Dearest Heart:
Today we have heard that all our carefully censored & carefully written letters are being held up, until such time as our safety shall not be jeopardised by their delivery.  Its a galling thought that somewhere a pile of letters is collecting, & my daily letters will be delivered at some remote time, en bloc.  But my safety, next to my duty, is my prime concern, for you, for our sake, so it is a good thing.

A lovely day, & tomorrow a route march with my detachment leading !  Its a lovely idea, though pillar boxes & telephone kiosks will be a trifle tantalising.  But we shall see bicycles & children, & lampposts & dogs & may be real women.  Strict discipline will be necessary with 78% of our cooped up rude & licentious soldiery.  Maybe I am rude, but not, I assure you licentious.

What of me as a writer?  I am doing nothing yet.  I could be, I expect, but it’s very difficult.  I’m living hard, as it were & can’t settle.  But feelings & ideas & emotions are building up & I shall either produce a real Book or else go stale & loose the little gift I have.  I think the former.  Its difficult writing real things away from you, of course.  Directly I get home & with you I feel my full self & needed to write.

Your day draws nearer.  I think of that a great deal.  All will be well.  But has your fortitude being capable of standing up to the strain of my actual absence?  I expect so.  But it must not interfere with the welfare of you & the child at this vital time.

A rough looking a lot of men, my soldiers, simple & some might think dull.  But so many of them are romantics & lovers, as their letters show, & they are so very fond of their children.  Its very touching.  But there subaltern is also very very fond of his wife & of his children or child.  Will be.

Bless ears, & your Mother & our warm friends, & yourself.  Bless your self for ever.

God bless you.
Ever your own

Dearest Heart:
Another letter on the off chance of it finding you soon.  A short one because the collection occurs any minute.  I’ve been really busy at last, & this is a snatched five minutes.

Lovely weather, lovely scenery, lovely company, lovely you in our little home.  I reread your five letters last night, dear newsy letters.

Tails all up, spirits high & the sun shines.

Peter found a copy of The Time of the Singing in the library & pinched it !  a services library.  He’s very thrilled.  I got a note from him.  A dear lad.

No more or nothing will go.  A great deal of love & the kisses are there if censorship does forbid them.

Ever your own very devoted.

Dearest Heart:
Another wasted letter sent away almost anonymously.  Still we lurk patiently.  Happy & busy.  I talked for an hour and a half this afternoon to my men, & enjoyed it.  Whether they did or not I can’t say.  I think they did.  After all, I’m all the poor dears have got to look to, a poor thing but their own.

The day is full of keeping them busy, eating, P.T, eating, seeing to the men, inspecting them, their rifles, their billets, eating, conferences, eating, drinking, bridge, a letter & bed, with a last look at the men.

David is so very nice.  He and I are the only ones who don’t sit drinking & talking far too late, who like being with our men (not the only ones I speak wildly) but he likes a quiet time, likes his gallant job, reads, sings little songs & is young.  He is going to telephone you when he gets back from this trip or even call on you if he can get from Cirencester to Great Alne.  He’ll have first hand knowledge of me up to the fairly last minute.  You’ll like his young seriousness & his Royal Navy good manners & his Dartmouth voice.  A good man & a true.  Also a gentleman.  He’s gloriously untidy, which is a fine at mark of youngness.

I find I’m living very moderately.  I have cashed for a cheque for four pounds from a sapper who wanted to send money home & a cheque was the best way.  Otherwise I’ve drawn nothing, only £5 at the beginning of the month.  So all should be all right. I’ll live very gently.  My only interest now is to do my job & you should be the spender.

I am no gardener, as you know, pansies shudder as I pass with a hoe.  Yet I think of home not only as my booking room, nor only as that perfect bedroom, but as all of that & the garden.  You & I walking along the paths towards the chicken run is one of my nicer visions.  It’s not so much gardening I like, its the garden itself, & the products.  Peter goes too far sometimes, its not surely the rarity of the plants, nor the cost, but their actual niceness.  I loved sticking the sweet peas with you.  You must run a Nature Class for Dickie Anne & me.

The inducing of children to play the piano, given a necessary flair in the child.  One must not pay the teacher’s fees & provide the piano & lay down times for practicing.  One must evoke a desire to be able to play, & short of inflicting “little pieces” on gloomy visitors, encourage.  She shall play Chopin, he shall play Brahms.  And then some quite unsatisfactory young man will come & be enchanted & what shall we do?  We’ll have each other, and that’s the greatest thing.

We have soups with French names & Chinese stewards who say nowt & look very oriental.  We also have a steward who at last understands that David doesn’t want morning tea, & agreed that “you want no cups of tea every morning”, & every morning David has no tea.  We love our little jokes.

A charming bout of Bridge this evening.  The O.C. Troops, a very sound Major, & I play against the army M.O. & Child.  Four brisk rubbers, sharp bidding & well mixed cards.  Also I consumed a steady Guinness.  All very nice, in the tiny smoke room.  All it needed was you, you quite perfect wife.

I have the quite sincere feeling that if I were to be taken away from this now it would cause definite consternation & distress to seventy five true men who each have their loved ones, as I have.  I know they have their loved ones, only too well from their letters.  They are so inarticulate, too most of them.

“Music while you work” is on David’s wireless set, & its Student Prince or Chocolate Soldier, (we dispute that- “Come come come to me only….”)

My blessings dearest heart, and our Day will come.  Bless you & yours.  I hope the infant arrives in good order & has some vague resemblance about him her to me.

Bless you, dear heart, be happy.

Dearest Heart:
Another letter, which will be delivered sometime.  And as the days pass with no letters inward I gloat on the pile collecting to reach me in due course.  What a day that will be.  All my sappers say that to !  Its difficult to be original after reading so many other letters.  Only when I consider you & us am I original.  For the is none like you.

Dear David is so much in love with his Wren, named Ivy !  Its a blissful, aching, radiant, early love.  Sweet & sharp, bewildering and poetic.  He writes to her all the evening, dreams about her all night, & goes thoughtful in the midst of activity all day.  A good man.

Last night I stood looking at the blues & greens & softness of the hills & communed with you.  The scene was splendid in the quarter light, the magic of water & the soft quiet of everything.  You would have put your hand in mine & we would have sunk into the silence.

This afternoon, talking to the men, I looked up & saw the Red Ensign.  It suddenly became real & held in its soft fluttering all the meaning of our History, all the meaning of our little stream, of the Mill and Candy, of Macaulay & Jane Austen, of great adventures, honour & service & by the trivia of English life.  The inarticulate loyalty of our Dominion men, the dumb loyalty of the most cynical critic of Government & custom.  It’s not void sentiment, the emotion a flag like our ensign can muster, its so deep that we must mock or say nothing, we have not the moral courage to praise it.  Yet this afternoon it caught me &  made me feel confident & proud & tall, it held my feelings on a steady pitch, it gave me a vision of resolution.  We have no flags & music in war today, but it is there, all of it.  It is our child’s flag too, and its a rare heritage.

The little picture will please you.  It is cut out from an old World Digest or some such paper.  I had to send it to you.

The men are producing a little newspaper & I have been asked to contribute an editorial & anything I like.  A tricky job.  I must try.  I’ll try to keep a copy for you to see afterwards.

“Afterwards”.  Yes, it will come, at first a delicious shyness, then a honeymoon, then the settling down to the old life renewed, renewed by our ended separation, by the presence of Dickie Anne, by new work and by the peace & content we shall have earned.

There is nothing very original in the parting between you and I, you at home caring for the house, preparing have to have our child, waiting for your soldier-husband-lover.  There are millions like us, there have been tens of millions, hundreds of millions like us in the past.  Yet for each player it is new & sharp & bitter.  Yet if you do not pine, I shall be well in my mind.  We shall not be far apart, modern science has overcome the distances of this world.  In so many ways I’m fortunate in my service, & fortunate in my destiny.  Most fortunate in my home life & in my wife.

You must paint some pictures, paint some Christmas cards, take walks with Candy, be careful of your health, no that’s not necessary.  Live your life & your health will be ever present.  Write when you will, your letters are always precious & beloved by me.  Relish your friends and the your good gay happy self.  I’m all right, that we know.

God bless you & keep you, and the days of separation will soon pass. Leave will come round again & the ultimate peace.  Indeed it will be a peace that passeth all understanding.

I like the little bears in this picture & the the rabbit with his ears down.  And the Buck & the furriness of it all.  We do love furry things don’t we !  But its the loveliness of you I love above all.  I have just leaned back & reflected on your salient characteristics.  Your laugh, your eyes and your certain judgement & your swift love of all things good & sincere struck me first.  Then, physically, your scent, indescribable, but warm & spelling home & peace to me.  Then your courage & faith & fortitude.  Your sensitive appreciation of people & of honesty.  Your cleanness of soul and your tenderness.  But this is impossible.  Your entire self ears all sufficing & a splendid gift I can never prove worthy of.

                        En bref, I love you, and you alone.

                                    Ever devoted husband & lover