My Dear Bessie. Chris Barker

       21 February 1944

      Dear Bessie,

      I received your letter of 1st January on 7.2.44, since when I have been busting to send you a smashing reply, yet feeling clumsy as a ballerina in Army boots, who knows that her faithful followers will applaud, however she pirouettes. I could hug you till you dropped! The unashamed flattery that you ladled out was very acceptable – I lapped it up gladly and can do with more! Yes, I could hug you – an action unconnected with the acute shortage of women in these parts, and mostly symbolic of my pleasure at your appreciation of qualities so very few others see, and which really I do not possess. I must confess that your outrageous enthusiasm banishes ‘acquaintance’ from my mind, and that I recognise the coming of a new-kind-of-atmosphere into our interchanges, and one which you will need to watch.

      To be honest, rather than discreet: letters from home sometimes contain curious statements. ‘Paddling’ one of my own, I had told them of my first letter from you. Back came a weather forecast: ‘Perhaps she will catch you on the rebound.’ I, of course, have no such wish, yet I certainly haven’t told anyone of your latest letter, and was glad I was able to conceal it from my brother. I find myself engaged on the secretive, denying dodge that has marked the opening stages of all my little affaires since the first Girl Probationer crossed my path. I can see that willy-nilly I am having a quiet philander, and I want to warn you it’ll end in a noisy flounder unless you watch out. I haven’t a ’aporth of ‘rebound’ in me. I warm to you as a friend and I hope that remains our mutual rendezvous, although I feel that the more I write you, the less content you will be.

      I hope you will not think I regarded your letter as purely a back-pat for me. As I read yours I wha-rooped too, and gentle tintinnabulations commenced. You’ll find this effort somewhat forced. I believe it is true that when you want to be natural, you aren’t. If you understand me, you have made me a bit ‘conscious’. I’m blowed if I am not trying to impress you.

      You say your mind is a rambling rubbish box, and your youthful desires for improvement remain unfulfilled. Congratulations on getting the rubbish in a box, mine spreads in a heap. I don’t remember having many youthful desires (except that I do recall Madeline Carroll featuring in one of them). I am glad you accept my view on others not being informed of the contents of our letters. It will be much more satisfactory, we shall know each other much better through an ‘in confidence’ understanding, which is implicit in our different relationship.

Your comments on Abbey Wood* etcetera rather puzzle me, and if you feel like enlightening me, please do so (‘I remember also the day, when I found that you never understood why I cut my losses, you returned those letters, a very black day,’ is what you say). I am more than hazy on the subject. What letters did I return? I like your observation that you can never dramatise for long, and ‘humour wins the day’, it is my own view, too.

      You say it is odd that I can be so ignorant about women, but apart from the important omission of never having slept with one, I regard myself as capable of detecting a wile when I see one, and I do not think women are so very different from men in any important aspect. If I were really plonking down what I did know, I should have to admit that I am puzzled very often by the behaviour of many of my own sex, and not a little quizzical about my own at times. Certainly I am no quidnunc in the labyrinth of sex matters. How bored I should be if I was, my mysterious Bessie!

      I am sorry you felt the least bit ‘weepy’ at my chess, garden, pigs. The things your tears are best reserved for are beetles this size, and fleas whose size is much less horribly impressive, but whose powers of annoyance are far greater. I exult in the possession of a sleeping sheet, which is very nice to have next to the skin compared with the rough Army blankets. At night, if the fleas are active and I cannot subdue them with my fevered curses, I take my sheet and my naked body into the open, and turn and shake the sheet in the very cold night air. Then I get back into bed and hold the ends of the sheet tight around my neck, to keep out my nuisance raiders. The last few months have been very pleasant as regards heat, and fleas have been few. I am not looking forward to the summer.

      A Sergeant Major is usually a curt, barking, more-in-anger-than-in- sorrow, kind of chap. Yet the one we have here couldn’t treat us better if he was our Father. He does more fatigues than anyone else in the Camp, asks you to do things, never orders. When he came here three months ago, we had one dirty old tent to eat our meals in, and that was all. Since then, we have added several more tents; plenty of forms and tables; a Rest Tent with a concrete floor; dozens of games, a regular weekly Whist Drive, a small library. Once we could only bathe in our tent, petrol tin fashion. Now, we use the showers in town, doing some forty miles in the process. If this is the Army – well, it’s not bad.

      Christmas Day was quite happily spent, as I haven’t been away from home long enough to feel bad about separation. True that last night I dreamt of my Mother, and as she called me in my sleep, I awoke to hear my brother calling ‘Holl!’ (my family name), as, in a vague kind of way it was my turn to first brave the morning air and put on – what do you think? – the shaving water.

We have been doing very well lately for evening entertainments. On five successive evenings we had an Accordion Band and Concert Party, which was very good and clean; an RAF Concert Party, which dripped muck and innuendo; and an ENSA* show, ‘Music Makers’, who rendered popular classics, and gave a thoroughly good evening, though the audience thinned out when ‘legs’ did not show. We get a Film Show every Saturday; whatever the weather, it is held in the open air, the audience (stalls) sitting on petrol tins, while those in the gallery sit on top of the vehicles, many of which come several miles for what is usually the only event of the week. I have sat in the pouring rain with a groundsheet over me. I have sat with a gale bowling me over literally while Barbara Stanwyck (in The Great Man’s Lady – she was a brunette) bowled me over figuratively. We take our fun seriously, and when we can get it, though I always think of the Open Air Theatre at Regent’s Park, seeing Midsummer Night’s Dream on a brilliantly lit sward, with a pre-war searchlight dancing in the sky above us.

      I did not go to the commercial cinemas in Cairo – I was a bit horrified by the prospect of being solicited as I sat in the 15 piastre seats (as not infrequently happens, I am told).

      George Formby has done a lot of talking since his trip here, but not a word (publicly) about losing ten bottles of beer from the back of his charabanc. Some chaps I was with at the time did the pinching and subsequent drinking, so I know!

      Have just been on my first ‘charge’ (crime), having been caught, with eight others including my brother, for dirty rifles. This is usually a serious offence, and is very easily framed. We were lucky and got ‘admonished’, which is like a ‘minor offence’ in the PO and is wiped out after three months. Being ‘tried’ was just like a Court of Law, without the wigs. I have been very fortunate in my Army misdemeanours which have been ingenious rather than numerous.

      Our OC is not a bad chap as such, but is very ‘La-de-dah’; he has a race-stick and the other day he was seated on it watching a football match when – it broke. Our side all wanted to stop the match and laugh.

      Consider my earlier comments upon ‘rebounds’, but let me have you full and frank and enjoyable. Keep away from an anatomical examination of me. Tell me what you think. I’ll revert to blustery Barkerisms at your request.

      Best wishes, Friend (The Lord Forgive Me),

      Chris.