My Dear Bessie (22 page)

31 January 1945

I am commencing to write this on board the ship which is to take me to Italy, from which country it will be posted. We have moved quickly, and I do not know how soon we shall actually be leaving Italy for home. We are intended as a great propaganda effort, and this may speed up things. I am keen to be another month, to allow me to collect things – and to avoid this very bad weather which you are having at present! Isn't it wonderful to think that, although I am not due home until August 1947, I am actually on the way to you now?

I hope that you will not start buying any clothes (if you have the coupons left), because you think you ‘must look nice' for me. I shall be sorry if you do. Just carry on as near as possible to normal. My return at the present time allows us to make public our mutual attachment. Deb's letter told me of your phone call to her. To her, and to my family, I shall say something like this – ‘Bessie and I have been writing frequently to each other for a long time, we have a close relationship and a mutual understanding.' I shall tell my family I hope to spend a week away with you somewhere during my leave. My counsel to you is to tell as few people as possible (you can ring Deb a few days after she gets her letter, which I shall post with this) and not go into the depths of anything. Be brief, don't say what we plan or hope for. To someone like Miss Ferguson you can politely reply to her observations that you thought it was
your
business, rather than hers. Try to avoid preening yourself and saying much. This is my advice, not anything but that. I hope you understand. I do not ever want it to be anything but our affair.
Do not permit any intrusion. I do not know how long leave I shall get. I could get as little as fourteen days, and I may get as much as a month. I hope you will be able to get a week's leave without any trouble, and because of the position, you must more or less decide where we are to go.

I had better stop in London for the first week. I have suggested to Deb and Jessie that they, Iris, and a very few others be my guests one evening in a convivial atmosphere. I shall have to be pleasant to people like Miss Greggains and Miss Rowe and many acquaintances. I wish the war was over and that I was coming home to you for good. Won't it be wonderful being together, meeting, getting on the train, eating together, sitting together, being together?

I am wondering how I shall tell you I am in England. Probably it is still quicker to send a telegram than a letter, and I hope to send you one announcing that I am on the same island. I will send another when I am actually soon to get on the London bound train, and you can ring LEE GREEN 0509 when you think I have arrived there. Tell me how I get to Woolacombe Road, or to your Park Lane house (the number would be sufficient, I shall remember where it is) and I will meet you there, or some other place you may say, as soon as I can. You must bear in mind that I shall be with my brother until we get home. Also, that, having been away from home for so long, my parents will want to see (and have a good case for seeing) a lot of me. I hope that everything will work itself out without any unhappiness to anyone. I shall be in great demand from two or three points and it will be difficult to manage without offence.

My brother and I had hoped to visit the scene of our capture at Kifissia, not so much to see our late billet as to see whether some personal stuff we secreted in the building earlier when surrender looked likely, was still there. Unfortunately, we hadn't the time and must say goodbye to the chance, although we have left some instructions with some other signals chaps we know.

It is a strange thing, but I cannot seem to get going and write very freely. All I am thinking about is ‘I am going home. I am going to see her.' And I expect you are feeling the same. I may be home in as little as a fortnight. I may be longer – but I cannot be much longer. It is no longer speculation, or hope, possibility. It is a fact, a real thing, an impending event, like Shrove Tuesday, Xmas Day, or the Lord Mayor's Banquet. You have to be abroad, you have to be hermetically sealed off from your intimates, from your home, to realise what a gift this going-home is. The Army doesn't worry much about chaps when they have to stop overseas for so long. It is a military machine, not able to spend overmuch time on personal matters.

The few letters of yours that I had on me, I burnt the day previous to our surrender, so no one but myself has read your words. In the first ten days of our captivity I did not think any soft thoughts about you, all I did was concentrate on trying to tell you I was alright. But when we had a few supplies dropped by aircraft (at great risk to themselves in the misty, snow-bound Greek mountain villages) and we started hoping we might get sent home upon our release, I was always wondering about you, about us. We are on the threshold now, not guessing at a distant
date. I am sorry about Abbey Wood, but so glad about you now. I want to touch your body, to know you. It is a pity that the winter weather will not be kind to us out of doors. But it will be nice sitting next to you in the pictures, no matter what may be on the screen. It will be grand to know that we have each other's support and sympathy. It will be wonderful to go away where no one knows us and be by ourselves.

I wish I was coming home for good, I wish I was coming home to a peaceful England, with the war over. But, at least, I am coming home, am coming home to you, to your lips, to your breasts, to hold you tight, and make you happy.

As I expect this letter will arrive home before I do, I am enclosing two photographs, taken at Volos before we had paid 2s. 8d. to a Greek barber for haircut and shave. You will probably recognise me through the hair, although it was a bit of fun deceiving chaps who did not know you without it.

I, in my turn, was very pleased to get your photo and agree that it was lucky the girl on the right of the snap was obliterated and not you. You might have felt the reverse, but you look young and happy and as though you are smiling for me. Which is a nice thought for me to have. I want to bring your handkerchief back to you. To be away from everyone, everything, to not have to worry about the world, the war, but just to have my face in your bosom, to do what I have said.

The socks
are
well knitted. But I am not wearing them yet (if you don't mind) because I want to save them a while. How you knitted away, for me, for me, for me.

I can say no more, no less, than that I love you.

Chris

Chris (left) and Bert after their release at Volos in January 1945

1 February 1945

My Darling,

This is so wonderful, oh! Gosh! Christopher, I have just received your telegram – how can I tell you how beautiful the world is, contact again with you, contact with life. Oh darling of my heart, I did not realise what a benumbed state I had been reduced to. It took about a quarter of an hour to sink in. I did not whoop or prance but my knees went weak, my tummy turned over, since when I have been grinning happily to myself with a beautiful inward pleasure. FREE, FIT and WELL, such wonderful words,
the relief from these last weeks of possible sickness, you Blessed darling. I just haven't any words, no words Christopher, just all bubbles and tremblings.

I had been cheering up because as there was no news I felt you just must be a prisoner. But you know how your mind keeps worrying away in circles at all sorts of awful possibilities, well that's what mine had been doing, and now golly – how I love you! You Dear Delicious Christopher. Ouch. I want to hug you to bits, eat you, come to my arms you bundle of charms. Hurry up mail, I want to hear your voice again, hear you, loving me, wanting me as always. I have not been able to look at your photos or read your letters, much too painful, but I have now, I have now.

You have been with me in all these bad days. I used to talk to you, inside myself, and I always made you answer that you were alright, and I used to hope that it was the right answer. Am I a silly dope? But I have a few more white hairs. You are there, you are alive. You are in this world with me, we are together, we, we, we, US. Deep breath here! I suspect Deb will hear from your folks and will be phoning me, and I shall have to register surprise, ain't it gorgeous!

Darling, I suppose there isn't any chance of you coming home. I thought there might be a possibility, for Churchill said something about the prisoners coming home – don't know whether that could mean all of you, or just the sick and wounded. Coo – just supposing. I am getting ambitious, it's such a lovely idea to play around with. Meanwhile I can manage for a bit, with the knowledge of your safety. Dearie me, things are looking up, though this business of Germany fighting to the last ditch sounds
rather appalling. Some silly blighter, an MP too, was asking for indiscriminate bombing of Germany. I should have thought what was happening now was grim enough to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty.

I feel in that excited state that anything can happen any moment, something is in the air, with all this news from everywhere. I really should say that it's me that is in the air, bounce, bounce, bounce. I am going to the pictures with Iris tomorrow – golly, I shall have to treat her. It's so wonderful, you are wonderful, the world is wonderful, everything is wonderful. Please come home, home, home. Please do, darling. Such dreams of our being – Oh My Love.

I Love You.

Bessie

3 February 1945

Dearest,

‘How do I feel?' – such a large question, sweetheart, oh! Such a large question! So difficult for me to tell you. When I received your telegram, I sat down and wrote immediately but nothing would really come, I was like a sleepwalker suddenly awakened, didn't know where I was, felt all soft and pappy, tremulous and
bubbly inside. And today with your letter, oh Christopher, all this warmth melting inside me, that I somehow want to wrap around you, to make up for all your sufferings of the past weeks, it seems a lifetime. I knew you wouldn't be warm enough, or have enough to eat, but I didn't think it would be quite so bad. Oh Chris, I wish I could have a damn good howl, but I can't, I am all het up and tense, wondering whether you might come home. I try not to think of it, try not to bank on it, try to be rational, to stop dreaming that it could come true. Each night before I sleep, I fervently say to myself, come home Chris, come home, somehow trying to pull you home. During the early period I literally died, but as time went on and there was no news I gained hope.

I will write those letters tonight, about coming home, surely it means everybody not just the RAF. It must, must mean everybody, they must not treat you so, such a terrible injustice. Surely they won't overlook you. I feel like going to 10 Downing Street.

Rockets – well my sweet pet, I honestly haven't given them a thought for many weeks. The last bad period I remember was last November when Wilfred was on leave. I can't recall what has been the position since then. They have been falling, but I am very hazy about the quantity. I woke up to rockets when Iris came back from leave about a week ago. She had been to her sister's in Sheffield and came back feeling a bit scared at having to face up to them again. Her agitation made me realise what a coma I'd been in – even rockets had left me cold. I suppose our imaginations can only cope with big fears, one at a time. I suppose I shall become rocket conscious again.