EXAMINED BY BASE CENSOR

[PASSED] BY CENSOR No. 875

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[Up to three letters may be forwarded in this Cover, but these must be all from the same writer. The cover should be addressed in such case to the Base Censor.]

Address:—

MRS KENNETH PENMAN

MAYCOT
12 COMMONSIDE
KESTON
KENT

No. 20

B.E.F. S.I.F.

Jan 23rd 6pm.

My Darling,

I have just come in from 24 hours guard on the Gun Position and found yours No. 13 waiting for me. It was so nice, I got No. 12 last night before I started. I had intended answering it whilst on guard, taking my pad with me, but conditions were so glacial, and writing in gloves so difficult, I decided to write you a long letter this evening. As it turns out I shall be able to answer both at once.

I was very worried and puzzled that my letters should not yet have reached you. I can only conclude that road conditions over here as so bad that the mail is held up for that reason. Our own transport is becoming a devil of a problem, it has become necessary for two men to stay up every night in order to turn the engines over every half hour, otherwise they freeze in spite of emptying the radiators.

The cold weather has had its amusing sides, last night we bought some eggs at a nearby farm for breakfast. This morning when I tried to break them into the frying pan they were frozen solid. You had to crack them all over as if they were hard boiled and peel the shell off before dropping them into the frying pan to melt. Bread too freezes so that in spite of being quite new it is…

…as hard as a block of concrete, and then of course everything liquid freezes, ink in fountain pens or bottle, ones handkerchief, towel, shaving brush etc.

The people I’ve been really sorry for are the cooks, they have been issued with sides of beef frozen solid as a rock–absolutely impossible to do anything with it. Tins of condensed milk, in fact all tinned things, have to have their contents melted before being used. The inhabitants tell us that nothing like it has been known for forty years—they’re telling us!!

Actually compared with the boys right up in the front line we are very lucky. I heard today that where they are in visual contact with Jerry they are allowed no fires in their dugouts because of the danger of the smoke being seen by artillery reconnaissance, and they are not even allowed to stamp their feet because the noise on the frozen ground carries so far on the frosty air.

I am going to talk to you for a little while now darling about leave. It’s the subject that none of us gets tired of talking about, the subject always in our thoughts and hearts. It keeps us going when everything else is absolutely unmentionable, so you can guess what it meant to hear that it had been cancelled until further notice. Our first leave date was the 20th at that time.

We were overjoyed when the tension eased to learn that…

…leave was to continue forthwith, the commencing date to be however 26th when 4 go, another 4 on Feb 3rd and three on the 13th which will dispose of eleven out of the 53 in the section and are the only names published so far.

Sergeant Ascolie is leaving on the 26th and he has promised to come up and visit you and tell you what a fine soldier I am. The first eleven names seem to have been chosen for length of service although not wholly so.

These are all facts, the ensuring is rumor, some of it well founded, some not.

The RAF who have been enjoying this leave since Dec 17th have been going home in batches every three days. Very soon now this leave will be finished and it is argued that the time separating our departure dates will be considerably diminished, thus accelerating the whole thing.

I don’t know if you remember Jackman, but he is now half Battery clerk and comes in for little titbits of information not divulged to all of us. He confided in me that Mr Chapple had seen the complete list and that my name was well up towards the front.

Oh! Darling how I long to be with you again. I am living a life of sort of suspended animation at the moment. Life is only measurable in terms of happiness, and I am only happy when I am with you, only really happy I mean.

I shall be able to write and tell you the date you…

…may expect to see me. It will be impossible to give you pixie heart any idea of the time of my arrival. I shall either wire you from the port, or phone you (via Mrs Lawford, I forget her phone number by the way).

I’ve thought so much of my actual getting home, will you think this very queer of me? I think I should like Jill to be having her nap when I get home, so I shall have you first of all darling absolutely to myself, and then we can go up together and wake her.

I have another little piece of news that I think will please you. A list of eight names arrived at the Battery Office tonight, mine was one of them, to whom books, pamphlets and other material is to be issued, and for whom lectures are to be arranged as a preliminary to proceeding home to take the King’s Commission.

I was more than pleased to hear this because I had heard a few days previously that a proportion of those that had had an interview with the colonel had had a further one with the Brigadier and I thought perhaps I might have been pigen-holed. Quite a common fate in the army actually.

I have also discovered that one of the men who went to R.H.Q. to interview the Colonel with me has already left for home. He was the one who met the Colonel’s question “How do I know you can lead men?”, with the…

…information that he had been in charge of 3,000 natives on a plantation in Malaya.

When the lectures start I intend to work very hard indeed.

I am writing this in the billet. Four of the boys having just finished an evening of bridge have decided that it is the most skillful of card games. As a non bridge player I expressed the opinion that snap was all skill. Much derision and the opinion expressed that I am suffering from senile decay and other ruderies.

Well darling, night night. All the other boys are in bed and as I didn’t get much sleep last night I am going to follow suit.

I will write to you again tomorrow.

All my love sweetest heart.

Nighty night,

Kenneth.

PS. I am enclosing this in what we call a green envelope. It obviates the necessity for censoring here and will perhaps reach you the sooner.