Letter from John Valentine to his wife Ursula

EValentineJRMValentineUM430208-0001.jpg
EValentineJRMValentineUM430208-0002.jpg

Title

Letter from John Valentine to his wife Ursula

Description

Number 52. He still has concerns about Ursula taking on a new job in a factory and asks her some details of the job. A third parcel has come from America containing about 10 lb of food. Thanks her for violin strings and describes lessons. Writes about music activities in camp but instruments in short supply.

Date

1943-02-08

Temporal Coverage

Language

Format

Two page handwritten letter

Rights

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Contributor

Identifier

EValentineJRMValentineUM430208

Transcription

Number 52 8th February 1943.
My Darling Ursula: Your letter No 38 arrived today so that I now have [unreadable word] 1 – 39, 41, 43 44. I was delighted to have the lock of Frances hair & to see that its lovely hue is unchanged – & also to hear how Dame Myra was honoured to receive a boquet [sic] form her. In your account of the POW raffle you say that sold certain tickets to ladies “but don’t know most of them from Adam.” Might I suggest that you are wrong there. You might not be able to distinguish them from Eve but you wouldn’t have any difficulty in picking Adam out form among them. I continue to ponder on your factory work & am tremendously impressed by it. Please tell me [circled number] 1 [/circled number] How often you work per week [circled number] 2 [/circled number] What are your hours [circled number] 3 [/circled number] The mortality & accident rate among workers [circled number] 3 [/circled number] How fa away is the factory & how do you travel. I love you all the more for your splendid spirit but am worried about the possibility of you overworking or hurting yourself. A third American parcel came today – a real beauty (E P Doree & Barrington Ill.) It is easily the best one yet & contains about 10lb of food. Please trace & thank the generous donor. Your set of fiddle strings also arrived & will make me independent in that respect for some little time. it has been a nuisance, hitherto, heavy to beg a new string whenever one broke – which isn’t very often though I’ve broken 4 in 6 months progress by the way is negligible. My “Prof” is a lovely player but a poor instructor & is not the slightest bit interested in me as a pupil. I haven’t had a lesson for 10 weeks although I practice diligently. All the same I feel sadly in need of a helping hand for the photographs in the books you sent showed me that I wasn’t even holding the bow or the fiddle correctly. By the way would you make an appeal to anyone likely to respond for gifts of music manuscript paper for the camp. There is a great deal of musical activity here – many tunes are composed here while others are arranged for the available instruments so that the demand is large & the supply hopelessly inadequate. Day gifts need not be of such fine quality as those you sent me & would be tremendously appreciated. I asked you to send me some just in case the [unreadable word] was with held but as all yours came & gave me plenty of work I shall present on M/S book to the [unreadable word] & possibly the other later. Life is dull here, dearest. I wish you were her to liven things up a bit for me. I gaze longingly at your photo, daily. Always yours John
[page break]
[underlined] Kriegsgefangenenpost [/underlined]
[sticker] EXAMINER 3638 51-851-W.H.H. Ltd. [/sticker]
An MRS U M VALENTINE
LIDO
Empfangsort: TENTERDEN GROVE
StraBe: HENDON
Kreis: LONDON NW4
Land: ENGLAND
Landesteil (Provinz usw.)
[postmark] GEPRUFT 64 [/postmark]
[underlined] Gebuhrenfrei! [/underlined]
[sticker] P.C.90 OPENED BY [/sticker]
Absender:
Vor- und Zuname: Sgt JRm Valentine
Gefangenennummer: 450
Lager-Bezeichnung: M.-Stammlager Luft 3
[underlined] Deutschland (Germany) [/underlined]
[page break]

Collection

Citation

John Ross Mckenzie Valentine, “Letter from John Valentine to his wife Ursula,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/19254.

Item Relations

This item has no relations.