Introduction 

In the autumn of 1943, a 29-year-old former postal clerk from north London named Chris Barker found himself at a loose end on the Libyan coast. He had joined the army the year before, and was now serving in the Royal Corps of Signals near Tobruk. He saw little action: after morning parade and a few chores he usually settled down to a game of chess, or whist, or one of the regular films shipped in from England. His biggest worries were rats, fleas and flies; the war mostly seemed to be happening elsewhere.

Barker was self-educated, a bookish sort. He fancied himself as the best debater in his unit, and he wrote a lot of letters. He wrote to his family and former Post Office colleagues, and an old family friend called Deb. He wrote about the local food and customs, and the occasional trip away from camp with his brother Bert. On Sunday, 5 September 1943, he found a spare hour to write to a woman named Bessie Moore. Bessie had also been a Post Office counter clerk, and was now working in the Foreign Office as a Morse code interpreter. They had once attended a training course together at Abbey Wood in south-east London, a time she recalled with greater fondness and precision than he did. Before the war they had written to each other about politics and union matters, and about their ambitions and hopes for the future. But it had always been a platonic relationship; Bessie was stepping out with a man called Nick, and Chris’s first letter as a soldier was addressed to both of them. Bessie’s reply, which took her several weeks to compose and almost two months to arrive, would change their lives forever. 

We do not have this letter, but we may judge it to be unexpectedly enthusiastic. By their third exchange, it was clear to both of them they had ignited a fervour that would not easily be extinguished. In under a year, the couple were planning marriage. But there were complications, such as not actually seeing each other, or remembering quite what the other looked like. And then there were other obstacles: bombs, enemy capture, illness, comical misunderstandings, disapproval from friends, fear of the censor. 

More than 500 of their letters survive, and this book distils the most alluring, compelling and heart-warming. It is a remarkable correspondence, not least because it captures an indefatigable love story. There is no holding back, and the modern reader is swept along in a gushing sea of yearning, lust, fear, regret and relentlessly candid emotion. Perhaps only those with steel hearts will fail to acknowledge an element of their own romantic past in this passionate tide. But there is so much more to enjoy, some of it banal, much of it humorous (that is, humorous to us, while evidently vital to them), all of it composed with a deft and elegant touch.

The vast majority of these letters are from Chris; most of Bessie’s were burnt by Chris to save space in his kitbag and conceal their intimacy from prying eyes. But she is present on almost every page, Chris responding to her most recent observations as if they were talking in adjacent rooms. We follow their transactions with the eagerness of a soap opera fan; the main villain is the war itself, closely followed by those they berate for keeping them apart. The erratic nature of the postal service as Chris moves from North Africa to hotspots in Greece and Italy is another bugbear, though it is also a constant wonder that the letters got through at all. We fear for both of them; the greater their joy, the more we anticipate disaster.

Chris and Bessie met only twice between his first letter in September 1943 and his demobilisation in May 1946, and their postal romance describes a fitful and compacted arc. Older readers may recall the advertising campaign for Fry’s chocolate bars, a treat Chris particularly enjoyed. In the adverts, five boys are each depicted with a different facial trait: Desperation, Pacification, Expectation, Acclamation, Realisation. We get a similar range in this correspondence, not always in that order, often within a single letter. We pass swiftly from overwhelming physical compulsion to domestic furnishings. But we detect no hint of irony from the writers: they just let rip. Many of their letters were several pages long and contained fleeting and dutiful observations of little interest to us today. There is also much repetition, not least of their romantic yearnings. Occasionally, Chris embarks on extended philosophical discussions of trade unionism, family politics and the state of the world in general. In my attempt to present a progressive and engaging narrative, I have chosen to retain only the most relevant, substantial and engrossing details. Accordingly, many letters from Chris have not been included at all, while others have been trimmed to a few paragraphs. 

Who were these two people? What occupied their thoughts before each other? Horace Christopher Barker (or Holl to his parents) was born on 12 January 1914, and the austerity of the period never left him. His father, a professional soldier, spent the Great War in India and Mesopotamia, and later became a postman (with a sideline in emptying public phone boxes of their coins). Chris was brought up first in Holloway, north London, and then four miles away in Tottenham. When he left Drayton Park school at the untimely age of fourteen his headmaster’s leaving report noted the departure of ‘a thoroughly reliable boy, honest and truthful, and a splendid worker. His conduct throughout was excellent: he was one of the school prefects and carried out his duties well. He was very intelligent.’

His father had lined up a job for him in the Post Office, confident of a secure, if predictable, lifelong career. Chris began as an indoor messenger boy in the money order department, fared well at the PO training school, and found a position as a counter clerk in the Eastern Division. His passions were journalism and trade unionism, and he combined them in his regular columns in several Post Office weeklies. He was a pedantic, reliable, headstrong man. Not the life of the party, perhaps, but a solid fellow to have in your corner. He was certainly no Casanova. 

The Barker family moved to a semi-detached ‘villa’ in Bromley, Kent, shortly before the outbreak of war, and Chris lived there until 1942. His training as a teleprinter operator ensured his status in a reserved occupation before the demand for army reinforcements brought him first to a training camp in Yorkshire in 1942, and then to North Africa. 

Bessie Irene Moore (known as Rene or Renee to her family and some friends) was born on 26 October 1913, two years after her brother Wilfred, and she spent her early years in Peckham Rye, south London. She had two other siblings, neither of whom survived infancy. Her father, also called Wilfred, was another ‘lifer’ at the Post Office. Bessie won a scholarship to her secondary school, passed her exams with credit, and became a postal and telegraph officer in the female-only offices in the South Eastern, Western and West Central districts. She shared Chris’s view that there could be no more worthwhile employment, filled with human incident and variety, and dedicated to public service. 

Bessie was twenty-five when she moved with her family to Blackheath in 1938. The Moores enjoyed a relatively prosperous lifestyle, taking regular holidays to the seaside and frequent trips to West End theatre. Bessie particularly admired the work of George Bernard Shaw and Kipling, and developed an interest in gardening and handicrafts. Shortly after the outbreak of war, her training in Morse led to a job at the Foreign Office deciphering intercepted German radio messages. She endured the Blitz and engaged in fire-watching duties, and volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force until her mother died in 1942 and she began looking after her father. When her relationship with her boyfriend Nick broke up in 1943 she believed she had wasted far too much energy in the pursuit of love. 

I first came across Chris and Bessie’s letters in April 2013. I was completing my book To the Letter, a eulogy to the vanishing art of letter-writing, and I was becoming increasingly aware that what my book lacked was, unpredictably, letters. More specifically, it lacked letters written by people who weren’t famous. I had been concentrating on Pliny the Younger, Jane Austen, Ted Hughes, Elvis Presley and the Queen Mother, and I had been talking to archivists about how historians will soon struggle to document our lives from texts and tweets. It became clear that what the book needed was a significant example of the ability of letters to transform ordinary lives. 

And then I had a stroke of luck. I had mentioned my book to Fiona Courage, curator of the Mass Observation archive at the University of Sussex, of which I am a trustee. She mentioned the recent arrival of a comprehensive collection of papers of a man called Chris Barker, a pile of boxes that included newspaper articles, photos, documents and many letters – a musty, lifelong stash. I arranged to visit the archive immediately. After ten minutes in a room with the letters I was sure that his correspondence with Bessie Moore was just what I was looking for. Within an hour I was close to tears. 

That these were valuable documents would have been evident to the first historian to encounter them. Almost all their letters were handwritten, many dashed off with evident hurry and distress. (The physicality of correspondence is another pleasure all but lost to us now, and one need only look at the manic array of stamps and inscriptions and directions on the outer wrappers to understand that these letters did not enjoy a smooth journey.) Shortly after my visit I was talking to the man responsible for 8 placing the papers at the archive, asking to use some of them in my book. I expressed the distant hope that they may one day form a book of their own. Permission granted, I selected about 20,000 words from just over half a million, and interleaved them within my existing chapters. 

When my book was published a few months later, readers responded to Chris and Bessie with enthusiasm; rather too many said they skipped through the main chapters to discover what happened to the couple next. Shortly afterwards, Chris and Bessie featured in a series of performance events called Letters Live, where superb readings from Benedict Cumberbatch, Louise Brealey, Lisa Dwan, Kerry Fox, Patrick Kennedy and David Nichols won them even more fans. And so, by what I can genuinely claim to be popular demand, here is a fuller account of their story.

What lessons may we learn from their exchanges? First, that the generous intimacy of letters casts a spell like no other. Grand histories have no time for the peevish minutiae of the infested billet or the unfortunate wartime shopping purchase, much less the silent devotion of lowly combatants. But beyond the grand sweep of adventure, it is these incidentals that hold us most: the Larkinesque disappointment of the film show; the jealous sideswipe at a former companion; the corduroy trousers ahead of their time; the cadging austerity that wormed its way into the soul; the way a postal delay brought on by a thunderclap over France could cause a person to fear the very worst.

Secondly, we know that Chris was a breast man. He had all the standard urges of a healthy male in his lustful prime, compounded by desert deprivation. The sexual highlight of the 9 week was too often a man dressed as a woman in a touring variety show. Chris did not fail to express this hormonal bottling. In my edit – reducing more than half a million words to about 85,000 – the simplest task was trimming the references to Bessie’s chest, and his desire to embrace it in a multitude of original ways. One imagines that even Bessie would have tired of this malarkey after a while, although perhaps not. It is clear from her letters that she needed constant reassurance that he was not going off her; moreover, her own frequent references to her anatomy seemed certain to arouse him further. (In the second half of their correspondence, having seemingly satisfied his urges, Chris shifts his lustful gaze towards the purchase of carpets.)

It is also clear that they wrote with far more passion than they could ever express in person. Chris repeatedly regrets being tongue-tied and ineffective during their two intermediate meetings. Their graphic intentions may have gone some way to alleviating the sheer damn dreariness of it all (‘We put up a tent. We take it down,’ Chris writes at the war’s end with the weight of all the wasted years upon him). 

I am certain that for years to come we will read these letters with a sense of wonder and delight. Something magical happens here, as well as something commonplace. The postal service to which Chris and Bessie dedicated their lives in turn rewarded them – and us. In the many years that followed their written romance, the couple lived to tell their tale. But they never told it like this.

What appeals to me in particular is the lack of heroics. Our correspondents are vulnerable, fearful, occasionally pitiful. They frequently berate themselves for their thoughts and actions. Yet it would be hard to imagine a more immediate expression of naive, 10 rambling and utterly candid engagement. When the war is still, the couple create their own turmoil. When rockets fill the air, their own turmoil becomes an even greater reason for survival. I’m tempted to suggest that, while unannounced in the grand Churchillian speeches, it was for the likes of Chris and Bessie that we were fighting; not so much for the sunlit English pasture as the freedom to unite lovers upon it. 11 

1

A Smashing Reply

5 September 1943

14232134 SIGNALMAN BARKER H.C., BASE DEPOT, ROYAL SIGNALS, MIDDLE EAST FORCES 

[Tobruk, North Africa] 

Dear Bessie,

Since Auld Acquaintance should not be forgot, and I have had a letter to Nick and yourself on my conscience for some time, I now commence some slight account of my movements since arrival here some five months ago, and one or two other comments which will edify, amuse or annoy you according to the Britishers’ war-time diet or whatever you had for breakfast. 

The ‘security’ advice of a Signals officer that in our travels we should keep our bowels open and our mouths shut seemed not to have been heard by the populace en route for our port of disembarkation. Wherever they were, they shouted ‘hooray’, waved Union Jacks and cryptically gave the ‘V’ sign. 12 

The behaviour of the troops on board ship was bad. They shouted, shoved, swore and stole to their black hearts’ content. I lost about a dozen items of kit, and was able to replace most of it from the odds left about on the disembarkation date by chaps who had first pinched for the fine fun of it. I cannot include my razor in this lot. That was removed from the ledge I had placed it on, as I turned to get a towel to wipe it. 

Our disembarkation arrangements were perfect and after a not uncomfortable rail journey we were brought to the above address. I had expected to be parked on a pile of sand, and told it was ‘home’, but the depot is a very pleasant place, surrounded by pine and eucalyptus trees and spotted with frequently irrigated earth-gardens where grow wallflowers, daisies etc. The water comes from a tap, and one sits down to meals. There is a church hut, quiet and fly-free, an Army Educational Corps hut, where are excellent books, a good NAAFI* (so far as these autocratic institutions can be good) and a cinema. 

A little further away is a tent, run by voluntary labour, where refreshments are served (not thrown at one) at reasonable prices, and there is a lounge, library, writing room, games room, and open air theatre, where a free film show takes place weekly, also a concert. There is a lecture one night, bridge and whist another, and a more ‘highbrow’ musical evening another night. 

Directly I arrived, my brother applied for my posting to his unit, and after two months of Base life I started on the wearying but interesting journey to him. I met him, after a separation of 26 months, and had a fine time talking of home and all that had happened there – the rows and the rejoicing – and in the evening walked through the sandy vineyard to swim in the blue waters. 

Since leaving the Post Office Counter School and joining the Army, a period of twelve years, I had little real rest. I was either actually on the counter or doing some Union work. If I did relax, it was not for long and I was conscious of being guilty. Since joining (or being joined to) HM Forces, I have had a great deal of leisure, and I have spent most of it reading and writing. 

Oh, the Pyramids; yes, I have seen them, sat on them, and thought what a gigantic case for Trade Unionism they present. How many unwilling slaves died in the colossal toil involved in erecting these edifices? And how insignificant the erection compared with Nature’s own hills and mountains?

I visited the Cairo Zoo, happily in the company of two young Egyptians who were being educated at the American mission. They made the day a success. The cruelty of having a polar bear (noble creature) in this climate, and the effort to console him with a 10 second cold water dip!

Excuse the writing, and confusion of this effort. But it’s me, alright. I hope you are OK Nick, It’s a long way from our Lantern Lecture on Sunny Spain at Kingsway Hall!

All the best, Bessie. 

Chris 

14 December 1943

Dear Bessie,

I received yesterday your surface letter of 20th October. I read it avidly as from an old pal, noting that though time has chattanooga’ed along, your style remains pretty much as it was in the days when we had that terrifically intense and wonderfully sincere correspondence about Socialism and the Rest Of It, unlike the present time, when, hornswoggling old hypocrite that I am, the Rest Of It seems infinitely more attractive. Thanks for the letter, old-timer. I am sending this by Air Mail because it will have enough dull stuff in it to sink a Merchant ship. 

Yes, I remember our discussions over ‘ACQUAINTANCE’ and my views are still as much ‘for’ as yours remain ‘against’. I have, perhaps, one hundred acquaintances (I write to fifty) yet I could number my friends on one hand. The dictionary:-

ACQUAINTANCE: a person known. FRIEND: one attached to another by affection and esteem.

You are known to me, and while I have affection for you it does not amount to an attachment. 

I am sorry that Nick and you are ‘no longer’, as you put it, and that you should have wasted so much time because of his lack of courage. You must have had a rotten time of it, and I do sympathise with you – but are you writing to the right bloke? I’ll say you are! Joan gave me my ‘cards’ a couple of months back, though I had seen them coming since April, when I got my first letters. 

I can quite believe your estimate of the way the London-leave soldier improves the shining-hour. You can understand chaps who get three or four days leave before a campaign opens, painting the town red, but unfortunately quite a large number who are in comfortable Base jobs have their regular unpleasant habits. When I was at Base our evening passes bore the injunction ‘Brothels Out of Bounds. Consorting with Prostitutes Forbidden.’ Where we collected the passes there was a large painted sign, ‘Don’t Take a Chance, Ask the Medical Orderly for a –’ doodah. The whole emphasis of Army Propaganda is ‘Be Careful’, even the wretched Padre at Thirsk, when he said a few words of farewell, said merely that most foreign women were diseased, and we should be careful. 

At the Pyramids when I found a preventative on the place I had chosen to sit down on, I thought it was a nice combination of Ancient and Modern! Whoever told you Pyramids told the time was pulling your leg. No iron or steel was used, cranes or pulleys. Ropes and Levers only. Their erection was due to Superb Organisation, Flesh and Blood, Ho Heave Ho, and all the other paraphernalia of human effort.

I bumped back along the desert road, meeting my brother very easily and getting him successfully transferred into my Section. We share the same tent and this situation suits us fine. We discuss everything in common, and have a fine old time. 

Much rain lately has made an ornamental lake of the wide flatness; but we have now got grass and some tiny flowers where before was merely sand. I have transplanted some of the flowers into a special patch we have made into a garden. Bert and I play chess most of our spare-time, on a set we made with wire and a broom-handle. There are some dogs about the camp which is far from anywhere. No civilians. We have two pigs fattening for Xmas, poor blighters, though I believe the uxorious male has given the sow hope of temporary reprieve. 

I hope you hear regularly from your brother and that your Dad and yourself are in good health.

Good wishes,

Chris 

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.17 

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. 

27 February 1944

Dear Bessie,

Letters take such a long time, and I am so keen on remaining in good touch with you that I have decided to write you fairly regularly, irrespective of the replies received, until such time as I detect that you are disinterested, or it appears that our present happy association is not so happy. 

So on to our pigs – yesterday came the day for the male (boar) to be sent away for slaughter. Half a dozen of us were detailed to hold various parts of the massive, dirty, unfortunate creature, while the man who knows all about pigs got a bucket firmly wedged over the poor thing’s head and snout. I was originally deputed to take hold of the right ear, but in the opening melee found myself grasping the right leg, which I held on to firmly as it lumbered out of the sty, and heaved on heavily as, somehow, despite a terrific struggle and the most heartrending screams, we got it on the lorry, which was to be its hearse. In the afternoon it met its man-determined fate, and this morning as I came away from dinner, I saw its tongue, its heart, liver and a leg, hanging from the cookhouse roof. I had my doubts about eating it in the days when it was half the eighteen stone it weighed at death. But now I have none. I certainly can’t help eat the poor old bloke. The sow lives on, she has a large and sore looking undercarriage, and will be a Mother in three weeks. I suppose we shall eat her progeny in due course. 

I recently made application for ‘The Africa Star,’ which most chaps here are wearing. I have first heard that I am to get it. When you know that I arrived out on April 16th and the hostilities ceased May 12th, you can see how very easily medals are gained. It is the same very often with awards supposedly for gallantry.

My Dad, a thorough going old Imperialist, will be delighted that he can talk about two sons with the medal, and mentally they will be dangling with his – EIGHT altogether, though his nearest point to danger was really the Siege of Ladysmith (in a war maybe you would have condemned?). Since the war, my Dad has had medal ribbons fitted on most of his jackets and waistcoats, and goes shopping with them all a’showing! My Mother comes in bemoaning the fact that there is no suet to be had. Dad comes in with a valuable half-a-pound he extracted from a medal-conscious shopkeeper. I can tell you plenty about my Dad, who has many faults and the one redeeming virtue that he is all for his family, right or wrong.

I have just seen a Penguin, Living in Cities, very attractively setting forth some principles of post-war building. I always think how well off we suburban dwellers are compared with the people who live in places like Roseberry Avenue or Bethnal Green Road, and die there, too, quite happily since they never knew what they missed.

I saw a suggestion for a new house to have a built-in bookcase, or place for it, and thought this a rather good idea. I have often sighed for some shabby volume in the short time I have been away from home. I carry with me now only an Atlas, a dictionary, Thoreau’s Walden (ever glanced at it – a philosophy), Selected Passages from R.L. Stevenson, and The Shropshire Lad, by Housman.

Do you remember when we did some electioneering? Was it at Putney? I would have enjoyed being at Acton lately, as I read in the local Gazette (sent to the other chap in our tent) that one of the candidates (later withdrew) was walking around with a steel helmet bearing slogans on it, and a big notice urgently advising electors to buy potatoes and store them under the bed. Did you vote in 1935 (I did) and with what result? Maybe we can get together for a bit of postwar canvassing? 

Cheerio, friend. 

Chris. 

6 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I hope I am not guilty of indecent haste if I commence another letter only a week after my last. I cannot claim that anything special has happened (in fact, thank Goodness it hasn’t) but I am brimming over with many things to tell you, my confidante, and it will be a long (and I hope a pleasurable for both of us) time before I have really unloaded my cargo of news, ideas, tales, things that have occurred since I left the country on February 24th last year, and also some of the things that occurred before then. 

I have just come away from the pictures, the mobile van, screen at the bottom of a slope and projector at the top, with the audience seated in the dip. Not bad tonight; two news reels only six months old and Girl Trouble, Don Ameche and Joan Bennett, fair entertainment as films go, quite a little smart talk which I rather enjoy. 

This afternoon I was just going off to sleep when my Sergeant woke me and (despite my protests that I was on night duty tonight) told me I must report at 3 o’clock for the ABCA (Army Bureau of Current Affairs) Spelling Bee. I went along there and suggested it be abandoned in favour of a discussion on ‘strikes in wartime’, and we did discuss strikes, fairly interestingly. The strange thing about most of these affairs is that so very few people can open their mouths to any effect in public. I am always congratulated on my contribution and looked at with greater respect afterwards by my companions – this ‘Gift of the Gab’ as it is called, is a dangerous thing for the welfare of the people. I am very suspicious of good talkers, very attentive to the stutterer. 

From the pictures, I had intended going straight to the other farce out here, The Egyptian Mail, our daily newspaper, and The Egyptian Gazette, its Evening (which we do not get) and Sunday consort. I am sending you a few copies in order that you can see what a hotch-potch of old news and English newspaper rubbish it is. It has frequent typographical errors, and is very unreliable. It puts the wrong headlines to news items, and is more amusing than informative. Once it said the Aga Khan had come fourth in a horse race, another time that Somerset had declared at cricket 1301 – 7.

I am not sorry you did not join the WAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force], because most of the chaps seem to regard uniformed women as uniformly willing to be pawed about. One of the girls in my district used to push her breasts into my stomach (it seems that she was a little short! – anyhow, I used to feel it was like that) and hold my arm, every time she saw me. This was around 1937–39, not in the younger days, when I thought, like most youths, that I was handsome. Anyhow, this girl joined the WAAFs shortly after war was declared. And I don’t think it was patriotism. 

It is the usual practice to swop our free issue of 50 cigarettes weekly for eggs, 10 for 1 egg. We also get 2 boxes of matches; these also fetch an egg each. We do not get many Arabs round here, but in other parts you can get a live chicken for 40 cigarettes. They may be scraggy things, but I am told they eat well. Of course, all trading with the Arabs is strictly forbidden, but goes on just the same.

And now away. I am going to have a few busy thoughtful days, as tonight got the job of opposing the motion ‘That woman’s place is the home,’ at the first of some debates I have helped to get going here. Am quite looking forward to it. It’s like old times!

Good wishes always,

Chris

13 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

It looks as though Air Mail is wunnerful quick these days, your Letter Card of 5.4.44 having fallen into my waiting hand only a couple of hours ago. You must use LCs more and hang the expense, for if your sea-mail is anything like this LC. I shall be writing you poetry in a few weeks. 

It seems that my frankness has not been without its effect on you. For there you are (I was about to write ‘here you are’ till cruel geography poked me) ready, even eager, to go back seven or eight years to Abbey Wood, and here am I so ready to embrace the project, if not you. How far distance has lent enchantment to the view, and disappointment gilded the scene, only events will show. But I warn you now against any prospect of me doing ‘the honourable thing’, and beg you to note that I have not yet, in my pastime ‘affairs’, done anything dishonourable. If you are hopeful, willing, expectant, it is in opposition to the facts, for I confess myself unlikely to possess in the future much more capacity than to entertain (howbeit brightly) as a rascal rogue, roué or rake. So let there be no hugger-mugger about it. – A kind of ‘Mistakes cannot afterwards be rectified’ spirit must reign as you invite me to change your pound, and, I gleefully hand you £19 6s. and a dud tanner* you are only too pleased to accept. I hope you will understand the metaphor. Euphemisms are so bracing.

Keep on talking about yourself. I promise that I shall treat you gently. Whatever may be true about men concerning themselves with things rather than people (about which I will write at length later) let you and I consider ourselves: – my Army Book 64 tells me I was born 12.1.14, and that at enlistment I was Church of England; 5 ft 9 ins., 143 lbs., Max. Chest 36 ins., Complexion: Fresh; Eyes: Blue. Hair: Brown! (It doesn’t say I was going bald but it’s the awful truth!) 

I am glad my last letter sent your spirit rocketing sky-high. But please to remember the Fifth of November and what happens to the rockets when their celestial brilliance is ended. They descend to earth, flat as a pancake, so don’t start understudying for the lead in another ‘Punctured Romance’; although I am an old (30 years) hypocrite, and when you say you find me ‘so satisfying’, I cannot help but think of circumstances in which you really would do so. But this is all very naughty and Chris-like. 

Now to exult as I read you again; to write you some more; and consider the promise that is YOU.

Chris

14 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I had not expected that my Air Mail letter would travel so quickly, and am delighted that you should already have it, and have spent some time, probably, in reading it. At the moment, and for the present, there isn’t a shadow of doubt that we are both in the same mutually approving mood, and that if we were within smiling distance of each other, we should soon be doing rather more than that. Of course, maybe the safety of our separate distances permits us to indulge in these happy advances. Perhaps we would beat hasty retreats into our shells if we knew that the seeds we are now sowing were due for early reaping. I might be on another planet for all the chance there is of hearing you say the good things you’ve written. But how much I enjoy you, how jolly fine it is to know that you really do understand what I write, when only a little while ago I was saying that I felt like Marconi would have done on the morrow of his invention, had all the world gone deaf.

If I had the chance, I might do a lot of things, or nothing. As it is I shall remain very polite and become as friendly as I dare without undertaking obligations I have no intention of fulfilling. I am safe from physical indiscretion for a long while, but I am also wanting you seriously to see that while we might have fun (certainly I could laugh heartily at the moment!) at a later date, it would not be so funny for you ultimately. I can’t help being your hero – and I breathe heavily and exultingly at your clear, bare admittance; but please don’t let me make you break your heart in 1946 or 47, when I scurry off with ‘one, two, three, or more.’ If I was a wise guy I would not write you and thus encourage your racing thoughts. I admit to a state of gleaming, dangerous excitement as I read again and again your written words. You fascinate and weaken me, and make me feel strong. Presumably you wrote the same in the old days (in an earlier letter I said I was hazy even about any letters), have I become so much more susceptible to flattery, or is the change due to the fact that I have been away from home fourteen months, and haven’t seen a woman (other than about four on a stage) in the last six? 

Don’t be a man-worshipper, or an anything-worshipper if you would be happy. The main difference, emotionally, between men and women, is said to be that a woman is loyal to one man always, but that a man’s attention wanders more than a little. This sex item is the biggest there is, apart from the instinct to survive, because no one is impervious to it and it controls us always. 

I believe and I deplore that too many people with Left views think they must free-love, be vegetarians, atheists, walk on the wrong side of the road, and so on. I think I have mentioned that one chap of 18 who I met in hospital told me he had ‘had’ 35 girls, several on the first day of meeting. This ‘loyalty’ of the woman has been blown sky-high during this war – one of the chaps here asked his girl why she hadn’t written for six weeks, and she replied she had been busy, didn’t he know there was a war on?! You say that men have a ‘much more powerful nervous force’ – I’m not sure I know what this means, but I am quite sure that a chap in love (while he is in that happy state) feels it as deeply as his lady. Perhaps it doesn’t last so long, but while it does it is pretty potent.

In your letter-card you say ‘I regret to admit I am feminine,’ and later on, ‘forgive me for being all feminine’ – yet, of course, you know that you are bristling femininity now, quite unregretful and not desiring to be forgiven. You know I am male and for the once attentive, therefore you don’t want to be anything but female. You want your old hero to be your new lover. What a pity that they have just given me my mosquito net for my second summer, and not a ticket for an air journey home. I am writing these particular words at midnight 13.3.44 – I could have breakfast with you on the 14th, if only one or two people would co-operate. It might be a little late, but what matter. Here am I, wondering when I last saw you and what you look like. I have an idea, I wish I could confirm by personal investigation. Do you still smoke? – a bad habit.

Expectant, willing, and compliant as you are, I seem to have discovered you anew. I find you very warm and appetising. I rejoice at our intimacy for the present. I simply wallow in your friendly sentiments which I feel as keenly as if a couple of seas and a continent did not separate us. You have smashed my perimeter defences, I am all of a hub-bub, and as I write my cheeks are red and I am hot. When I finish one letter to you, I want to start again on another, as today. I hope that I shall often have something to comment on, rather than initiate my own discussions. I know this strange unity of expression and understanding cannot last, for I feel just as though I was sitting at your feet. This is bound to peter out sooner or later. You say ‘here’s to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’ 

You are a terrific love-maker by letter. I can but wonder what you are like at it in the soft, warm, yielding, panting flesh. Please pardon the rub-out, and the re-writing hereabouts. Truth is that with the morning I became timid and decided on deletion. Let me go back a few lines, say that I can but wonder, and warmly do.

I must avoid writing one whole letter slobbering, however pleasant it is for both of us, I must make a pretence of telling you all about our camp. ‘Jeannie’, for example, has had seven pups, two of which have been drowned in order to give her a better chance. She had them on Friday, and on Monday she was racing about after her bête noire – desert rats. The other mother, the sow, has hardly energy to move. At least eight are expected shortly. Our picture on Saturday (luckily I was on duty) was as childish as the previous two I have described earlier. Stars Over Texas. Stage Coach hold-ups, and pistol duels. We are getting more than disgusted.

Having interposed that sentence I can return to our new thrilling relationship, to be fully enjoyed while it lasts, and unlamented when it is done. I am ‘all for you, dear’ and the prospect of soaking in you, luxuriously for a while, of touching you where you will let me, from here, is absorbingly, naturally, before us.

Chris

15 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I suppose that Spring out here has the same effect on a young man’s fancy as it is popularly supposed to do at home, because I sent you a LC on the 13th, an a.m. Letter on the 14th, and here again, for the third day running, I am putting pen to paper to relieve my rushing thoughts, which are all about and of you. Unfortunately we only get one green envelope and one LC a week, but the latter is censored in the unit and therefore not suitable for my purpose. We only get one of this LC type monthly, and here I am spending two months’ supply in three days. What does your Father think of your several letters, and do tell me that it is still you I am writing to, and not you, plus Iris, plus Cliffie, plus –?

For goodness sake disregard everything I have said that sounds the least endearing. This is a fever that I have which makes me hot and dispossesses my mental faculties whenever I think of you, which is more and more often. It is irrational, illogical, nonsensical. I am hopelessly lost in contemplation of YOU – and I last saw you – when? Yet I have heard from you – applauding, approving, invigorating. I feel a King. I think I made a mistake about you years ago and I rush to make amends – yet I cannot rush physically to you though I positively ooze appreciative emotions and impulses. 

Tonight I have to speak for fifteen minutes in that ‘Woman’s Place is the Home’ Debate. I should be deciding what I am to say, and how. But here I am, improvidently assuring you of my poor surgings. In a month or two, I may revert to brusque bonhomie. For the present I am entirely ‘gone’ at the thought of you being in the same world. You suggest in your LC that men are less emotional than women. I, at least, am as emotional as you. I revel in your sentiments, I return them in full. Whatever the reason, for whatever the period, at this moment, you have me. To be sensible, I should withhold all this, to avoid your inevitable later disappointment. But I simply cannot. I was quite OK before I got your first letter. I was rational, objective. But now that you have my ear – I must give you my heart as well! No doubt it is wrong, certainly it is indiscreet, to blurt out such things when the future laughs that only present conditions make me like this. But I am like this. I am always consulting my diary to see how soon you will get my letters, wondering how soon I will get yours. I feel that you are doing exactly the same, and share my upset. I can’t do anything without wanting to put my hand out to you, to touch you. I know you would encourage me. I find you wonderful, you delight me and thrill me and engross me. But as I said earlier, disregard these purely Spring emotions. I might mean it very much today, but it is tomorrow that matters in such affairs, and I am certain to revoke a dozen times in the long tomorrow. This is a real sane note to end on, as I sit here, hot-faced and desirous, ready for you as you are ready for me.

I am but a miserable sinner!

Chris 

19 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

Here again to greet you, four letters in four days – and really wanting to write four each day. Stupid and silly, but since my thoughts are around you and I am pulsating still, I am going to follow Oscar Wilde’s advice ‘The only way to resist temptation is to succumb to it’. Really, you should reply to me that I am an ass, and that you have been kind enough to burn my words before I want to eat them. But I am sure that you won’t, and that almost for certain you are down with the same ailment, wanting me the same as I want you.

I want to say I’m sorry for Abbey Wood and the opportunity I missed. I want you to say you’re sorry I’m miles and time away from you, that you fully welcome me, and glory in my present affected state. I warn you of the transient nature of my emotions. I cannot say I love you, because tomorrow I shall be sorry for doing so.

Do not tell me anything you do not feel. And of what you feel, please tell me everything. Discard dignity and discretion and live knowingly. Tell me what you think, in your letter that is not liable to be censored like this one. You delight and thrill and excite me. I want to touch you, to feel you, to possess you.

Now to the impersonal part: The Debate took place OK. Everyone was there, forty in all. The proposer was a decent chap, a Scottish signalman. His seconder was a Major, mine was a Lieutenant, jolly good chap, also a Scot. I had heard that my opponent was a good speaker, and I had wondered if I would fail to shine. I need have had no doubts. He had written his speech word for word and read it from the paper, which he held in his hand. I’ve a bad memory, and at present, anyhow, I am more concerned with the possibilities of you. After the almost grim speech of my opponent, I just got up and sparkled. I made them laugh when I wanted them to. I just had them in my hand. I had to stop at fifteen minutes, but I could have gone on for fifty. Imagine how cockahoop I was – I was far and away the best speaker there. After all this – and we were overwhelmingly argumentatively superior – the vote ended 35 for 5 against. In other words, man’s deep prejudice was undisturbed by argument.

This afternoon I visited our hospital, some fifteen miles off. At an exchange a couple of hundred miles away there was a chap with a very high-pitched voice, just like a nagging wife; I had not heard him for a couple of days, and on enquiring his whereabouts was told he had collided with a grenade. So I thought I would pay him a visit and cheer him up. He was very lucky, and only got badly sprinkled with shrapnel. No fingers or hands off. He is said to be 17 years old. He looks 15. I got a lift (there is a nice ‘taxi’ spirit on the road here) there in a truck which was taking [a man] to hospital with smallpox. I hope I don’t get it!

Coming back to the camp, I found a tortoise, not more than three inches long. I put it in a grassy tin to show my brother; during the three hours it was confined it made ceaseless efforts to get out, and when my brother had seen it, I sent it on its travels again. Once, we despatched one after writing ‘Barker’ in indelible pencil, on its back! A horrible thought is that many of the beetles around hereabouts are the same size.

I trust you to receive me gently and forgivingly, not to expose me to the ridicule of the third party, and let me go quietly when the storm within me has subsided.

Chris

20 March 1944 

Dear Bessie,

Life here is not bad if events elsewhere are borne in mind. I should like to watch the ducks in St. James’ Park, but I daresay they themselves get a bit scared at the nightly display of human ingenuity, 1944 model.

In these parts I daresay we take (perhaps I should say, ‘I take’) a greater interest in ‘human’ things than we would do at home. A sow is due to have young – that means a daily visit to the sty. She has them. Before breakfast that day I take my first look at piggywigs four hours old. The camp dog, Jeannie, produces seven lovely little pups. It’s a treat to see them snugly around her and a lark to speculate on their parentage. We once had a cat who had six kittens. The day they were born the presumed father did a bunk and hasn’t been seen since. Of course, he might have gone up in smoke, following contact with one of the thousands of mines still littered around here. 

I hope you are OK and fairly happy. If you ever get a chance to come abroad – don’t.

All the best,

Yours sincerely,

Chris 

21 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I was surprisedly delighted to get your LC of 12th, today. It’s a blooming nuisance how other people take such a keen interest in ‘affairs’. The only way of holding them at bay is to tell them nothing. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive’ my Mother used to say to me. I’ve deceived a little since I first heard that. Accordingly, I enclose a letter you can leave in a bus without giving me heart failure. If you think my friend Ivy (of whom more later) would be interested, what more natural than that you should show it her? Please, please, let my admittance of you to my heart be a splendid secret for us both, to be enjoyed so long as it lasts, and remembered pleasurably if and when it ceases. 

You will be replying to letters I haven’t precise remembrance of. A pity, since I very much want your reactions. I want to know whether you are feeling in the same exalted state as me, and I hope you’ll ‘let me have it’ anyhow. I have felt increasingly nervous about your reception of some of my words. I can only ask you to read them as though they were poetry and not regard me as altogether mad. I may be sorry that you will no longer think of me as the ‘strong, silent’ type. But if I gabble now it is because your approach has found me in a weak spot. I must tell you of the feelings that you have aroused, because for the once I am primitive and the respectability veneer is off. It is not easy to write when, at one point, a letter may be censored, and I hope you’ll make allowances. I think you will have gathered by now that I am like a raging torrent, and as you know there is no arguing with such things. I am impatient and intolerant of anything but you, and although I am bound to discuss nonentities and mediocrities, through it all I want you strongly.

Need I say I am waiting to get your next letter and the next, and the next? And that it is good to know you exist.

PS The other letter can be suitably produced if you get an enquiry – ‘Heard from Chris Barker lately?’ ‘Yes, typical letter’ the reply!

26 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

This war will delay many marriages as it will cause others. I shall either marry quickly (and take the consequences) or court for about ten years, by which time you’d know your future wife as well as your own mother.

Did I mention I’d seen Shadow of a Doubt during the week? It was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, ought to have been good, and for photography and direction, certainly was. (Do you hate or approve Orson Wells – Citizen Kane whirled me round a hundred times, but I believe I bit it, and I liked its different-ness.) 39 

My brother was out on a run. As I walked along in the rapidly fading light I saw a familiar slip on the ground, and picked up – an Egyptian pound-note! I hope it came from an officer but I fear that the wind whisked it from a fellow-other-ranker. I was delighted to find it (‘Unto them that hath shall be given’) as my brother is always finding odd coins, notes, valuables. We share luck, and I happily preened myself as I handed him his 10s. just now. The last time I found any large amount was when I was taken as a 9 year old, by my brother, to the AA Sports at Stamford Bridge (I got separated from him in the Underground – those new automatic closing doors were just coming in – remember the guard at the old trellis-pattern gates?). I found a purse, containing 19s. 11d. and a visiting card. My Mother returned it, and with such a horrible ‘you ought to be thankful an honest person found it’ air, that the poor young girl remitted a 5s. reward to me, almost by return post. I always felt the small fortune was a little tainted.

How do you get on in the Air Raids? I hope you continue to have good luck. If we were together I guarantee we could ignore them, just as I want to ignore everything now, so that I may touch you. And I want to do that badly.

Is your Dad in the PO? Mine retired a month after the war was declared. Pension £1 5s. weekly. Gets about £2 a week for two days’ work in a bakehouse. His trade was baking before he came in the PO, and when he applied for a job in 1940 they asked him how long since he had been in the trade. He said ‘27 years’. They said ‘OK – start tonight.’ One good thing is that he is entitled to bread and cakes, and can bring home bunmen, studded with currants, for his grandson!40 

Tonight Churchill is speaking from London, and I hope to be amongst those who gather round the wireless to hear his latest estimate of the war’s duration. We all take it very good-humouredly but the language is sometimes lurid.

I hope you are well. I am thinking of you.

Chris

At the back of my mind I have some idea of selling books at a later stage in my life. I would, I think, like to start a second-hand bookshop mainly. It’s not for the money one might make, but only on the basis that books are good things whose circulation must assist reasonableness and progress. What do you think?