken up the wrong way, & especially so now we both read each others letters so thoroughly & carefully in order to extract the full meaning, & the feeling & the mood of the other when writing them. If you were ever to give me permission to be unfaithful, I should feel that the world had come to an end, & that you did not care what I did or what happened to me. Love & passion, & just sex all by itself, have no meaning to me at all apart

2. from you my sweetest. I think about you very passionately very often - but never a single second does taht make me want to go for any woman, lady, girl or such like out here. That would be incidious & just silly & also disgusting & horrible. Because I am thinking of you & I get very worked up & excited & sad & filled with longing for you, & then it passes off, as it must do - until the next time I think about you in such a way. Our life, & happiness & love have been so perfect - & this is only an interval until they are so & moreso again. I really believe we are exceptional, & therefore exceptionally lucky. For example, this man I lunched with yesterday, is 40 next Monday, & really looks no more than 30. And he says that the reason he looks so young, & his wife at the age of 33, the same- is because they has been married for 10years, & have been terribly happy & contented. And yet, he was spending the weekend with a girl in Haïfa - he told me of a pretty nurse he slept with at Ismaia - & he was going off to Beirut today, & had somebody there. And he has his wife's tacit approval, for this sort of thing - though I should not think to such an extent. Well - What I mean is this - these people have obviously been very happy & are going to be so again. But I am quite certain that they are never going to reach the heights & depths & marvels of happiness that we do. This makes our separation harder for us - but only in a way. I have a very fine feeling about you & me, & painful

6. really & I have enjoyed being able to just go up & see them whenever I wanted to, & sit down & have a drink & be at home. He is a very nice fellow, & intelligent too. And Nina is very pleasant. She is a bit [clingy?] & silly in some ways, but you wold like her. I told you in another letter - or maybe a L.G. - I would tell you some more of the priceless things she said. But it is rather unkind, & you do not know her anyway, & so I will leave them until I come home. Now darling - about your letter. You had lost Jimmy's but it was all about shares & war loan & you told me what he said. In point of fact, I sent Jimmy an A.G. for speed, & suggested B C. & W.D shares, enough to have me eligible to be invited onto the Board - & this just in the same or war loan - & asked him to advise you. I'm sorry he got it all wrong & you had to be too much worried - but it all seems to be done by now & it sounds O.K. to me. And you enclosed Gladys' letter - as you say, she is a very staunch friend of mine. I hope to goodness she will not be browned off by Willy, & will still be there when I return. I did send her an A.G. - I must send another sometime. I must stop & post this in the morning. This move of mine is very definitely interfering with my letter writing. My last letter having been sent off on Aug 29. But I shall push on & make up. All my love to you & Maxie - & sweetheart, all my kisses & all my hugs & love & passion to you always & forever & now, Harry.

Letter No 71 - Thursday - Sept. 11th

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

My sweetest darling,

Well - the coy & myself have now arrived in our new station - & it is still M.E.F. The journey yesterday was a bit of a strain & quite a mix up. We came by sail, instead of setting off at a reasonable time of the day, we had to start at 4.30 pm & arrive in the dark at 8.30. Four hours for a journey of about 60 miles. One camp is about 5 miles from the main station & so in the morning I went to see a wonderful department of the army called Movement Control & carefully arranged with them to have the train stopped at a small station quite near. These people are rudely referred to as "Bloody little Movement & bugger all control" - they certainly lived up to their reputation yesterday. The train did stop, but only long enough to allow myself, two Sgts, one Corporal & one private soldier to emerge - then moved off - just like that. I was wild & rushed into the stationmaster's office, where four revolting Arabs all talked at once. & made me wilder still. It was Peter's first train journey - & of course he got off the train with me.

We are partly in huts & partly in tents. The Officers Mess is in a tent, & on the end of

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which is a small room, oblong 21 ft x 10 ft & that is mine. In it, I have my camp bed & sand fly net - all my clothes an odd nails & knocked together shelves - Peter & his bed, made by the Army pioneer & my table, on which are your photographs, my working materials, a lamp, & odds & ends. And so this is the scene & still are the surroundings from which I shall be writing to you until further notice. It has a window at either end, one overlooking country & the other the officers latrine & it has a concrete floor, beaver boarding walls & corrugated iron roof. The lamp is a good one, thank goodness - one of those high pressure affairs with a mantle. And so I suppose I must be thankful for this, & that I have a room & not a tent. But I am attended by a collection of flies & moths large & small & all kinds of other queer things which fly. what a fly blown, bloody country this is. To be honest, the country is not bad - rolling away on one side & a fair range of hills on the other. The Judeaen hills I think, which lead on right up to Jerusalem. Now that I am nearer to the Holy City again, about 50 miles I believe it is - I must make a real effort to go there & do some

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concentrated sightseeing. My local town of course is now Tel Aviv, about 10 miles away - I expect I shall go in there about 2-3 times in a month & each time with Ben Arzi.

There is a cinema here - open air - & the usual change of programme every night. But I am told the machine is pretty dicky, the first weeks programme is foul - the only one I shall probably see being "Torrid Zone" with James Cagney, & which we probably saw together some years ago.

It really is a great thing having the Coy all together once more & under my hand. I have given myself a hell of a talking programme tomorrow. All officers, 9.30 to 10.30: Sgts 10.30 to 11.30 - break. for a mug of tea - Cpls 12.0 to 12.30 - Lance Cpls 12.30 to 1.0 - the whole Coy from 2.0 to 3.0. By which time everybody should know, individually & collectively just what I think of them. They all need it very badly - it is good training for my political career!

There is no doubt at all that this place is very enervating & sleepy than where I have came from. It is now 11.45 pm & although I realise that I must go to bed, I feel