January 29, 1947
763 Broadway
Denver, Colorado
Beloved:-
I take no exception to myself. All you say is right and how can I feel anything but shame.
I know I have done wrong but I have been unable to do anything else.
Jean, I am sick, I am mentally and physically sick. I am in constant pain twenty-four
hours of the day. Trying to think is a definite effort for me.
I love you Jean, there is, nor can there be anyone but you. The Hell on earth I have gone
through is unbelieveable. I see your face in every succession of hotels and furnished
rooms. I can do nothing, I cannot think except of you.
Would you try again? I have my GI which will get us a place wherever you wish. I have my
retirement pay, a little over two hundred a month. The GI we can work out together so
that we live where we wish. The retirement pay you may handle completely. I don't ask
that you live as my wife. I only ask a room, rations and a bit of tobacco. The rest you
may handle as you see fit. Perhaps in time you may see fit to come back to me but in the
interim I will be content with only the companionship of you and TenEyck.
Don't call me "Mister" -- don't write me as "Mister". You dragged me from Private to
Captain and a Captain of the Army I shall remain -- it's a long way up from what I have
been and I will not forget it.
I'm a sick, lonely man, Jean. Much of it if not all of it is my responsibility. I simply
cannot exist without you.
The things? Hell Dear, if you can't solve it we might as well forget them. I known no
transfer place in Chicago. If all the concrete results of your life and my life mean so
little to you they can mean no more to me. Let them go. I have little left anyway.
Dam! Darlin'! All the hard days we lived together and now that we're economically sound
you slip it off. Sure, if you take me back you've got three children but I still think
we can live and find happiness, or content.
I'm tired and I'm sick and I love you, Jean. Each thing I do is wrong but it was never
that way together.
You've had Hell? Yours has been an economic Hades whereas mine has been something it is
impossible to live with.
Will you try again Jean Dear? I'm a tired, hurt old man but I love you terribly even if
I constantly hurt you. You handle the checkbook, you run the house, you take care of me
as well as TenEyck and Mary-Suskind. A load? Sure, but no worse than the current problem,
and, it might save me.
I love you Jean.
Tiger