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

Gee whiz, but that fruit cake certainly hit the spot just now. I've just come back from the evening's entertainment which had lasted rather long and where the air became a bit chilly. Going back to the office at a time like that seemed just right for that little snack. It is a lighter kind of cake than you make and it is neither as thickly filled with fruit nor has it the variety of fruit which your cake has but at this stage of the game and out here in no man's land I'm not apt to be particular. It tastes swell. Now a nice warm drink of cocoa would go just right with this while I sit and talk over the day's event with you. Those were the good old days, weren't they, Aunty Clara? Those Fall nights sometimes after ten o'clock when you had finished preparing Aunty Florence's lunch and had sat down for a cup of coffee or even shared in the cocoa you just made for me. And then we would hug the oil stove and talk over the situation. I'd better stop this kind of chatter or I'll be talking myself into a sad case of homesickness in short order.

The morning this morning went by as fast as morning can go I guess because I was busy making two separate entries into every man's Service Record. It takes a good while to do a job like that and I was lucky to have been able to finish it just as Recall blew for the noon meal. Those Service Records are mighty important little books and quite a bit of our work just consists of making various entries in the things.

But about the show. As I sat here at my desk after writing the first letter to you today, I could here the noise and shouts of the audience up there on the hill. I began reading my Reader's Digest but couldn't bring myself around to writing any more letters while I knew the show was going on. So I walked over there.

Two fellows from the other outfit which came over on the boat with us were up on the stage tonight entertaining. He was quite a showman aboard boat and not only has a comic line of chatter but is a singer as well. He and the other outfit's Personnel Sergeant Major were just about the whole show.

But now comes the picture. As I told you previously, the title was "Men are Not Gods" with Miriam Hopkins and Gertrude Lawrence. It turned out to be an English production and it just didn't go over with the American boys because they left in droves. Their acting, their direction, their music and their setting were all as English as you could make them and therefore very different from our Hollywood productions.

In spite of the fact that almost all the audience left, a few hardier souls remained and I was one of them. We were rewarded because there was a story to the picture and although it was from quite an unusual angle it did have a smashing climax.

Miriam Hopkins, a working girl, becomes infatuated with the actor of Othello in Shakespeare's play. He is married but finds he also loves this English girl. There is the triangle set up with the wife knowing of the third party but innocent of the fact that it is this poor English friend of hers, Miriam Hopkins. The gripping climax comes when he actually intends to murder his wife during the acted stage murder. Miriam Hopkins, in the gallery, realizes this and screams out. It all ends happily I that the pair are reunited and Miriam Hopkins goes back into her ordinary workaday life.

I'm going to try to get a letter out to Uncle Jack tonight but the chances of it being completed are pretty slim. But still in all you say no letter is worse than a bad one so maybe I can gather one together which will be fairly presentable. I might as well write one now as any other time because I'm never satisfied with any of the letters I write whenever I write them,

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman