Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
September 7, 1943

The office work is piling higher and higher and yet we are still building that canopy to keep the rain off the office worker's heads as they pass from office to office when it rains. It will take days to clear up the backlog of work yet the payroll is due to begin any day now. To top that situation comes the movie camera angle which seems to be taking up more and more of my time right along. For instance, I thought surely I would find time to write you a letter between four and five this afternoon but no, I had to set-up the movie projector in the big tent for tonight's show which is now over with. Since the big tent is a small tent when it comes to housing a regiment, we divided the show for the night into two performances with one battalion being allowed to attend its own show. The picture was "Idaho" which I had seen back in the States. That meant I had to yawn through it twice this evening.

All this had to happen on a day when I especially wanted to write you a good long letter because Roman F. Burkard came into the Personnel Section today and laid one V-mail on my desk, then another, then a third, and a fourth and finally a fifth. Yes, and every one of them was from my own Aunty Clara. Our mail seems destined to skip days and come in bunches but what good bunches they are. The letters are dated the 25th, two the 26th, the 27th and the 28th. You mention that on one of those days you received nine V-mails from me and it was a day which was made for reading letters well it so happened that your five came on a day made for reading letters too.

It isn't so easy to dash a letter off to just anybody because these letters to you take at the very least, thirty minutes. And in these letters I just write as the thoughts enter my head without regard for sequence or form. When I write to others, I try to keep the composition of the letter in mind as well as what I am writing. Then too, I have to figure what each person would like to hear and what they wouldn't be interested in. With you I can say everything and anything. While my letters to others never seem to turn out too hot anyway, I still waste more than thirty minutes apiece writing them. And it is always harder writing to people who send me excellent letters and whom I fear are apt to be more critical of my answers than most others. Such are Uncle Jack, Ray, Dolores.

Today was candy day and my poor resolution not to indulge seems to have been shattered to bits. Out of a box of 24 bars which I bought at 11:30 this morning, I must have little over 12 left. I don't know why it is but because I have them on hand I just keep taking a fresh one and eating it just like a person keeps eating peanuts or jelly beans. But they did me a cathartic good turn which I had sorely needed so don't feel too bad about my injuring my system by eating too many of them. In that one respect they are very healthy.

I haven't had any opportunity to do any one of a dozen different things I wanted to do such as write other letters, study my studies, read etcetera. From the various rumors floating around, the tent interiors will soon be arranged in GI order as prescribed by some of the higher ups. In anticipation of that order and the eventual tossing out of such homemade furniture as cabinets, clothes racks and the like, I am keeping my eye open for scrap lumber and material out of which I can make a regulation foot locker which will be permissible under any circumstance.

By the by, Zamora and Burkard both have flashlights identical to the one which you sent to me. The difference between them is that theirs has never given them any trouble.

This lad, Larry, is going crazy over chess fundamentals and instead of writing to his wife he is sitting alongside me studying the rules of the game --- out loud.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman