First letter in a l-o-n-g time.
A typed letter, from Jack, in which he hyphenates the letters of words for e-m-p-h-a-s-i-s: oh b-a-b-y!
Jack has been in Samar, in the Philippines. Servicemen need to accrue points to be discharged. He would have been discharged already if he was not a mailman. Still, he will likely be home for Christmas.
Mail is so important to the war effort — for communications and morale — that despite having enough points to leave (48 when the threshold was 44) Jack has had to stay. I think about mail now — so many post offices have been closed in Prague that it is has become a slog of usually over an hour’s duration to send post. This is an impediment, as are the tariffs from the UK. I think about the gift Paul’s parents tried to send me last year for my birthday. It couldn’t be sent from the UK without my having to pay costumes so it was sent via a friend traveling to Berlin, who swears he posted it, but apparently even this was too much as it never arrived. But Jack and Winnie send camera lenses, lighters, Filipino money, a hat that needs to be painted (if we can’t do a good job ourselves, let’s find someone who can).
It strikes me that we have crippled the domestic postal service — as in the one used by private individuals — even as we ease the shipping of things we have purchased. Asos, yes, in 72 hours. Your own clothes, sent to you by your mother, not so much. The dinner you ordered and have paid someone to deliver to you even though the walk to the restaurant is a roundtrip of 10 minutes, sure. Your favourite snack from the place you grew up? Don’t even think about it unless you literally still live there. That’s weird, isn’t it? The same system, but optimised for mediated, commercial activity and de-optimised for the passing of goods between actual human beings who know one another.
I had never thought of that before.
Jack is generous. I looked up how much the $10 he sent Bobby for his birthday was worth in 1945. $175 and change, it turns out. Jack was always generous. I would like to cultivate this in myself.
I exhale scarcity.
I inhale abundance.
I exhale scarily.
I inhale abundance.
I think about the relationship between generosity and the horrors of war, the way the NHS was an outgrowth of the British experience of WWII. How commendable it seems to me to come out of something so horrible not clinging for dear life to what is yours but convinced everyone deserves access to greater dignity. Though trauma towards the collective, not away from it into little bubbles, ordering “blankets and stuff” to sure ourselves up.
I remember, though, that Jack did that too. I wish the correspondence had continued. I would love to know his thoughts on the bomb shelter in the basement on Pennsylvania Avenue. You should be sceptical, Jack.
Sometimes I think that’s my name, Jack. Sometimes I think I should add it to mine.
I am a very happy man. Except I’m not.
The teamwork in this letter moves me. The way he is so obviously keen to see her. His care for her feelings — the solicitousness in her direction, not wanting to disappoint her, to get her hopes up unfairly. Sometimes it feels the care all flows from her towards him, so this is nice to see. I think of them with their whole lives ahead of them — they are only 25 when this is happening. It makes me want to cry.
He saw a movie. It was quite good.
She listened to her little white radio.
Bobby will understand it’s from both of them, even if he forgot to sign her name.
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