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

27 August 1943

Nothing new here, darling. I wait. I read, I think a little, I dream and I daydream. And above all – I wait. And you know that waiting is not exactly an easy occupation. Tiring for the morale and the spirit. I feel empty.

And then, you are so close and I love you so much and I can’t see you. Because I must wait. You see, Yvette, how it is easy, don’t you?

Even your letters don’t reach me any more. They have told me that I will have to wait until my arrival at the destination before receiving them. They will be there. So you see that since your departure I know nothing of you. Oh, I know that you love me. I know that you think so tenderly of me. I know that you suffer as I do because of our separation. And I know that you also wait. You wait with all you heart and all your thoughts. But I don’t know what you are doing —– And not only that: I don’t have the possibility of reading your tender words, the beauty of you reasoning, of your so lively intelligence. The day they hand me that big packet of letters – what a festival, darling!

Waiting, I feel your tender words. I hear them when you murmur them to the stars. I live your tenderness and your marvellous love and it give me the will to live, it helps me to withstand the blow and put up with the discipline necessary to put an end to this sombre epoch. And while waiting action, waiting the clear joyous epoch, which is coming, I keep your love very preciously hidden in my heart and I am helped by my imagination.

I imagine  – you. All the time. Morning, day, evening and night. It is always  -you. And that is so natural, so simple. It does not require an effort of spirit. It lives in my body. I see- and I see you. I breathe – and I breathe you. I read- and I read you. Always. It is organic.  You, my little Yvette, so much loved, so much cherished, so much desired – in my heart, my spirit, my all.

So, deep inside, I am never alone. I feel that I will no longer be alone, except in death.

You are with me, so I live.

And I smile at you, and I look at you, and I think of you, and I caress you and I love you, I love you-

And I share my impressions and my thoughts with you. I share with you the profound joy that comes to us from the far Ukrainian plains. The profound joy and living hope.

I share with you my dreams of France rising from her torpor, of France leaving this cruel black night.  France of the future, so close. That of Michaud and Denise.

You see, I have read Ehrenburg’s book. To tell the truth it deceived me a little. I expected better and I believe that it is one of his weakest creations. Certainly it is a complex and difficult subject that he tries to distil in novel form. To relive the history of France during the eventful years 1935-1940, is a pretty hardy enterprise, and he doesn’t do badly. He has a routine and a technique of a great writer. On can easily talk nonsense when one is not Ehrenburg.  There are passages in the book of a real and touching beauty. For example, the strikes, the defence of Tours, the death of Lucien,

He profoundly moved me also, in bringing to life for me the whole epoch of the war in Spain, of the Popular Front in France, the period of my most intense activity,  when I attained revolutionary maturity, and whose memories assail me  and fill me at the least recall.

But in Ehrenburg’s book, I did not seek the causes of the fall of Paris. We know them all.  What I sought and wished to find in his book, is the expression of what my heart and my conscience felt at the moment when the Nazi plague invaded the streets and lanes, the boulevards and gardens of Paris. And that is what I still feel now and until the day of the liberation of France.

Oh dear Yvette – the pain even of the city, of the streets, the houses, the mansards and the roofs, the bridges, the footpaths, the lamp posts, at the moment the fascists came there. The street Faubourg du Temple, that ancient straight street that rises, with the large crying women, swearing and laughing aupres de leurs charettes, the news vendors and even the Crainquebilles – and a nazi soldier sauntering along in the middle of all that! The Parisian prolo leaning against the bar and drinking his Pernod- and a nazi right next to him! The garden of Notre Dame, there, right at the end, on the corner where the Seine is cut in the middle – and the crooked cross on all that! When I imagine it, that fascist cross stirring on the large footpaths of the Champs Elysees, well that is still happening! Yes. My God, my God, how to imagine it in the little streets of the Republique, Bastille, Gambetta, Belleville, Pere Lachaise, Roquette and Cherche-Midi! Or Moufftard street!

The footpaths of these streets, the walls of the houses, the men and women who live there- Yvette my little one, will they still be the same after the great wound they have received?  They must be. They must be. If not, nothing is worth the trouble.

Darling, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. I know from experience that I must keep a watch on my wish to express all that my heart is feeling. You know, yourself, what a fiasco it always is when I try to put into words the immense love I have for you.  So?

So here it is: I want to tell you that there is nothing new with me. I want to tell you that I pine horribly without you and for you. I want to tell you that I love you. I want to tell you how much I love you. How much? Oh Yvette! Nobody would be able to say it. Because instead of words, fire would need to come of out of their lips. Or music.

I embrace you,

Your Henri