My Dear Bessie. Chris Barker

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       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.