Letter to prisoner of war John Valentine from his wife Ursula
Title
Letter to prisoner of war John Valentine from his wife Ursula
Description
Describes packing up all belongings and arranging for furniture and other belongings to go into store. Mentions donating blood at Red Cross, doing her last shift at work and wrapping up other matters. Still awaiting news about her possible house purchase and mentions possibility of going to live with her parents in Devon. Concludes with news of her and daughters activities.
Creator
Date
1943-08-02
Temporal Coverage
Language
Format
Two page typewritten letter with added handwritten notes
Publisher
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
EValentineUMValentineJRM430802
Transcription
To Sgt. J.R.M. Valentine,
British Prisoner of War No. 450,
Stalag Luft III, Germany.
From Mrs. J.R.M. Valentine
Lido, Tenterden Grove,
Hendon, London, N.W.4.
471
Sunday August 2nd 1943
My darling Johnnie,
Practically the only thign that has happened since I wrote to you last is – packing. The whole house is a welter of boxes and suitcases and piles of things awaiting packing, and we have been up into the loft heaps of times, bringing down forgotten treasures, many of them moth-eaten but some still worth keeping. I have done a lot of ruthless throwing-out, but some of our photo albums I have kept, and some priceless photos of hockey, fives and swimming teams at school. I have been going through your papers as well, all those stacks of London Angus receipts and correspondence, and I have selected the more valuable-looking statements of account, cheque-books of receipts and that sort of thing and sent them all off in a bundle to Mr. Chalmers as I have not got the present Treasurer’s address, explaining that as we are moving I wanted [censored] the unimportant correspondence about subscriptings and so on, I have given to the Government for salvage, which was quite the most patriotic end it could have come to. I hope you don’t object, but if you do they are gone just the same and I for one am glad to be rid of them. I have sacrificed quantities of paper myself, old letters and notes and poems and heavens knows what, and they too have met an honourable end. Even so we shan’t be exactly travelling light!
I have arranged for our furniture to be collected from here next Friday and taken to Batty’s warehouse to be stored until further orders. That will cost only £3.15, which seems to me quite reasonable, since it includes packing up all our china and stuff. I am stowing away quite a lot of the household linen, most of it in fact, in the drawers of the walnut tallboy, your clothes are divided between the Chinese chest (your suits) and your green trunk; the rubber boots of various kinds are packed in the doll’s pram under Frances’s hard toys, and many of her soft toys are packed in your old tallboy it is a really gigantic job sorting and packing all our belongings, specially with Frances “helping” all the time and taking odd items off up the garden, where I find them some time later! In the middle of all this I went off to have a blood transfusion on Wednesday to the local Red Cross headquarters. They had got the whole thing very well organised up there, and after pumping 2/3 of a pint of the best out of my arm, quite painlessly, I was led gently out and made to lie down for 10 minutes and then rest in a chair for five minutes more before being allowed to attempt the 3 minutes walk home! I felt as right as rain, and did my last night’s work from 7 till midnight same as ever. I have given my notice there and collected my last pay-packet so once more I am one of the idle poor. I have also handed in the Penny-a-Week Fund, and have wound up the Savings Group as well. Nobody in the Group would volunteer to take it over from me, so tomorrow I must take the whole works up to the local office and hand it back. I have had it almost exactly two years, and in that time we have raised over £800, which seems to me to have been worth while. I shall be so idle after this I may even have time to read! Talking of that, I have just read Mary Webb’s “Gone to
[page break]
[margin text] The Neals are very sad to think that we shall have left here when you return and have put in a special request that you may come & see them again sometime. [/margin text]
[page break]
Earth”, and I enjoyed it very much indeed. she certainly does write most beautifully of the countryside.
Unfortunately our affairs as regards the house have not progresd [sic] any further, I am still waiting for the report of the Building Society’s surveyor, and the longer I wait, the more despondent I become. This evening I took the last Savings Cert. into Mrs. Neal and had a chat with Mr. Neal on house purchase and building societies in general, and in the end I felt so very uncertain about everything that I asked him if he would survey the house at Broomfield for me, and he says that if he can fit it in this week before he goes for his holiday he will do so. You see, even if the building society’s surveyor does pass it and they agree to lend us the money on it, that doesn’t prove that it is sound structurally, and I shall feel so much happier in my mind if have an independent opinion on it and I am sure Mr. Neal would give me good advice and not let me buy a pup. You see it is so suitable in every way and so very reasonable in price for these days, that one is immediately suspicious that “all is not sweet, all is not sound”, as Ben Johnson said, specially [censored] If I have to turn it down in the end, I just don’t know what Frances and I will do. To begin with we are going to stay with Bunty down at Gable End, leaving here on Monday, today week, and I daresay we could stay a couple of weeks, but in any case that is only a holiday. I expect you have heard that Bunty is expecting her third, lucky blighter. What will happen to us after that I just don’t know, at the moment. My parents will be down in Devon and I suppose we could go to them for a bit, but frankly I don’t want to stay for months and months, Frances is sometimes too much for them and it hasn’t been all jam these past two months. And besides I do so want to get a home for you to come back to, why you may be back any day now and nothing ready for you! I think I shall have to revert to my old Micawber frame of mind and trust that something will turn up. But perhaps High House will turn out to be alright for us after all.
On Thursday I went with Mary Simmonds to see one of the latest Technicolour films, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a very attractive and well acted film, but unfortunately not much like Low’s Blimp. The film Blimp is really a jolly good fellow and perfectly reasonable and adaptable behind the well-known moustache and Turkish bath get-up, whereas Low’s Blimp is an expression of something far less pleasant and unfortunately just as real. I’m surprised that Low let them use the name.
Frances is as full of beans as ever, and is getting to know her alphabet quite fast. She can also count up to 5, and strings together quite imposing sentences now. She often brings me a bit of paper and says it is a letter “From my [underlined] own [/underlined] Father”, and when the postman comes she brings me the most unlikely looking bills and says they are from you! I still haven’t heard from the new camp, but I suppose this slowing up of mail was to be expected. Still, I don’t enjoy it. Just now I am missing you desperately. I do hope you are alright in your new camp and have got somewhere to practice your fiddle. I saw the Jansens the other day and they haven’t heard anything either.
With all my love & a big kiss from Frances. Ursula XXX
British Prisoner of War No. 450,
Stalag Luft III, Germany.
From Mrs. J.R.M. Valentine
Lido, Tenterden Grove,
Hendon, London, N.W.4.
471
Sunday August 2nd 1943
My darling Johnnie,
Practically the only thign that has happened since I wrote to you last is – packing. The whole house is a welter of boxes and suitcases and piles of things awaiting packing, and we have been up into the loft heaps of times, bringing down forgotten treasures, many of them moth-eaten but some still worth keeping. I have done a lot of ruthless throwing-out, but some of our photo albums I have kept, and some priceless photos of hockey, fives and swimming teams at school. I have been going through your papers as well, all those stacks of London Angus receipts and correspondence, and I have selected the more valuable-looking statements of account, cheque-books of receipts and that sort of thing and sent them all off in a bundle to Mr. Chalmers as I have not got the present Treasurer’s address, explaining that as we are moving I wanted [censored] the unimportant correspondence about subscriptings and so on, I have given to the Government for salvage, which was quite the most patriotic end it could have come to. I hope you don’t object, but if you do they are gone just the same and I for one am glad to be rid of them. I have sacrificed quantities of paper myself, old letters and notes and poems and heavens knows what, and they too have met an honourable end. Even so we shan’t be exactly travelling light!
I have arranged for our furniture to be collected from here next Friday and taken to Batty’s warehouse to be stored until further orders. That will cost only £3.15, which seems to me quite reasonable, since it includes packing up all our china and stuff. I am stowing away quite a lot of the household linen, most of it in fact, in the drawers of the walnut tallboy, your clothes are divided between the Chinese chest (your suits) and your green trunk; the rubber boots of various kinds are packed in the doll’s pram under Frances’s hard toys, and many of her soft toys are packed in your old tallboy it is a really gigantic job sorting and packing all our belongings, specially with Frances “helping” all the time and taking odd items off up the garden, where I find them some time later! In the middle of all this I went off to have a blood transfusion on Wednesday to the local Red Cross headquarters. They had got the whole thing very well organised up there, and after pumping 2/3 of a pint of the best out of my arm, quite painlessly, I was led gently out and made to lie down for 10 minutes and then rest in a chair for five minutes more before being allowed to attempt the 3 minutes walk home! I felt as right as rain, and did my last night’s work from 7 till midnight same as ever. I have given my notice there and collected my last pay-packet so once more I am one of the idle poor. I have also handed in the Penny-a-Week Fund, and have wound up the Savings Group as well. Nobody in the Group would volunteer to take it over from me, so tomorrow I must take the whole works up to the local office and hand it back. I have had it almost exactly two years, and in that time we have raised over £800, which seems to me to have been worth while. I shall be so idle after this I may even have time to read! Talking of that, I have just read Mary Webb’s “Gone to
[page break]
[margin text] The Neals are very sad to think that we shall have left here when you return and have put in a special request that you may come & see them again sometime. [/margin text]
[page break]
Earth”, and I enjoyed it very much indeed. she certainly does write most beautifully of the countryside.
Unfortunately our affairs as regards the house have not progresd [sic] any further, I am still waiting for the report of the Building Society’s surveyor, and the longer I wait, the more despondent I become. This evening I took the last Savings Cert. into Mrs. Neal and had a chat with Mr. Neal on house purchase and building societies in general, and in the end I felt so very uncertain about everything that I asked him if he would survey the house at Broomfield for me, and he says that if he can fit it in this week before he goes for his holiday he will do so. You see, even if the building society’s surveyor does pass it and they agree to lend us the money on it, that doesn’t prove that it is sound structurally, and I shall feel so much happier in my mind if have an independent opinion on it and I am sure Mr. Neal would give me good advice and not let me buy a pup. You see it is so suitable in every way and so very reasonable in price for these days, that one is immediately suspicious that “all is not sweet, all is not sound”, as Ben Johnson said, specially [censored] If I have to turn it down in the end, I just don’t know what Frances and I will do. To begin with we are going to stay with Bunty down at Gable End, leaving here on Monday, today week, and I daresay we could stay a couple of weeks, but in any case that is only a holiday. I expect you have heard that Bunty is expecting her third, lucky blighter. What will happen to us after that I just don’t know, at the moment. My parents will be down in Devon and I suppose we could go to them for a bit, but frankly I don’t want to stay for months and months, Frances is sometimes too much for them and it hasn’t been all jam these past two months. And besides I do so want to get a home for you to come back to, why you may be back any day now and nothing ready for you! I think I shall have to revert to my old Micawber frame of mind and trust that something will turn up. But perhaps High House will turn out to be alright for us after all.
On Thursday I went with Mary Simmonds to see one of the latest Technicolour films, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a very attractive and well acted film, but unfortunately not much like Low’s Blimp. The film Blimp is really a jolly good fellow and perfectly reasonable and adaptable behind the well-known moustache and Turkish bath get-up, whereas Low’s Blimp is an expression of something far less pleasant and unfortunately just as real. I’m surprised that Low let them use the name.
Frances is as full of beans as ever, and is getting to know her alphabet quite fast. She can also count up to 5, and strings together quite imposing sentences now. She often brings me a bit of paper and says it is a letter “From my [underlined] own [/underlined] Father”, and when the postman comes she brings me the most unlikely looking bills and says they are from you! I still haven’t heard from the new camp, but I suppose this slowing up of mail was to be expected. Still, I don’t enjoy it. Just now I am missing you desperately. I do hope you are alright in your new camp and have got somewhere to practice your fiddle. I saw the Jansens the other day and they haven’t heard anything either.
With all my love & a big kiss from Frances. Ursula XXX
Collection
Citation
Ursula Valentine, “Letter to prisoner of war John Valentine from his wife Ursula,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 26, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/20052.
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