Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
July 21, 1943

Dear Aunty Clara,

Whew, the mail really came storming in today. Two from you dated the 8th and 9th of July and one from Myrtle Reed. Thanks a lot for getting the flashlight and sending it right out the way you did. I don't suppose it could have been sent airmail, so sometime towards the end of August I will begin expecting it. It sure is too bad that we have to wait that long for the slow mail. Now that our correspondence has quickened to its old tempo it is hard to realize that we are actually separated by such an eternity of time when it comes to slow mail. So you got to talk to Dolores herself, eh? Little did I expect anything like that to happen when I asked you to call Gussie up on the phone. I know Gussie is that way, though, because many times when I would be talking with her at the switchboard, I would casually mention someone in the office and before I knew it she would be connecting that person with the board. I knew that you could not insure the watch or any of the other items when you sent them to me but that is just the chance we have to take. I'm curious to know who that fellow is who worked down at Myrtle's place and is now in my outfit. I tried looking thru the cards to see where they last worked but I was handicapped in not knowing the name of the place (I just knew that it is a law firm in the loop). Then too it is a job to look thru all the cards for something which will probably be answered in the next letter or so. Therefore, I gave it up.

The French grammar, which the chaplain offered for sale (50 cents), was not worth it for fellows who have taken French up in school. It is simply a skeletoned course of the more simpler elements of the language. He has a French book which is fairly decent. It is a collection of the fables written by La Fontaine - a great French writer of away back when. Joe Kurtis, the clerk of H&S Company, bought the book and offered to let me read it whenever he was not using it.

Somehow or another the office Robbin works in got hold of a 22 ½ pound box of hard candy and as a result we now have about five pounds of it in our office. Since they haven't been selling candy bars in the PX for some while, we value any other kind of candy we can get. Incidentally, I have another confession to make. Robbin sociably (he thought) brought out two cans of beer this evening - one for me and one for him. I drank it under protest and warned him that hereafter I will flatly refuse his hospitality however kindly meant. The three cans of beer I drank in consecutive order the other night were enough to satisfy my desires for the duration. You know how awful it tastes when you sip the stuff so I have drunk all four cans with the utmost rapidity. This shocks the real beer drinkers - they do not realize that that is the only way I will get it all down. Beer is a rationed commodity and is purchased in the orderly room thru a check-off system. Every time I enter the room there is quite a good bit of bantering about who I'm buying the beer for and all that sort of thing. They know perfectly well that the nine or so cans I have bought from time to time never went down my hatch.

Lt. Yantis is now in charge of the new moving picture projector and it looks as if some of the clerks may be lucky enough to learn a bit about the operation of the machine because he will need someone to assist him three evenings a week. There is an advantage to learning how to operate it. Not that it could become a livelihood on the outside but that if a person wants to take it up as a hobby they will have the experience. Then too, many clubs and associations pay good money for the occasional use of a member's talents in running a projector. That is how Frank Thorstein managed to get married with all that extra dough being raked in.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman