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

Do you know that I am almost living just to write you these letters? I go thru the day with just one thought in my mind that I will have the opportunity to write. After I have written to you my mind is at ease. It is following that old idea that Clarence's mother did not know how he felt at the last moment of his life. And by my writing to you as often as I can you will be able to know what I thought, what I felt and what I did up to my last moment should it ever come. Every once in a while I think that in a few days it will be a year since Clarence died. Being in the Army, as you know, has made his death seem remote because I do not feel his absence as being conspicuous among the absence of everyone of my friends. But I've often wondered whether when I get out of the Army and into civilian life if that old feeling of loss will return to me. Or will the lapse of time in the Army make me forget. There is one thing which I usually remember about Clarence and especially when I was home on furlough. That very last evening I saw him and we walked around the old neighborhood we had been discussing our plans for our life after the war. We were walking down 56th Avenue between 16th and 18th. He said that he made plans for a future which will never come does not seem wasted to me because at the time we were discussing those plans we had enjoyment and the enjoyment of the moment was worth more than any eventual materializing of those dreams might have been.

The band did not play this evening as I had anticipated but they had the Jive Five out there instead. They are five fellows from the band that have music in them from head to toe and it is all jazz.

Company C put on a dandy show even though most of it was corny humour and the acting was a bit amateurish. You can't expect a group of men indiscriminately thrown together to put out a Hollywood production. Cava was not MC but he stole the show anyway with a take-off on the speaker we had here the other week. He managed to get the mannerisms of the speaker perfectly and of course in caricature made them very funny. He used almost the same phrasing as our speaker did and played up the funnier aspects. The fellows really did roar out at some of the things he said and did. That boy has a lot of nerve getting up in front of an entire regiment and visiting audience to try something out like that. Later on he sang a few songs and played a part in one or two skits.

The highlight of the evening came in the last act. From somewhere or other Company C got a hold of a woman to help them out with their show. You should have heard the roar when she came out in a number called "Honey of the Island" and did a hula dance with a grass skirt costume.

The picture "Mister Lucky" was wonderful. Cary Grant, a gambler and draft dodger, falls in love with Laraine Day, a Debutante and a War Relief worker. He planned to use the charity angle for raising dough through legal gambling but he turns straight, turns the dough over to the charity and disappears. She loves him and he loves her but he doesn't think he is a right guy for her. To make up for his draft dodging he joins the Merchant Marine and later thru a planned accident by Charles Bickford he is brought together with Laraine Day and the story ends happily ever after.

The show was long and it is now fifteen to eleven. During the hour after supper and before the show I did not write letters. I lay on my cot resting while I explained and demonstrated to Larry a few of the tricks in chess using the miniature board his wife sent him.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman