Dvr H Adler
PAL/30765
68 R.8. T. Coy
R.A.S.C.(P)
M.E.F

8 November 1942

My most beloved wife,

Despite the unforgettable day that we spent together just a week ago in Cairo, I have not been able to find the time as well as the quietness to be able to thank you for all the joy, all the beauty and all the happiness that you heaped on me by your love. Darling, I love you, I love you I love you and I am so very happy that you wont be able to stop hearing me whisper to you over and over again that I love you.

I can well imagine your impatience to hear news of me and understand your edginess and disquiet not to have heard for so long. That must have made you very unhappy. I suffer about it as much as you and beg you, with a gentle kiss on the eyes, to forgive me. But you will understand, Yvette, and would love me more if I could explain to you and ask your pardon while holding you in my arms.

I have spent a week of fierce struggle against men who ingeniously used all their meanness in order to send me away from my unit. They succeeded for I am nor far from you and am writing this letter in the Café Cyrus, the same one that we chatted in from time to time, where I already loved you but you felt only a vague friendship. That’s the fact of the matter. But why, how and with what means, those things I will tell you one day and you will see that I reacted in a dignified way and that I held high the flag of our ideal. They did not win the battle. It is I, that is to say, us. You will not be ashamed of your husband. Not now, or ever. That I swear to you. For I love my past of struggle as I love you. And you know, darling, how I love you – one could not love more.

So I am provisionally here and I have every reason to believe that very soon war aims will bring me again close to you.

But I want to make the best of my stay here, to regulate definitively the formalities of our marriage. So write to me quickly and tell me what I have to do to get your certificate of divorce and in any case send me an authorisation, signed by your officer (?), to obtain it for you. When that is done we can ask for marriage leave, as we decided in Cairo. So write to me darling, quickly, with all the information so that we don’t lose any time.

Tomorrow I will write a very long letter with more explanation of what has happened.  But Yvette, my love, the sweet words your whispered in Cairo, the intoxicating promise to be always mine, in spite of distance, time, painful separations caused by our common struggle; that you will always agree to with a fighter’s dignity, these words of love that your lips whispered and your eyes confirmed, oh darling, darling, they double my courage and give me the intelligence and the strength to stand tall in this cruel struggle. But without your love, darling, I am sure that I would have been defeated.  I know it and I feel it.  Your image guided me and during the whole week of struggle I heard your voice, darling, saying: ‘Henry, I love you for this too!” So it is thanks to you, Yvette my little one that I had the thrilling pleasure of cultivated men surrounding me and shaking my hand and saying; ”Adler, I have never seen a man struggle with such ardour and so much dignity and intelligence for his ideal…”

Darling, I don’t say this for myself. I don’t enjoy flattery.  Deep down it is to you that these words are addressed. They are  my wedding gift to you. And it is good, you know.

“My darling, darling, darling, I love you.

Henri.