Sunday September 2nd 1945, Marks Hall

Desert Convoy

My darling,
                I've just laid down the telephone and I must apologise for raising any false hopes that I was coming home on leave. As I said, this is Griff's last night, and though we have been celebrating almost continuously for a week, I want to take him and his wife out tonight to have a few drinks at my expense. I've had lots of good meals in their hotel and I want to make the only return I can.

               Yesterday Griff went up to Uxbridge and in two hours was converted into Mr Griffiths, complete with a very neat blue suit, new shoes, sox, shirt, tie, hat and a very good quality raincoat. I arranged for several of our sergeants and WAAFs to meet Mr & Mrs G at one of the locals last night and Griff threw quite a party. The new civilian was the object of a great deal of hilarity and some envy. I would be delighted to stand in his new shoes but strangely enough, Griff is viewing his departure  with a certain amount of regret. He is a very sociable type, a born clubman and probably the most popular man in the mess. But I know just how miserable he can be outside the social round, and his wife confesses to some apprehension about his settling down to the life of a country town solicitor. Their home is in Barry and they say it is quite a nice place. Ask Jean if she knows it.

               Your Thursday letter arrived yesterday as you intended. Please convey my warmest congratulations to Cliff on his promotion. As you say, the extra money will be very useful to them in the unenviable task of setting up house.

              I am delighted to hear that you are better than you have ever been and that the heartburn is diminishing. Since you occasionally enquire about my health, I may state that I am perfectly fit and still carrying out my exercises conscientiously. This has been rather a hectic month with V.J. celebrations and Griff's departure but I have acquitted myself with credit and tonight sees the end of our junketings. Sober steadfast and demure from now on.

            Even your description of Mary's cellar does not tempt me. I am doing no travelling till that blessed Thursday three and a half weeks hence, when I travel to London to catch the mid-day train. Roll on the time. I'm longing to see you again.

              I am reading Desert Conquest by Russell Hill, an American correspondent. I find it extremely interesting because it covers the period I spent in the desert - from the time before the retreat right up to the fall of Tunis. Have you read it?

              From now on, dearest, don't hesitate to use taxis for all your journeys - for example your next visit to Kate. And let me know how the joint account is looking. If it's at all shaky, I'll transfer another credit to it. Don't spare the cost for anything that will add to your comfort or convenience.

             My morning cup of chai is awaiting me so cheerio for the present.

.......

Thursday 30th August 1945, Marks Hall

Margaret darling,
                        The Griffiths pre-release celebrations which arouse so much apprehension in you are pursuing quite an orderly course. Yesterday we all went to a Colchester cinema in the afternoon, had dinner in his hotel at halstead afterwards and then spent the remainder of the night in a pub near Braintree. The presence of Mrs Griffiths prevented any excessive alcoholism.

                       The picture was To Have & Have Not with Humphrey Bogart and the Bacall woman. This lady is very skinny and her face is really extremely ugly but she certainly puts across the rather limited range of emotions demanded of a Hemingway heroine. She moves with a kind of slouching grace, contrives to look very smouldering and suggestive, and sings in a rather fetching low voice. Humphrey Bogart gave as usual a very good representation of H. Bogart.

                     It has just been announced that cypher officers in groups 21 and 22 are to be released during October so the RAF is still a little bit ahead of the Govt. schedule. Unfortunately the Groups get much larger above 22, and even if they manage to release one group per month in our trade, I won't be out till February. It is all very tiresome as you say: it would be so nice to start off together right from the beginning of our new life.

                     I got your Tuesday letter last night. It's strange you should be re-reading John Macnab as I aslo found it in the library here and decided to have another go at it. I find that Buchan seems more and more dated every time I read him nowadays. His five representatives of the ruling and officer class and his intelligent, humorous and yet extremely respectful members of the lower orders all belong to a vanished age. I like him best now in these novels like Salute to Adventurers where he gets away from modern times.

                  With regard to your exhortations to use my coupons, I won't be in London before I go on leave but when I am in Glasgow I'll buy whatever you suggest. I need some more light underwear but apart from that I seem to be quite well stocked. This winter is going to be rather grim in many ways - chiefly in the matter of fuel - and I hope we don't get much frost and snow. I still think that before the end of autumn we should fill our green box with coal. When I'm on leave I'll pack it with lumps from the bunker which can then be refilled.

                  I'm glad to hear that you are still feeling so fit. Four weeks today I hope to be travelling north and I'm looking forward very much to seeing you again. I'll be very pleased to stay at 155* if it is convenient. Give my regards to the family. ......


*155 Hyndland Road; home of his in-laws.

Tuesday 28th August 1945, Marks Hall

Finchingfield. (Watercolour borrowed from linked page.)

My darling,
                I ought to have written yesterday but it was such a glorious day that I was persuaded to go touring with the Griffiths family. We have been doing quite a bit of exploring recently and have discovered some very interesting and pretty villages miles away from main roads. Essex is intersected by hundreds of miles of narrow lanes and it is interesting, if a trifle baffling, to nose along them in a car. Yesterday we got completely lost and made three circuits of a kind of rural maze, passing and repassing the same group of rustics, before we managed to find the way out. Later in the day we discovered that the Americans, who used to infest this area, had uprooted all the signposts and pointed them the wrong way; and, since it evidently delights the local folk to watch the frantic efforts of tourists to get away from the neighbourhood, the signposts have been allowed to remain in their mendacious condition.

            We had tea at a village called Finchingfield which is so perfectly picturesque with its duck pond, village green, thatched houses and old windmill that it just didn't look real. But what an awful existence to live in such a village! No wonder such hamlets are full of pubs. The merciful anaesthesia of booze must be the only alternative to complete insanity.

            Your Friday's letter came yesterday morning and I was delighted to read that Kate is still thoroughly satisfied with your condition. If I remember my baby lore, it should bring considerable relief to you wen the infant finally decides to take up its position opposite the exit and I expect you'll know when that takes place without needing Kate to tell you. I'm sure everything will go swimmingly.

             I don't suppose that there has been a pregnant woman so interested in theology as you are since the Virgin Mary, but I don't propose to continue our discussion by letter. It can be done orally and at a more propitious time. After all, think of pre-natal influences. Wouldn't it be awful if our offspring decided to be a parson!

            I think Christine Margaret is a very nice name indeed and we'll just close for that if sex should permit.

            If the hot weather has returned to Scotland as it has here, you have had a remarkably fine month at your country residence. I am sure it must have done you good, and your mother will be delighted to be away from the town in hot weather. As you will be leaving at the end of the week, I'll send my next letter to Hyndland Road and I'm eagerly looking forward to the time, four weeks hence, when I'll be there myself.

           Take care of yourself darling and keep well ...

Friday 24th August 1945, Marks Hall

Margaret darling,
                         This morning's newspapers have thrown a great gloom over Marks Hall and I should think over all service establishments. After all the encouraging 'semi-official' forecasts of last week, we are now told that there is to be no acceleration in release and the scheme in fact will work at the same rate as was originally planned months ago.

                          I can see the Govt's policy: they intend to resettle all the munition workers before releasing large numbers of of servicemen and from the point of view of avoiding unemployment, it is probably a wise plan. But this alternate raising and shattering of hopes is having rather a wearing effect on men's nerves.

                          The RAF have been putting on quite a spurt in the last few weeks and Griffiths, who is group 19, has been ordered to report at the demob-centre on Sept. 1st. I'll be very surprised if they release only three or four groups in the C.& C. branch between Sept. and the end of the year, and yet that is what is implied in today's Ministry of Labour announcement. We can only await the event, and for myself I am not going to worry about it. I'll fill in my time as well as I can with reading and study and I know that very soon you'll have plenty to keep you fully occupied.

                          Your letter of Wednesday came by yesterday evening's post. I pass over in offended silence your remarks about my shaky writing and pass on to the important matter of my leave. What do you think of making my leave period from 29th Sept. to 9th Oct? And of course as usual, I would try to travel north two days before the official start of my leave. I'd be in Glasgow for the 28th and as you're more likely to be late than early*, I think that is the best arrangement. Please confirm, or make alternative suggestions.

                          Five weeks today I should be on leave - and may be pacing the floor of Redlands, an object of sympathy or derision to all around. Actually I am quite confident that you will cope with the situation in your usual competent manner and though you may fittingly retort that I am being amazingly philosophic about your strenuous exertions, I can't help feeling that you have everything in your favour including a remarkably good set of  nerves. And dear heart, you'll be supported by most intense prayers to my own particular God, who is none the less potent because he is impersonal.

                         From the tone of your letters, you don't seem to be at all bored by your curtailed activity and I hope you are still keeping well and free from heartburn. It will soon be Sunday night again, and another week will be shoved into the Limbo. Till then, sweetheart, cheerio, and all my love ...


*The baby was in fact born on Sunday 30th September.

Wednesday 22nd August 1945, Marks Hall

My dear,
              I am sorry to have my fears confirmed about the slowness of my letters to you. But things seem to be back to normal now as your letter of Sunday evening arrived here yesterday. One is grateful for the telephone as it helps to bridge these awkward gaps.

              Your theological outburst has my full sympathy and I am very pleased that we have been spared any official thanksgiving in this unit. Your various question are answered very cleverly by Prof. Whitehead in his 'Adventures of Ideas'. If I understand correctly his rather difficult arguments, the fault with Christian theology is that while the world needs God, God does not need the world since he is conceived as being aloof and omnipotent. Logically it follows from this concept that God is completely responsible for all that happens in the world and, with the world as we see it now, that does not give us any high opinion of God. Whitehead obviously favours a very different notion of a Deity which needs the world for self expression and who is represented as the persuasive force behind all great ideals. Whitehead maintains that such an idea has been completely set out by Plato for whom he has an enormous respect. God for Plato was manifest in Ideas which were continually struggling for expression in the material world - "torturing the unwilling dross" as Shelley puts it. And Whitehead thinks that this notion of God as a persuasive force only and not as an omnipotent compulsion is the only one feasible from a philosophical viewpoint.  Such a theory of course gives man full liberty to destroy himself if he is sufficiently pig-headed, and that is obviously the way Man is tending.

                 So there you are. It's not as exhilarating as escaping from fowler's snares and not as comforting as the thought that God is always on the side of the Anglo-Saxons, but it seems more likely to be nearer the truth.

                The above reminds me of the stuff I used to write to you from Lochranza in our strenuously intellectual days. Our life has been strangely divided into different periods but I am certain that the period which we shall be entering on soon will be the happiest and most carefree of them all. I am longing for it to begin.

                 Griffiths has just called to invite me to go with him and his wife and family to Colchester for the afternoon. So that will pass another few hours. The Griffiths family are established at an inn in Halstead for a few weeks and Griff is travelling to and from duty in his car.

              It's grand to hear that you are feeling so well and less troubled by heartburn. As you say, you should be well for, thanks to your fortunate position with your family, you are enjoying every advantage. It must be rather a dismal business for a woman to have to live alone at this trying time and I'm glad to hear you are having so much to keep you interested. I only wish I was there also to do my share in looking after you.

             In a few weeks now I'll be getting ready for leave. And after that I hope I'll soon be taking  a single railway warrant to Glasgow. And then to a delightful saturnalia of moving furniture, throwing out rubbish, whitewashing, rubbing down walls, washing nappies and walking the floor at nights. Fie on this quiet life, I want work!

...

Sunday 19th August 1945, Marks Hall

My own darling,
                  Griffiths and I have just returned from a melancholy afternoon walk round the camp. Every weekend now there is a 'stand-down' for all but a few personnel, and an Sat. and Sunday this place looks like a dead city. Today has been completely overcast and one has the feeling that autumn is just around the corner.

               To my great delight I got a letter from you yesterday after having had nothing since Thursday. I expect that my letters to you will have been similarly delayed by VJ holidays. You threw me into some confusion by dating it "Wed. 13th Aug" but according to all the almanacks I have consulted, last Wednesday was really the 15th.

                To answer your query first of all, I can hardly imagine a name I detest more than 'Victoria'. Apart from its horrible associations and domineering sound, to bestow such a name on a female child is like branding a birth certificate on its brow. The name is going to be Christine Emma or Margaret, so you had better make a decision soon.

               Congratulations on attaining the weight of 11/4 cwt. [12 stones or 76.2 kilos] I am sure you carry it all with great dignity and composure. I am sorry to hear that the infant chooses to be so active in the middle of the night but I don't suppose you can begin to subject it to disciplinary measures just yet! Relief is not so very far away now.

               I am afraid you are rather optimistic in hoping I'll get out in October. Groups 20-27 are the largest in number as far as the RAF is concerned and I can't reasonably hope that they'll be able to release six groups of cypher officers in the next batch. November is a safer bet and at the worst, I should assuredly be released by Christmas.

             Your proposed orgy of domestic activity suits me admirably. I ask for nothing better. I'd like to get you away from that beastly set of stairs as soon as possible, and if the new Govt's energetic approach to the housing problem should bring down prices, we may manage to pick up the kind of place we want at a reasonable figure.* The problem is not nearly as acute in Glasgow as it is in the South and I think our district should be the first to feel any improvement.

             Dearest, you don't mention your old enemy, heartburn, in you last letter and I hope that means it is less troublesome. I'll hear from you this evening. I hope you are still diligently coddling yourself and being unnaturally selfish. Please be very careful ...


*In fact it was 1955 before they left the top flat in Novar Drive for the terrace house in Broomhill where Margaret still lived at the age of 92.            

Thursday 16 August 1945, Marks Hall

My darling Margaret,
                             If my writing is a little wobbly, it's because the pad is resting on my knee and not on a table. It is such a marvellous morning that I am sitting outside the shack and have been enjoying the prospect. I don't think I ever saw a countryside looking so rich: all the grain is cut now and the stooks are very pleasant in form and colour, even to one who odes not usually indulge in rural rhapsodies.

                             Your letter of Sunday/Monday reached me on Tuesday morning. I am very sorry to hear that your heartburn is increasing. Have you mentioned it again to Kate or do you think it is the natural result of the ever-increasing demands on your internal accommodation? Anyway, as you say, the time of your relief is not too far away now but I'm sorry you have had this affliction for so long. I had it one day last week after a particularly devastating dinner of roast pork and stuffing, and the pain made me realise just what you have endured.

                            I was on duty when the P.M. announced the surrender of Japan so I saw the beginning of the celebrations which have been going on in this place ever since. People have gone mad here, chiefly I suppose because the threat of an overseas posting is now removed from most of them. Griffiths and I had rather a strenuous night of celebrations which took us from the Officers' Mess to the Sergeants', and thence to the Airmen's Dining Hall where a kind of mass dance was in progress. It was 3am when I got to bed and I think most people are feeling rather glad this morning that a was does not finish every day.

                           I don't think I told you in my last letter how much I enjoyed Blithe Spirit. I'm afraid the brilliant dialogue was wasted on the audience who seemed to be concentrating almost entirely on the beauty of the technicolour. Some of the interiors were excellent in this respect and Constance Cummings photographs better in colour than anyone I've seen on the screen. Kay Hammond was brilliant as the ghostly Elvira: I don't know if she could act in anything else but Coward's female parts are simply made for her. But as I said before, many of her most beautiful remarks simply did not register. Cinema audiences are so accustomed to putting their rapt souls into their eyes that they can spare little attention for any dialogue more complicated than the normal American stuff.

                        The part of the medium was played with terrific bravura by Margt. Rutherford who was in the original play but has never been in films before. In her spasmodic and quite irrelevant intensity she reminded me of that old infant mistress you had in Wellfield.

                       I'll be able to get the VJ days added to my next leave which will bring it up to almost a fortnight. Roughly what dates do you think I should try for? If you intend to be punctual I should like to be present for the event and walk up and down outside the door in the recognised fashion. I might even faint if your nurses are sufficiently attractive!

                      Sweetheart, I'm longing to be with you for always and it shouldn't be too long now before we are finished with this business of separation. Our life together fills all my thoughts of the future, even though I'll no longer be able to claim all your attention!

...

Note: Some of these links are fascinating: there's a trailer for Blithe Spirit on YouTube and photos of schools in the north of Glasgow at various times in their history.