"I hope by now you will have realised that this is a proposal. I’m afraid it is not a very good one. For one thing, I’ve never written one before and for another I’m so horribly shy that I simply can’t put down all that I want to say; but I can just manage to say 'will you marry me Margaret.'"
My grandmother kept every letter sent to her by her future husband whilst he was serving in the Italian and North African Campaigns during WWII.
My mother is a dedicated family history enthusiast and has been reading through all the letters to help piece together her father’s experiences during the war.
This particular letter is very special. It is a marriage proposal.
My grandfather, as a part of the Royal Artillery, was being deployed in the Allied invasion of Sicily with and facing the very real possibility of being killed during the operation. He wrote in 1943 to ask Margaret to marry him. To judge from the letter he may have found the proposal a more daunting prospect than the invasion!
Two years later, after VE Day 1945, Jim returned to the UK and he and Margaret married the same year. They were together for some 45 years.
Transcript:
Lt JG Logan R.A.
My Dear Margaret
This letter is being written under considerable difficulties - i.e. I’m writing it on my knee, sitting on a rock, in the twilight. The above is possibly the worst sentence I’ve ever written.
I’ve just received your letter of 25 June and it is certainly good to know that some of my mail has at least got home, thusly no doubt disarming your unworthy suspicions.
I’m not so pleased though to learn that date of your departure for Ely, as it very likely means that some flowers of mine have gone astray. I hope you got them all right but I’m rather afraid you’ll get home to find them lying withered on the doorstep.
I don’t know whether I ought to apologise for what I'm going to write now or not - I hope not! You see, I meant to keep all this till quite a bit after the war, when I’d come home and taken you perhaps to Blueloch, perhaps to the port quite a few more times. Circumstances have arisen, however, which make it imperative that I should say what I want to say now.
I hope by now you will have realised that this is a proposal. I’m afraid it is not a very good one. For one thing, I’ve never written one before and for another I’m so horribly shy that I simply can’t put down all that I want to say; but I can just manage to say “will you marry me Margaret.”
You see, Margaret, I’ve been in love with you since about 5 mins after I saw you. Do you remember the occasion? I was winding wool in the drawing room at “the Meadows” and you came in, were shocked by my incompetence and took the job out of my hands. Even then I was determined that one of these days I would ask you to marry me, believe it or not!
All this letter would you know have been quite unnecessary if only my plugging up of the exhaust of ajax had worked, as I’d fully screwed up my courage to the sticking point to ask you then - it’s taken me about two years to do it again.
I do hope this hasn’t come as a fearful surprise to you. You see, I've tried on many occasions to show you a bit of what I’ve felt in my letters, but I'm such a moral coward that what seems frightfully daring to me probably amounts to practically nothing. Actually almost every time I’ve had a letter from you, I’ve longed to say some of what I’m saying now, but my wretched shyness has prevented me. About 75% of the pleasure I’ve had since I’ve been here has come from your letter and about the worst blow I’ve ever had was when all those letters of yours were stolen last year.
I’m not going to say much more, because I hope you know me well enough to know what I’m thinking even if I can’t say it very well. But please Margaret, whatever your answer may be, don’t stop writing to me. I’m sorry for saying that, because I know very well you wouldn’t. I hope you’ll say “yes” - Gosh! How I hope it - but if this is a bit too sudden- and I suppose it may be - I’ll be quite satisfied if you just say that you’ve got me under consideration (horrid phrase). But even if you say “no” I still won’t give up hope altogether, but I’ll still keep on writing and one of these days i’ll try again, maybe it will be in person that time.
Love Jim
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