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Dvr H.Adler
PAL/30765
650, G.T.Coy R.A.S.C
“B”Platoon
C.M.F

16 November.

At last I can again write you a few words, my darling,

My lastletter was on the 1oth. So it’s six days since I’ve written. Forgive me, Yvette: I couldn’t. It was absolutely outside my power. It’s not work. It’s not that I didn’t have time. It was depression. A terrible depression gripped me and ranged pitilessly through me, body and soul. I believe that during six days I was quite without consciousness.  I tried several times to write to you – even a few words – but I couldn’t. And on top of that, I caught one of those colds, you know, which only made the depression worse and took possession of my whole being. But here we are and all that has gone.   The depression is over, my health is better and here I am ready for new fatigue, new sad journeys with a chain of misery filing past my windscreen and you sweet face smiling tenderly at me.  Looking at me intelligently and lovingly, there in font of me on the high wooded summit of that green mountain, through the water which falls in a shower on the glass, in the wet asphalt shining under the light of the headlights, you my sweet little adored wife, you are there, child like and majestic at the same time, caressing my forehead and wildly fighting the black beast that from time to time devours my heart.

I pine most terribly.  I pine to the death. I pine for you, my darling.

I am filled with you, and if it’s not the melodies of Beethoven which accompany you it is  ? Baudelerien that inhabits me.

Sometimes – rarely, darling – an avalanche of thoughts beat down on me and wipes me out. Yes, wipe me out.

But there are no thoughts independent of you. I think of the war, rather of the war and you. Peace, revolution, the past, the future, oh yes, all that has not left me, all that is a weight that I fell – and how much! – but you are mixed up with all that.

[eight lines of rambling about Yvette, the past, the future etc and their love.]

I happen to be sitting in our Club. A very restful atmosphere reigns over it. The premises are splendid. A huge red carpet covers the floor, so that you don’t hear the noise of footsteps. Magnificent lights illuminate the walls covered with works of art. There is among other things, a painting showing a young girl seated on the edge of a chair. A strange purity, a sweet goodness flows from her glance, from her young innocent body – I find it truly restful – are the punishments of the day which pass in front of me.  A small orchestra plays very agreeably a mixture of Schubert, Brahms, Puccini, and Rossini and folk melodies.

At the same time, my friend Fuchs, you know the ex-Legionnaire came into the cabin, for it was raining outside and I write to you on the steering wheel.

“Hey, Henri, what would you have given to have Yvette here now? he asked me. I said nothing. What could I have replied to that? What?—-

“I would have paid the best bottle.” – he said and he left.

He’s a fine boy and a good friend.

When he looks for a wife, he puts himself out (se gene) he does it in secret, because he feels, even though he does not understand it, the beauty that inhabits me: your love. He has not known love, he a man of 38 years, who has known wars, the Legion and the brothels of the Kazbah – he is a man whose tragedy I notice in his least gestures.

But, let’s get back to our Club. So I arrive and begin to write you a long, serious letter, concerning the situation and the general line that we must apply etc etc. I decided to do that, but very soon, I threw away the pen and looked long at the little girl and my hands were immobilised and my heart empties itself- incapacity? Only fatigue? Oh, pining!

Automatically I run towards you, I put my head between your arms and I ask: Yvette, darling, what has happened with my head?” Then I pull myself together, and I begin again to write.

And I write: Yvette one must always remember that nothing has so debased man as much as fascism. And the generation to come will have a great job to accomplish – to detoxify the hearts and the brains of men poisoned by the bloody but refined regime. This operation can only lead to a happy result with an immense mass movement, like that which enabled a sixth of the world to succeed in creating a new man, a man knowing how to distinguish moral values.

            To this task, the most important and the most gigantic after the allied military victory, must attach themselves all men, all those for whom human dignity is not an empty word.

I recall Kyo in  “The Human Condition” who, when asked why he was a communist replied:” because of human dignity”.  It is only when one has known fascism – and he knew bloody repression in China of 1924 – that one can understand the full meaning of that thought full of tragedy, of hope and of faith. But it is very clear that it is not in the palaces with polished floors that one can find those are ready to struggle for dignity. That is rather the source of those who have sneered at it.

It is in the East that the sun always rises. It is in the working class areas that are found those who will save civilisation. And only them

From Clichy, St-Denis, St-Ouen will come the people, side by side, with an ardent flame in their breast, and build a new world.

But —- but how sad it will be if it turns out to be like before this war. But that wont happen. It mustn’t happen.

There is more or less what I wrote. More laboriously than now in the cold cabin with great drops of water falling all around, on the roof and even through the roof.

Then, my glance meets again the glance of the little naked girl, and again my hands go towards my chin and my thought fly towards you. Imagining the two of us, in the torment to come.

Then an idea penetrates my head and makes me suffer horribly

Is it possible that it is too late for me to have a child? Oh God! How much I want a running around in the sweet peace of our home!  I am 32 years old. You progress. I don’t. I feel it.

Well, the other day we celebrated the 7 November. I had to speak. Right in the middle I stopped and said: “I can’t; excuse me” and I sat down. The best thing is that I didn’t feel any embarrassment for this fiasco. What do you think about it darling? Are you not mistaken about my subject? Like the others.       Or rather, the subject was so much in my heart, that I became dumb.  You know, silence is truly a strong expression of a profound sentiment.

I will continue this letter tomorrow or after tomorrow. Now I just stop.

You know how to take my letters: as a sign of life in me and you can forgive my stupidities. Save one thing that you must never forget: I love you, I love you, and I love you, darling, oh how I love you.

   Your

   Henri.