Letters from World War II : J.H. Massey

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way of putting it) - & in Oct they suddenly stopped the monthly payments & offered her £10 down to finish - which she refused & quite rightly so, I think - & the £2 monthly remains stopped. It really is too bad, I think, & I feel strongly about it. The Jews - & the Arabs to a lesser extent - may not be doing any actual fighting, but they definitely are taking the place of British troops & so saving men & shipping etc.

Another hard luck case has concluded successfully today. A chap called Zilberberg was married to a girl who was an illegal immigrant into Palestine & in addition all the marriage papers had been left behind in Germany. So, when he joined the Army he declared himself to be single & so got no Family Allowance. In August, he got moving with the Rabbi & obtained his marriage certificate & so qualified for the Allowance from that date. I found out that his wife was going to have a baby, & was v. poor - & so I put up a case to the Command Paymaster to have the Allowance antedated to his date of entitlement - 11 Nov [40?] & today I had a letter from the C.P. that this is agreed to. So that is another £20 for the wife - quite a nice help at such

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with every body except you - oh dear, I do feel sad. Goodnight, sweet darling & I shall think of you & how I love you when I am in bed. XXXH.

Monday Dec 8th - I decided yesterday to give a little party to celebrate our anniversary. So I had a bottle of Camel Hock put on the ice: a bottle of Rishan Claret put in warm water & glasses put on the table & made sure that we had sherry & brandy. Solaman came in before dinner, first & had a glass of sherry & then I suddenly felt sick & serious about it all & had the wine kept back on its shelf & the glasses removed from the table. They are such a boring blasted lot & I could not face it. And I decided instead to take Ben Solaman to Tel-Aviv for dinner & "Gone with the Wind" which has just arrived. It will cost more money but I shall not grudge it.

Did you remember, darling, the day we saw [that film?] in London? You were wearing your chartreuse coloured frock - the one you have on in your photograph & we walked about London from the photographer to [?] where I bought my sun glasses which I have never worn, to Martins Bak to get the travellers cheques & to the snack bar where we had lunch & holding hands all the time. I often think of those days in London in Sept, & how lovely you were. But how we wasted time - trying to buy Khakis drill which we never bought & seeing if you could come to Egypt as a nurse or anything at all & there was never any chance. And all the time we might have been away somwhere in the country & having an ever lovelier time.

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but definite news about your move from Nos Mayo & tells me not you are now in Beaconsfield & have been there for nearly six weeks. And you also report several missing letters of mine, in particular the one in reply to your long one about Maxie's birth. I do hope it has arrived now - & I hope darling that I did not seem wooden or imperious & because I have the feeling that I may have been, on paper. I have read that particular letter at least once a week since it arrived on August 11th & it somehow gives me the overpowering feeling of wanting to be with you, but not having very much to say: I 'm sure you understand.

On Tuesday I went to see "Gone with the Wind" - it was wonderful again but I missed you. The dinner part of the evening was a little annoying - we went to Pilz - an expensive but very good indeed place - Saloman & Ben & his wife. And so we had hors d'oueveres, good dinner & sherries & [?] & brandies & cigars - it all cost £3, & they never even said thank you. The main reason may have been [?] but I think they might at least have is the good manners and/or wit to thank me.

On Wednesday I was going to write to you but just could not get moving - I have been wondering what to do with myself. Finally I decided to pay a call on the Sgts Mess. This is now composed of 3 British & 6 Jewish & the British have often complained to me that

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is a pretty miserable affair & that the Jews never spend a penny on a drink & go to bed early - that the feeling is not too good. I found the 3 British have a beer & the Jewish Sgt sitting on our side. I intended to offer them a drink & let off a certain amount of charm & personality - but they were so pleased to see me, they insisted on extanding their rounds too and I finally broke up the party at 1.0 am. Feeling mellow & sleepy. Last night I had a tremendous return attack of misery & went to bed after the news at 9.30 pm.

I have also been very busy during the day. I am running a cadet course for the NCOs the last 10 days. [having?] been giving two lectures a day myself - which also means a certain amount of preparation. And so, I do not relax until about BFEc news runs at 9.30 pm.

I am going to give another lecture & speech during the next few days - this time to the Hebrew University, & ??? Association ??? in this Coy, Who is an M.A. of the Hebrew ????? approached me some days ago & asked me would I talk to them, on something to do with the War. He informed me that the last two speakers had been this ?an Walter Riemann & Rai???? And also I was not too willing to do it, because if I have to speak at all, I like like to speak sensibly & sincerely. & I'm afraid that my

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and [illegible] & ideas do not quite agree with the official ones. But the Corporal was very nice & had he had told them about me - so I finally agreed & am going to talk about the building up & training of the British Army before & during this war. This will, I hope, interest them & also keep me away from thin ice. They are buggers those Jews: they always seem to have a newspaper & reporter handy, & if one says anything vaguely pro Jewish they pick it up & write it & publish it. The main reason I am doing it at all, one, was publicity for myself. I have had to ask permission from Area H.Q. which in time may help me to get home, or get on the former list, by/or this seems important & I am increasingly certain that one has to be a Regular to get beyond a Maor in this Army. I have been of some new appointments today & for all of which I'm quite [illegible] I should be most [illegible] that the people who have got them all Regular in a way, [illegible] is natural to assumed [illegible] Regulars [illegible] more officer than [illegible] [illegible] the assumption is [illegible] on a serious & misconception.

I now crop & go to bed & send this off in the morning. I'm on teriffic tenterhooks about my application any day now. I may get a reply to say to or stay. God what a difference between the two. If I stay, as I expect I shall. I shall go on loving you & missing you. & trying to come home - & you must try & [illegible]. Every scrap of my love [illegible]

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of the doors & windows which fit about as well as those reach - no 4 dozen suits you used to want me to buy. The roof is just suspended over the top of the walls not fixed on at all & so the wind just comes straight through But I suppose my lot is a comparatively good due, I do get 3/0 per day Field Alowance.

[image: handrawn house with rooftop not touching the walls, indicating 8" opening)

I set out not to do at the beginning of this letter but seeing I cannot help it. If only I could see you & Maxie just once every few weeks - what a difference, it would make.

Hanging on for a reply to my application is also very wearing. It is now over 3 weeks since I wrote my letter by all calculations, the reply, if any, should be any day now. It is also 3 weeks since I had a letter from you & my mind seems to be full of nothing else. And perhaps because of these things, I seem to have lost interest & enthusiasm in everything. I seem to take things so seriously & heavily my letters to you are perfected. And I seem to have lost the art of just chatting along to you in my letters. But there is this one all important thing in my mind all the time & nothing else matters. Since the answer which I receive is a sickening negative you will have had my No first. I'm afraid you will find my ranting & grumblings rather boring- But I cannot

help myself. Oh darling - I do love you & miss you so. I shall go to bed now & try again tomorrow. XXX H. Monday 15 Dec Thank you - the silence broke today & I had your letter no. 66 of Oct 18 - also p.c. posted on Nov 30th but dated Nov 26 by you. So darling, you can imagine that I now feel very much lighter in [tears ?] I'm hoping that more will follow in reasonable succession, so that my awful oppression will be lifted for a few weeks & I may write you long & lovely letters. You were saying in your letter that you felt guilty on account of writing me miserable letters & making me sad & unhappy. Well, the guilt if such it is, seems to have transferred itself to me now. I am doing that very thing to you. But darling, I feel that you will understand & certainly not want me to force myself to write & I did not feel, in any case. I could not do it, as you know me well enough. I certainly have nobody else to unload onto, and it does help quite a bit. Naturally I would much rather that you had been able to write happy letters before Maxie was born but as you could not I much prefer that you should write me what you feel & were going through than that you should have to pretend & not pour your heart & soul too, any body at all - in

job until he comes back. When Jack did return, Kiley was very last to leave, and he dreaded going back to the Depot, & seems to be rather attached to the Corp & to me by now. So I put up a case that he should stay, & this he is being allowed to do, until Jan 2nd. C.Q.M.S. Hemmings left today, en route to the O.C.T. I was sorry to see him go, as I got on very well with him. And so Col Fich is now C.Q.M.S., which is quite funny in many ways - he is so unlike one, with his girlish figure & ways, & wavy black hair, a R. Colman's moustache, & lovely white teeth. (Solomon calls him "Petunia") But he is 100% [efficient underlined] & he will certainly do very well indeed. Jack went into Hospital today, to have his teeth out & his [ ?] scraped etc & will be away about two weeks & so poor Kiley is all alone with 6 Jewish sgts; I shall have to have him across to my room, for a beer, from time to time. I have had to switch round my orderly room staff again too - Golun having, in spite of being, a M.A. was about the dullest witted clerk imaginable & I eventually could not bear it any longer. So I pushed him out, am trying that chap Pessah, about whom I have written to you. At the moment, he is equal in rank, L/cpl, but inferior in knowledge, to Spitz. The little Spitz is really

Letter No. 88. Sunday Dec 21st

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

My own darling sweetheart

I do not know whether I shall manage a very long instalment tonight, or not. I feel reasonably fit & awake now but I have been another enormous long walk today with Saloman, to which turned out to be much longer than we expected as intended & we must have done no less than 25 miles. It is only interesting to go East from this place, which takes us into the mountains, North, South & West are mostly a continuation & extension of a rather dull & flat valley going on to the sea. So [having?] orders to serve doing a dull initial fire both in & out, we had the car takes us to a certain place - & it was only after we had seen the car away that it was realised that a wrong turning had been taken. Soon we set off each armed with a service rifle, a haversack, ration of bacon & marmalade sandwiches. Peter following along. We get some very good brined bacon about 2-3 times a week now, not having seen it at all since I came out here. At 3 o'clock we came to the place we intended to begin training about 20 minutes from home. So we branched off towards the nearest main road - & we were very lucky - at 5.0 pm we hit a minor road, & very tired & foot sore by then, sat down for a smoke & we had only been there two minutes when an Arab bus came along, & took us within 4 miles of home - this was really a miracle because buses, particularly in Arab parts of the country were very few & far between. And two minutes after coming back here, the rain came down in floods. So it was a good day after all. It was a lovely clear warm & sunny day

Letter No. 89, Sunday 28th Dec Major J. H. Massey 6 Palestinian Corp, The Buffs MEF My own darling heart - I arrived back from my Xmas visit to the Hopkins in Haifa at 7-30 this evening. I have been busy ever since, as many things had to happen during my absence, nothing at all having happened for 3 1/2 months. And I also found a large bunch of letters & cards waiting for me, including [miraculously ?] your letter no 61 from Oct 26th, AG's of 2 & 8 Nov- the latter giving me the copy of Hughes certificate. It is now 11-30 pm & I cannot write much longer. I wanted to make a beginning - I have so much to tell you about the "most important topic" - & about my leave - & still to answer properly your 3 delayed letters which arrived last week. And to tell you again how much I adore & love you & long for you with all my heart. Your Xmas parcel was [lovely underlined], my darling - thank you very much indeed. All the contents are very useful & what I want & used & I'm so pleased to have Tolstoy's book. I took the parcel with me to Haifa & opened it on Xmas morning. Your letter was sweet & made me so happy [& sad ?]. I wore a pair of the socks straightaway, I put Vaseline Hair Tonic on my hair, I powdered myself in all the places after my bath; I kissed the [Perlis ?] too, & pulled the crackers with the Hopkins child. It was a lovely parcel & I was so pleased you made me wait to open it until Dec. 25. I am furious with myself now for not sending such a parcel to you &