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Dvr H.Adler
PAL/30775
650, G.T.Coy R.A.S.C
“B”Platoon  
M.E.F.

20 August 1943

Yvette, my darling wife, thank you, oh thank you so much for having come. I was so impatient to see you. I felt so badly about leaving without being able to speak to you again, embrace you again, caress you, love you. When you are concerned, I cannot play the Stoic. Each cell of my body each thought in my brain, each of my looks desires you, my beautiful, sweet, darling.  I was desperate – and then you came. And your presence infused new life into me. I so much wanted to see you that your arrival simply left me breathless.  Oh you know that it lasted just until I got myself together again. You came so beautifully, so simply and you brought me all the beauty of the great silent moon.

The calm, that pale light, the sweet traits of your good intelligent sleeping face – that is the image I will guard jealously in my heart to the end, to the very end. Your love for me is so great, so sweet: it enlarges me, it purifies me. It gives me goodness, courage, intelligence. It makes a man of me.

I love you darling as —— as you love me!

It is so lovely to know you living, tied to me by your  heart so pure, surrounding me with a happy love, enriching me ceaselessly with the most beautiful music to which my heart is enslaved: the memory of you.

It gives so much sweetness and strength to know that you wait for me, darling, that you don’t forget me, that you need me as I need you.

It was so funny when you left. When, once again, the train carried you off. I was pressed against some sort of rise (rampe) and I saw you get further and further away. I felt the emptiness in me. I didn’t even have the strength to lift my arm. I knew nothing but I felt everything. I felt pain and joy, happiness and misery. I felt the sobs of different natures tightening my belly. And when I could see you no more, I could still see you, there in the window, smiling at me, caressing me with your eyes and with your heart, I saw you – even when the train was no longer there.

I didn’t move. I was rooted to the spot, a statue, a stone, and the little corporal of the R.T.O said “She’s gone, brother” (Eng).  “Thank you” I said to him and I started to walk.

No, I am not unhappy. I am sad but this sort of sadness is also happiness. I love you so much Yvette; I love you so much, darling!

It is so easy for me now to put up with the bitter bareness of my camp. For it is full of you. This dead earth has been revived for my soul by you. You are in the Naafi. You are in the Y.M.C.A.  where you were, and where I am now sitting and writing. All of that is still rich with your presence. And my heart, little one, my heart where you are always present, always, always…

I pine, oh how I pine!  But this pining, it is also happiness. Without this sadness, without this pining, I would be a dead thing. Do you understand me, darling?

Never before, never, have I left for battle so alive, confidant, strong, so manly as now. What a wonderful guarantee for the future! For the battles to come, for those where we will be side by side from which there will be no going back.

Little one, my darling, my wife so loved, my little Yvette, be strong, confidant and courageous. Work. Work hard. Be good, brotherly towards our wounded. Do not let yourself be carried away by the pain of our separation.  Consider what is at stake. We must fight to reconquer the right to live with human dignity, to give dignity back to our France, darling, to give back liberty to the peoples, to rebuild Stalingrad, to build a new and better world.

But –

It does nothing, takes nothing from your strength if, from time to time, in the evening after having fought all day against death, you dream a little of me. Of my love. Of     our life, of us, much of us. Of our little house. Of our kids—

Dream a little of the day when you will again be able to rub your nose on my shoulder- I swear that it will take nothing away from your strength. On the contrary, it will enlarge your courage and the desire to finish everything more quickly. I know that, from myself.

And then I know that you can’t dream of that. Because you are me. And I, I dream of that ceaselessly, without intermission – and I am happy.

I love you and I embrace you tenderly.  Be strong, darling.

Your Henri