France
Marjorie, honey –
This is your stationery that I am writing on tonite. Best I’ve had for a long time, isn’t it? Thanks like everything, dear. It’s more fun to write on decent paper.
When I first came to the hospital, it was very cold, but recently it has thawed, and it has been above freezing for over a week now. Even had a nice blue sky today, the first for some time, and very beautiful. We had a lot of snow, but that has gone now, leaving mud and trickles of water. When you don’t have to live out-of-doors, early spring is a refreshing, pleasant season.
Ernie Pyle has returned, to the Pacific and with the navy, I see. He is still the representative-elect of the infantry, however. We like him because we somehow feel he is like us—it is phenomenal how he catches and expresses the feelings and experiences of a “G.I.” In reading the book you sent me by him, I had to wonder if perhaps the boat on which he went to Africa wasn’t the same one on which I came across. It sounded so much like it. He said in his first article how he hated the thought of returning, but felt impelled to do so. That is easy to understand.
Of course, we are all interested in the “Big Three” meeting, and everyone is still following the Russian army very closely. All are wistfully hoping for the war to end now. I feel that we still have a lot to do and that particularly the soldiers should realize it. Fretting the war’s end from day to day only wears them down, and now has many of them wishing for anything that will stop the firing—even if it is not unconditional surrender. Now is the time to work even harder and finish the thing up for [face ?], in my opinion.
Last nite I had a very nice time before I went to sleep. I just laid on my back with my eyes open and let my imagination run on our future. Not a new trick, but last night a new wrinkle came to me. We had gone to school awhile, and were out teaching. Don’t know whether it was in high school or college, but in any event we were working hard, and in addition to the regular work, I took up some individual clinical work afternoons. Just like Dr. Carroll was doing at U.N.H., I see now. Anyway the work spread—psychological tests, interviews, case records, all for the “10%” of students who need clinical aid. We liked the work, the need for it became obvious as we continued, and after a lot of nice dreaming, the work came to take all my time and the position of “school psychologist” was created with a fine office, and record room and interviewing room. Then I was very happy, and you were, too, so we cuddled together in bed and went to sleep contentedly and peacefully.
It was very relaxing to me and I slept very deeply and long. Much better than usual. Do you ever have nites like that, when everything feels good and your mind just wanders to pleasant things? They aren’t frequent, but I enjoy them when they come. You are always in that kind of thought—I just don’t seem able to picture any future without you right with me all the time. That is why you are different from anyone else in the world. You’re the only person that knows and is part of those almost subconscious thoughts we have. My relations with everybody else go on completely in my conscious mind. They are excluded from affecting or sharing in genuinely “natural” thoughts—thoughts that show what you are, not what you think you are or what you want others to think you are. That’s not clear, nor is it even sound to divide conscious and subconscious thoughts. Perhaps the thing I want to say is simply that only you could talk to me in my sleep as you have and not wake me up. Other persons would startle me into awaking, but you speaking is as natural as having a thought myself. Of course, that ability only reveals to you how “all mixed up” my dreams are, but nevertheless it makes me love you more deeply than I thought I could ever love anyone. And who ever had a logical dream, anyway?
I love you like the dickens, Bunny
Wallace.
