My sweet Terry,
I just got back from a flight, a miserable one at that, and found that I don't have anything until 10 in the morning, then only for one hour. Dog tired and crumby, but I had to write this letter before I let my head hit the pillow.
My feelings for you are terrific! When you told me of the pain you had gone thru, I actually couldn't stop thinking of your misery. Darling, you're one of the unfortunate ones to have trouble and pain, the life of a woman! When I got your other letter, it had just the opposite effect. I'm glad that everything is glowing again at home.
Sweetheart, the more chance I have to think about us, the more, I find, I love you. If I could only hold you close to my heart - if only I could touch your lips, only to feel your soft, warm face against mine - just that, and I'd be content. Only to hear your voice, your laugh, to see your walk, to dance, to laugh, to let go with all we've got, and I'd be content. Just to feel your heart throb against mine; to feel your warm, soft, body; to feel as two, gloriously in love; then I'd be out of this world!
"You mean so much to me, don't let anything take you away from me" - a prayer. Darling, I'm waiting anxiously for your picture. The one you sent previously is over my bed. Every chance I get I sit and stare, and at times you seem to come right out of that picture and into my arms, but it's so damn futile - I can't seem to realize that you're not here, but are many miles away.
I'm enclosing a picture of myself in full flying suit. It was taken while I was a cadet at Pilot school. It's the same type I have now and it's still me. Hope you like it.
The candy was swell, almost as swell as you, honey!
I'm getting dog sleepy, and I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open. So, it's first a pause until the next time; until then, I'm deep in the thought of you, so very much in love with a so very sweet person.
Always, my love and my heart, yours!
Jim
Dearest, sweetest, Terry,
I have an hour before briefing, will take advantage of it and write to my better half. You've received a letter by this time, sent it yesterday. I've been flying every night for the last three nights, and tonight's flight will be the last until Tuesday afternoon. I have a one hour class tomorrow and off all day Monday. That's how it is here - we'll be busy as hell and fly like mad for 3 or 4 days, then we get a break in schedule for a few days. It's a case of a whole lot at one time, and nothing the rest of the time. That accounts for my lapse in writing - sorry, but that's the way it is. So, you won't worry any more, will you? That is, when you don't hear from me for 2 or 3 days, you'll understand.
Terry, sweet, don't feel too badly about it. I understand the circumstances, and please don't have friction between you and your mom and dad.
Darling, I'm crazy about the snap shot. I look at it every chance I get - it sort of relieves the longing - makes you seem closer - not as good as the real thing, but under the circumstances, it'll have to do.
Don't take my last letter too seriously - not all of it. I might have said something that wasn't all together, in the right sense, ethical. However, if everything reads alright, forget it. I was writing under the influence of a sudden change of plans - sort of down hearted as it were - but this letter ought to leave you with the feeling that I still love you!! Terry, when I extended my heart out to you, to keep - to do with what you wanted, I wouldn't let a little thing like an extended engagement make me take it back as I think about it now, I love you more!
I was pretty selfish to ever think about you coming down here to this God foresaken place, where we'd see each other in spurts - what a helleva way that would have been to start our marriage. It would have been very trying, to say the least, and marriage is ticklish enough under ideal conditions. Yes, Terry, darling, I think we're doing the right thing - and I don't think either of us will ever regret it. As you said, in a round about way, anything as fine and wonderful as our love is surely worth waiting for.
Now, sweetheart, please don't get sick from all this worrying - if you keep it up, you'll be in pretty bad shape in no time. I wouldn't want to hear that you were suffering from a nervous breakdown - I don't think there would be anything that would keep me from taking off - I'd be like a confirmed lunatic - until I saw you or heard that you were alright again. You're so lovable. Darling, please don't ever be any different that you are right now. You're so pleasant, so sociable, so lovely - I'd be so proud to have you with me anywhere! Mrs. Terry Ann Brown - how does that sound? To me, it's one of the loveliest sounding names I've ever pictured or imagined.
My luck has always been pretty good, but to be lucky enough to be your future life's partner, that tops everything that has ever happened to me.
Darling, my love for you is indesrcibable, the feeling I have for you can only be expressed in song and poetry - and in another way that can't be put into words.
You're all I ever hoped for, you're all I ever dreamed of, that's it - you're my ideal. Darling, I have to leave now - I have to get ready to earn some of that easy money they're throwing at me. As all good things have their recess - so does this conversation.
Youre loving, adoring, future husband, you and I, forever.
All my love,
Jim
Dearest Terry,
I got the news today - got sort of stopped in a way, mainly, because I was so absorbed in my plans for us. I should have expected, should have stopped to consider.
Anyway, it's as I told you before, whatever you say is "wilco" with me.
I won't say that I'm sorry, darling, because I'm not. I felt that it would be as easy as that, I loved you, knew that you loved me - did the thing I thought was right.
I cancelled the apartment and told the chaplain how it was - so now it's you and I, still, if not in marriage, something just as good - our promise to each other. Yes, sweetheart, let's just be engaged for now. You don't think that I'd give up first because I couldn't have my way, do you?
Terry, sweet, do me a favor, (do us a favor), don't come down. It's obvious that if we were to see each other again, that we wouldn't be held responsible - it would be hard for both of us to take. We're not kidding ourselves. You know what the results would be. It would be so damn difficult, almost unbearable, to part - why not leave things as they are, eh?
Incidentally, as I started to write, I thought of our bottle of Scotch I had saved for our wedding. I just now opened it - took a whiff - it smelled so good - a toast to us, may we always be happy - together!!
Sweetheart, what your dad says is true, we hardly know each other. Maybe we're assuming a lot about each other, and maybe we're wrong in our assumptions. But, love doesn't work that way - it's either there, or it isn't. One doesn't teach himself or herself to love someone, they just feel it, they know it!
What he says about the long trip is absolutely, fool proof - Forgive me for not being considerate enough to think about that - that's all I can say.
Now that we've decided to wait - God knows that I'll wait for ever - He knows because I've told him - we can be glad that we've done what was best for all concerned.
I guess it will all work out - correction: I know it will! If your mind is at ease now, I'm glad, after all, your welfare is my happiness. I wouldn't want you to conflict with your folks. They mean a lot to you, and you mean a lot to them. So now we're all happy, well - as happy as can be expected under the circumstances.
I don't know how to say this, I realize how you feel, and I know how I feel. But, as you gathered from my last letter, I want you to go out and enjoy yourself - I don't want you to hibernate. If, at any time, you meet someone, someone who means something - hell, I don't know how to say it - I can't say it! I love you too much to lose you. Naturally,if anything does happen, it'll happen and no one can be blamed, no one will be responsible - it'll just happen - and I'll be praying that it won't. What I'm driving at is that I don't want to feel that I'm tying you down. It all seems up to the fact that I want you to be happy.
Darling, we can only hope, and have faith in our love. A lot of things can happen before I see you again, some of them good, others, not so good. We will be happy - we will!
I received the rosary and the candy. The candy was good, and the rosary was one of the nicest things I've ever received. Maybe the one who sent it had something to do with it!
I've been flying quite a bit lately - I'm not one to complain, but after five or six hours at 28,000 feet and then finish the day off with ground school, it really leaves me ready to sleep for a week, but it's the same thing the next day, and the next. Sometimes we just look forward to nothing but bad weather so we won't have to fly. It has to be this way though, there's so much to be done before the crews are really ready.
I can see why the boys keep on the way they do. They have hopes of fulfilling plans similar to ours we have.
Darling, I don't mind telling you that it's going to seem like a long time before we see each other. I'm going to miss you more and more as time goes on. I love you so - there's no one like you. I'm so proud of you - I've been bragging about the sweetest girl I know. I adore you darling.
All my love,
Jim
Dearest,
I suppose by now, that you've received my cards from Mexico. I saw them in a little shop and couldn't resist the urge to send you my feelings via Spanish from Old Mexico. I hope you liked them, they put the words right in my mouth - I couldn't express it any better!
We left Pyote Thursday at noon and spent a day in El Paso, Texas first for the hell of it. Went across the border to see what it was like over there. I was mildly fascinated and had a pleasurable time. I was thinking of you, wishing that you could have been with me. I've really got it bad, honey, I can't ever forget you. No matter what I do, I'm connecting you up with the circumstances, visualizing what you would be saying or doing - always feeling that something was missing to make it complete and realizing that if you were there - the artist could go home, for the picture would be finished.
We arrived here Saturday somewhat undecided whether to like it or not. The living conditions seem to be all right for us, but the housing situation in town is awful. There are plenty of good homes, but not enough of them empty and it's almost impossible to get anything.
We won't be doing very much until the 8th when the rest of our crew get here, and I found out that they weren't expecting us here until the 8th, which means that we navigators could have gotten those leaves as easy as that, but our C.O. didn't have enough back bone to go thru with it. I'm madder than a wet hen - it could have been so simple for us then, however, the situation gets more involved all the time - or maybe I make it that way.
Oh, sweetheart, I'm all mixed up - sometimes I think my head will never stop spinning - I'm like a chained dog - so much I want to do, and so little time to do it with, that is our biggest problem. Darling, I love you so, that to be away from you has developed into a constant pain just above my heart. It's a feeling of longing, of desire to be near you, to hold each other, oh, so tightly!
There is a solution to every problem, maybe we can work ours out to a point of at least mild satisfaction.
There are so many things to consider in our marriage. I love you enough not to want to hurt you by "I regret to inform you, etc." I want to come back the way I left - in these times there are odds, for or against - I don't know which. If we were to marry, and something did happen to me, I couldn't stand to see the hurt in your eyes. But on the other hand, if every thing did turn out all rosey and bright - we would have been sorry for not going thru with it as our hearts told us to do. Oh, my sweet, I'm not trying to be melodramatic or noble - I'm trying to do the thing that is right for both of us. I'm trying to think clearly and deliberately and at the same time the thought of our being apart keeps driving and pushing at my heart. If only we could be together, to talk to each other, instead of writing, it might or it might not help.
What I'm trying to say is that a possibility of another leave is as possible as recovery from a bad case of double pneumonia. There's a very remote possibility, but it's very remote indeed. And so I can safely say that my stay in the States is limited to a few short months of hard, long training, after which God knows how long it'll be before we'll see each other. I have every hope and the utmost confidence that I'll be back! I want you to know that "you will always be the one for me," that I'll always love you!! My only hope will be that you still love me a long time from now, when we're together, the two of us, grey hair and all.
So, you see as things stand, we won't see each other before I go. It might be better that way. It would be so hard to part for either of us. But I can't convince myself of not seeing you again for another year. Darling, why don't you come down for a few weeks? We can talk it all over then, and if things turn out, at least one way or the other, we would at least have had the pleasure of each other. Then you could go home or stay depending on what we decided.
Since we love each other and will eventually be one, I feel that we can talk about a lot of things that would otherwise be left unsaid. On this particular point, our love life, I want you to know how I feel about it.
First of all, I'm sure that you are the woman that I'll always love regardless of what has gone before - that is water under the bridge. I'm so happy to hear you say what you did, naturally, but I didn't expect a doll for a wife to say the least - I did want a woman who had emotion and a warm heart, someone I could love dearly, and with all my heart. Someone who had been around more or less, not someone who had lived the life of a nun surrounded by a childlike, puritan wall all her life. What you told me made me happier than I've ever been. Happy to know that I was in love with a woman who knew what love was, who had emotion enough to say that she was fortunate to have been able to control her affections, not to have never had any before. Happy to know that I wasn't in love with a statue of cold, unaffected desire, and that I was in love with a woman who was mature, mentally as well as physically. This is what those words meant to me, this is what I wanted to hear.
As for myself, naturally I've been in situations, situations that I had to fight against within myself. I always seemed to look forward to the day until I met someone like you. I thought I was in love before, but it's not until now that I realize how wrong I was. Do you know how I feel about you? I feel that we could start from scratch - and end up on the top of the world - together. With an inspiration, as I have in you, I believe we could surmount any obstacles together, and still be there at the end of the long road, gazing into each other's eyes and saying, "Darling, we made it together."
As far as children are concerned, I think that's something to be decided between us and at a more appropriate time. However, I love children, and if it's possible - if it's God's will - maybe some day we can see what we can do. Until then, we'll just forget about it.
Sweetheart, I want to say something else to put myself at ease and possibly yourself.
There are a lot of problems involved in marriage, itself, that I don't understand and I assume that since this marriage business is new to both of us, that we'll have the same doubts and questions, and at times we won't know how to handle them so readily as we think. But it's my opinion that if we're both sensible, both of us try to iron out our problems together, and as one preacher said to two newlyweds "Good luck, and don't both get mad at the same time" I think we'll be the two happiest people in the world.
I was glad to hear that your dad liked me. At least I've made a good first impression. Not knowing your dad, and just getting a glimpse of your mother, I can't say much either way.
However, if they're anything like you, and I'm sure they are, I'm going to like them a lot. Perhaps even more than usually is the case.
Now, you know how things are, and as I've said before, whatever you decide will be ok with me. I'll respect your decision, and everything will work out some how.
Let me know though, so that in case you do come down, I can make arrangements for you and be ready for you.
So hard to leave, even in writing, but I'm going to hang my love on this line. Praying and hoping for the best for us always. Speaking your name in my every prayer.
I'll always love you, darling - always!
Yours,
Jim
My dearest Terry,
I got back to the base today and saw a card and two letters from you. Naturally, I couldn't wait to read them - still nothing definite. I'm glad I called you now and found out partly what the story was. I was on a 2 day pass when I called. I tried to get you Thursday night, but I gave up after midnight after 4 hours of waiting to get it thru. I finally got you Friday night, calling from the Herring Hotel in Amarillo, Texas. Now we're still not straightened out, are we? I wrote a special delivery letter to your dad, he'll have received it by the time you receive this. Not knowing your dad, I didn't know exactly how to approach him, but I made an attempt and I hope he answers it.
I don't like to see you in trouble with your folks, but I'm sure that if they see that we're really serious about this thing, they'll come around. They always put up a fuss at first (we're not the first ones to have this problem), but after it's all over, they realize that they might as well face the facts.
I was really expecting something of that nature, partly because it's hard for parents to realize that their little Terry has grown up now - and is no longer their little baby girl. It happens so gradually that they fail to appreciate the very much changed child - into a woman, and a very lovable, mature, and stable one at that! And as I said before, they'll come around to accepting this fact that you know your own mind, and want to certainly live your own life - and that they'll have to share their love for you and you for them with some one else.
You're certainly in a spot, I wished I could trade places with you, you must be awfully mixed up, and it must be hard on you. My folks would never try to stop me at anything I wanted to do, they knew it would do not good, that I'd do it any way; and I don't love them less, or they, me, for all of that.
I wished I could talk to your dad and give him our side of the story.
I spoke to the Chaplain here at the base. Asked him what he thought of it after telling him the whole story. His answers were very frank and honest. He said that from what I tell him, and his judgment of me, that we had his blessings and that we shouldn't wait any longer than was necessary. "Every marriage is a gamble and no one is tying the other one down in any way, shape, or form. It's a 50-50 proposition, and if we both love each other, are sure of our own mind, we should go ahead, and let the future take care of itself. Get all the happiness you can get now, and when tomorrow comes see what happens, but today, let today be the big problem, or joy, as the case may be."
I haven't spoken to my mother about coming down, but I'd be glad to have her here for the big event, and as you say, it might help. I'm going to write to her today and see what she wants to do. I've told her of our engagement, and I know that she'll be glad to hear it.
I'm sure that I'll have a place for you. It'll be kind of nice down here. You'll be living with my bombardier's wife and it shouldn't be too lonesome. They have a car, and it'll be convenient in that respect at least. I hope you don't mind the set-up that way, but we sort of thought that it's better to have our wives together so that they won't seem so all alone. Besides, she and you will have mutual feelings in common, and all that sort of thing.
When you come, reserve pulmans and wire ahead for reservations at the De Sota Hotel. I want you to have every comfort - always. Let me know darling how things are, and especially how you're feeling. Don't go getting sick on me now, I don't know what I'd do, I'd be like a caged hen.
I haven't made arrangements with the chaplain as yet, but there's plenty of time when you're on your way. I hope to make it a good one - we don't get married every day, do we? Incidentally, I'm enclosing a memorandum on what we'll need in the way of documents. They should be very easy to obtain.
Darling, I can't wait to see you again. I know that every thing will turn out all right. But I want to make it plain that you do whatever you feel is right (in your own mind). I want you to be happy, and if something should happen to prevent our being married now, I want you to know that I'll come back looking for you, and you alone. If, however, you should experience a change of feeling, and I'm sure hoping that you don't, I want you to do what you feel is right. I want you to love me always, and I know that if you do, you won't feel tied down. If you feel the way I do, you'll be all right, you'll be happy, because I know that I'll be happy to come home to you, sweetheart.
I trust you darling, if I didn't I wouldn't love you as I do, and it's the last worry on my mind. I'll never believe anything bad about you unless you, and you alone tell me, and what I don't know won't hurt me.
If, in the future, you want to go out for sociable evening with some one, I won't mind, honest I won't. I'll tell you why. As I said before, I trust you with all my heart, and if you really love me, you could go out with anyone and not be afraid of yourself. Let's face facts, if either of us went out for purely platonic reasons, it would only make our love that much stronger to know and fully realize that we mean so much to each other.
I believe that, right now, you have no desire to go out, that you wouldn't enjoy yourself with any one else. I believe that because that's the way I feel. However, I know you love to dance a lot, and I can't see anything wrong in your going to dances. It's fun, and we'd only be kidding ourselves if we couldn't trust ourselves in another's company. What do you think?
I know now, that I could go out with 12 different girls in 12 different nights, but you'd be on my mind, you'd be the one I'd dream about, you'd be the one I'd be waiting for. That's why I'm so sure of my love for you. All the other girls I've known before, and have met since, don't hold a candle to you. They just don't compare!!!
Answer soon and let me know what's what honey. I love you darling, I'll always love you.
Always yours,
Jim
