ON ACTIVE SERVICE

PASSED BY CENSOR No. 621

Mrs Kenneth Penman
MAYCOT
12 COMMONSIDE
KESTON
KENT

GNR PENMAN 1440280
Section 4 194/60 HAA.
B.E.F.

Feb: 27th 1940

Darling,

Notice the improvement in my “form”. I was going to write to you last night but as I had done so the night before I decided to leave it till tonight, thinking I should only have No.25 to answer which I had just received little thinking I should get another No. 26 (dated the 22nd two days later than 25) tonight. Darling its sweet of you to write me twice in three days.

I adore the story of Jill and the sweets, Darling, she is sweet, I shall love sampling them when I get home. I shall be terribly nervous about it, I think. “They’re Daddies sweets and are not to be touched”

By Jove, my writing is quite back to “Freddie Fly” standards isn’t it!

Yesterday, it was decided that we should provide ourselves with some muslin to go over the doors of the Battery meat safe; so one of our drivers was dispatched to nearest fair sized town to obtain same; he’s a good bloke, one of the fourteen in our billet, by name Godfrey, before these troubles began he was in an Insurance Company. Well after recourse to the little red “Francais anglais”, “Our Man” G decided (quite rightly apparently) that the French for muslin was mousseline and intimated that he required “cinq metres” of the stuff. One Dwarish and very drapery French woman behind counter informed him that she “parleyed anglais” and that they didn’t call it “mousseline” but “musette” at…

…the same time rather like a conjurer, producing a large leather music case; powerful enough to carry a couple of sonatas and at least four symphonies. “Our man” was horribly stumped at this; he rather took the attitude that he could forgive the damned woman not understanding her own language but it was a bit thick when she insisted she knew his. Well! he started then to make a private search of the shop on his own account; looking for mousseline and leaving out all musettes and what have you; after about ten minutes he was triumphant only to be loftily informed by said female that that was “cinqdette” and anyway there was only “deux metres et demi”. With that the poor bloke walked out, speechless. At another drapers a little further along the street “Our man” decided to have one last try; on entering he discovered some thing quite reasonably alluring and therefore intelligent behind the counter, who to his demands for cinqdette met them with the remark: “Mais Oui! m’sieur vous desirez du mousseline—I ask you.

It’s sweet of Wyn to take you and Jill out in the car occasionally, I expect Jill has learnt by now not to love pussies quite so fiercely as she did when she was very little, rather to their detriment if you remember; talking of cats; our mice, I find, are increasing (’tis the spring ou c’est la guerre). Do you know of a good clean billet trained cat willing to serve with the BEF somewhere in France? Terms of engagement would be 1 night on tiles per week and 10 days home leave after each litter (any thing under eight not to count)

Jacko, you remember, mouse trap Jacko, had a letter from his wife this evening, which she apparently…

…wrote in the small hours, having returned from, I imagine quite a merry party, he read out to us one of the sentences, it was this “One me has brought the other one has”, we’ve all tried to punctuate it but without any success whatever.

Darling one, how I appreciate your views on people like us and then the very newly weds, actually of course there isn’t anybody quite like us; no we cant generalise, I know that I personally have a personality perhaps happy above the average, but sometimes its almost all I can bear; I need you so, more than anything I need (need in its strongest sense) I need to talk with you; I want to say silly things, naughty things again, I want to see your nose wrinkle in amusement, I think I might get de-prixied even, there’s such a heap of different ways in which I miss you, theres always the very biggest way of course, but I think all the little ways put all together mean more to me than the first. Thats where we differ from those who have been married just a little while, we’re so used to one another, we have such every thing in common, we lean on, or I do, on you Darling for so much, I’m such a dot and carry one without you; its only thoughts of you, I find, that have kept me fit and I hope cheery during this terrible winter. Please forgive dearest one this incoherence but I always feel chokey when I write like this.

Your own adoring husband,

Kenneth.