Bradley TenEyck Van Deusen

January 29, 1947

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