Letters of Note - Chris Barker and Bessie Moore

4 letters:

Chris Barker - January 1945

Bessie Moore - February 1945

Chris Barker - April 1945

Bessie Moore - July 1945

1) Chris Barker

29th January 1945

My dearest one,

I have just heard the news that all the Army men who are held P.O.W. are to return to their homes. Because of the shipping situation we may not commence to go before the end of February, but can probably count on being in England sometime in March. It may be sooner. It has made me very warm inside. It is terrific, wonderful, shattering. I don’t know what to say, and I cannot think. The delay is nothing, the decision is everything. Now I am confirming in my head the little decisions I have made when contemplating just the possibility. I must spend the first days at home, I must consider giving a party somewhere. Above all, I must be with you. I must warm you, surround you, love you and be kind to you. Tell me anything that is in your mind, write tons and tons and tons, and plan our time. I would prefer not to get married, but want you to agree on the point. In the battle, I was afraid. For you. For my mother. For myself. Wait we must, my love and my darling. Let us meet, let us be, let us know, but do not let us, now, make any mistakes.

How good for us to see each other before I am completely bald! I have some fine little wisps of hair on the top of my head. It is not much good me trying to write about recent experiences now that I know that I shall be able to tell you everything myself within such short time. What I have my eye on now is the first letter from you saying that you know I am alright, and the next, saying you know I am coming to you. I must try to keep out of hospital with some of these post P.O.W. complaints. Plan a week somewhere (not Boscombe or Bournemouth) and think of being together. The glory of you.

We are free of duties and yesterday I went to our friends in Athens, taking some of your coffee and cocoa, which they were very pleased to have. Thank you for sending it. We were embraced very excitedly, kissing and so on, continental fashion.
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. 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. 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 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 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, 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.
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 offense.

It is a strange thing, but I cannot seem to get going and write very freely. All I am think about is ‘I am going home. I am going to see her.’ It is a fact, a real thing, an impending event, like Shrove Tuesday, Xmas Day, or the Lord Major’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 few letters of yours that I had on me, I burnt the previous day 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 snowbound Greek mountain villages) and we started hoping we might get sent home upon our release, I was always wondering about you, about us. 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 support and sympathy. Won’t it be wonderful to be together, really together, in the flesh, not just to know that a letter is all we can send?

I love you.

Chris

2) Bessie Moore

6th February 1945

Darling, darling, darling,

This is what I have been waiting for, your freedom left me dumb and choked up, but now, oh now, I feel released. Oh Christopher, my dear, dear man, it is so, so wonderful. You are coming home. Gooly, I shall have to be careful, all this excitement is almost too much for my body. You must be careful too, darling, all this on top of what you have been through, it is difficult to keep it down, you can’t help the excited twinges in your midriff, can you, do keep well, angel, I shall have to say that to myself as well.

Marriage my sweet, yes I agree, what you wish, I wish. I want you to be happy in this darling. I make a plea to whatever gods there be to make me greater than myself, so that I can make you as happy as humanly possible, to help you over the bad days, and swing along with you in the good days. Whilst you are afraid, you will not be happy, we must get rid of these fears between us. Also confidentially, I too am a little scared – everything in letters appears larger than life size, like my photograph, it didn’t show the white hairs beneath the black, the decaying teeth, the darkening skin, I think of my nasty characteristics, my ordinariness. Yes, I too feel a little afraid. Still I can’t be bothered with that now, for we are going to meet, does anything else matter Chris?
About what happens on arrival, of course you’ll have to spend the first part at home, I suspect I can get my leave when needed, we only have to sign for the actual summer period, otherwise they are very accommodating. Oh dear dear me, plan a week somewhere, bonk, up comes my heart, a week somewhere, by the sea, with you. Where shall we go, of course I’d choose north Devon, sea, country and air, but March raises the question of weather, might we go to a largish town, I prefer villages normally, but with you I guess I’ll do what you want, also I feel that you’ll need looking after, don’t think you should walk around in the rain, not for a while, anyway, guess I don’t care where, as long as it’s the sea, and you, you, you. Inward clangings and bouncings and I wonder how soon.

Glad you managed to give them the coffee and cocoa, our Greek friends I mean, to show them that we wish them well, and hope very strongly that they will get the government they want, though perhaps they live too close to poverty to think of governments.
You know I say to myself, ‘Bessie my girl, you’re not so hot’, but I think you may have a similar feeling. I say, how is your digestion, mine’s awful, I shall be reduced to taking Rennies or something, a wind remover. My tea at his moment is stuck somewhere in the middle of my chest.
So you don’t want to get married, well that’s a douche of cold water, still I soon shook the water out of eyes, it seems a bit unimportant, with your homecoming in front of me – I guess most impractical, poor lamb you hardly know me. ‘Do not let us make any mistakes’ now underlined. You dear old silly, do you really think you can guard against that, or ensure the future?

I can’t help wishing that you won’t get these letters, that you’ll be on your way, that the time to wait is that shot, because my impatience is getting pretty bad, being able to write like we have has been a wonderful thing, but it has always remained only the beginning, the contact for our future and a beginning must change to something else, and now it is changing.
What do you think of the war news? Don’t like getting too optimistic, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to come home to stay?

I love you,

Bessie.

Not long after his return home, Chris Barker and Bessie Moore spent a week together in Bournemouth. It was a success, but perhaps not a complete one. The subsequent ardour was a little less explicit, and there was a mysterious incident with fish.

3) Chris Barker

10th April, 1945

My dear one,

Our meeting was a wonderful thing, and now we have to put up with the after-effects.

I do not feel in a very good state for writing at the moment, as the ship has been rocking a good deal. Each morning, ten of us have to clean out the ship’s hospital. It gets us out of other jobs, like mess orderly, guards, sweeping the decks, so I get on happily with our three baths, the lavatory pedestals, and similar number of wash basins. Three weeks ago, when I was a temporary gentleman, a chap in Lyon’s ‘wash and brush up’ washed out my wash basin, now I’m doing the same. I am not too keen on doing the scabies bathroom, but never mind.

I wonder now if you would like to wear an engagement ring. If you would like one, and it was not unlucky or something, how would you feel about getting one? I think they are jewellers’ blessings, but if wearing one would make you the least bit happier then I would prefer it? What do you think? I am a blunderer, but you must excuse me. I am starting to feel more normal again, though like you, find our days together dream-like.
I hope you do not weep too much (if you did weep). And, if you ever do so again, let it only be at the hardness of our separation, never in despair of our future meeting and life together. Of course, my senses have been thrilled and luxuriated in you, I have become more than a little woebegone at our post-war hopes of a home, by ourselves. The figures lead me to think it will be ten years before we get the chance to choose.
When the war is over I know you will buy what you can to ensure we do not have to make any troubles in equipping our own home, and, if you could manage, to start house hunting. As you know I have £350, and you nearly the same, so we could raise £700 for a first payment. I am sorry that you are alone in your searches.

Do you know, I can’t help feeling triumphant at our relationship. It seems so wonderful to possess your regard, and possess you. I do not think I have any of the slave-owner mentality when I confess I am infinitely joyful at owning you, and I feel that I do. I want you absolutely, entirely, wholly. I hope you are feeling all of this too, and you know in your bones I will do anything for you.

You say I said enough while on leave. I am disgusted how little I said, about ourselves, and about my impressions of life abroad and the Army. I am not very happy about my deficiencies as a sweetheart - I think I tease you too much.

I should be on my knees before you, confessing my utter dependence on you, imploring your interest though I may seem to have it, telling you always that without the hope of you, I should starve and thirst. I could have been so much more eloquent, yet my stutterings satisfied you. I am sorry we wasted those five nights at Bournemouth, it seems to be beside the point that there will be many more. I am sorry about the error of judgment regarding salmon. I’ll catch a whale for you on my return journey.

I hope you are getting on all right with your spring cleaning. Personally, I think far too much is made of this event. A properly run house would be ashamed to admit it needed a really good clean-up once a year. It is a suburban blight. But enjoy yourself, don’t mind me.

I hope you can have some time with your brother Wilfred when he is on leave, but I think that celebration is at least premature while the Japanese are so strong and the fighting is likely to last for so long. And what shall we celebrate? That the Fascists are vanquished? That there is freedom in Germany, and everywhere else? I shall be inclined to celebrate when fighting everywhere has ended, and the people seem apparently to be taking the first steps in controlling their own destinies.
Last night I was on guard, kind of stroll around the tents. I was on 11:50pm to 1:30am, and then 5:30am to 7:30am, and thought of you sleeping peacefully, while I patrolled the almond trees and listened to the barks of the distant dogs, and the ‘perlip, perlip’ and ‘whirrip whirroo’ of the birds here. A feeling was with me that distance doesn’t matter. In one of your letters you say your heart beats within me. That is good. I will look after your heart. Please always try to be happy because of future prospects, rather than sorrowful because of present separation. I know it’s grim, because my hands, my lips, are very conscious of their idleness.

I love you.

Chris

4) Bessie Moore

21st July, 1945

Dearest Chris,

You blooming old darling! I could hug and hug and hug you for somehow saying all the right things and being your so beautiful self. I am wallowing in your letters and feel extra smitten. I get it extra with every mail.

No, no you’re not wrong interfering in my affairs, I want you to interfere. They are our affairs. Our affairs. Even when I protest I want you to go on interfering because maybe I’m not very used to it yet but I want to get used to it. We are dependent on each other, for two people loving each other so much there’s no other way but complete and utter surrender of everything. I should feel desolate if you didn’t want to interfere, if you didn’t have bossing thoughts.

Yes, the election results are a bit of a shock. I hadn’t noticed that Hamstead, of all places, had gone Labour. My digestion is still awful. I don’t think it is chewing, I fear it’s nerves, though how it happens, I don’t know. I do so long for when we can live normal sort of lives. This is such an unnatural way of going on for both of us. Can’t be doing you much good, any more than it does me. The nuts arrived OK.

To come back to the Labour government, I do think they should make a good job of it. I do think they have more brains to work with than the Tories. When you compare the two, Labour shop rather well, don’t you think? I felt more excited about the Labour win than VE Day. I do wish everybody would stop striking now and give the government a chance to get into action.

I wonder how your leave is getting on? I do think your commanding officer is a bit thick. Surely you should be entitled to some compensation for being POW. Wasn’t exactly a picnic. I have become a martyr to my engagements and I am cutting them down.

It looks as though you’ve detected my state of nerves in my letters. I never thought of it showing like that. Bless you, dear, for being what you are, for noticing, for being strong enough to tell me. You make me feel safe and sure in your keeping. I know you’re right, Chris, because they have been fretting me. It’s funny how, when you’re run down, you seem driven on to do more than you can. It’s so difficult to stop rushing.

We are hungry for each other. Oh, so very hungry for everything you have to give me: your hands, your arms, your lips, your body, the smell of you, to know again the exquisite magic of being so very close to you. When I imagine hard, I can feel your hand on the top inside of my thigh. Why just there I don’t know, but that spot is what I can recapture sometimes. Just your hand there, so vividly your hand. Don’t you think that’s odd? It’s quite a feeling, and always the right leg. Lick for me, rise for me, yearn for me. Go on wanting me always. Need me, need me, need me. Feel my pain, my misery, for we are one. Your hand in my blouse, on the tip of my breast. Sweet delight! Wonderful man, I love you.

Bessie

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