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

The evening mail was strictly alright. Two of the eleven packages now on their way arrived. One was from the Victory Club Zone #52 and the other was the first package which you sent out. It seems incredible that there are still nine packages in the mail on their way to yours truly.

Anyway, I was on my way to the showers when I stopped by the Orderly Room and found the first mentioned package. It is a box of Bugle Special from Marshal Field's. It has four jars of jam just as Mrs Boyer's package had but there is no fruit cake. This has ten little packages of crackers to go with the jam and the usual hard candy plus a few toffee caramels. There was no indication as to whom the package had been sent from until I ripped away the address label which had been pasted over the sales slip that is pasted on all of Field's boxes.

Believe it or not, I came right back to the office to write a thank you letter and it is in the mails right now. After such a long wait last time, the club members will fall over when they see such a prompt reply. The box was bought on September 21 and mailed on October 1st. Evidently the club had funds on hand or had been advanced funds prior to the bunco in order to send out the boxes to the boys overseas during the one month period. No doubt the majority of its mailing list is still in the States so the bunco funds could be used at a date closer to Christmas in buying boxes for them.

We haven't even opened the box yet to eat any of the contents because paradoxically, now that we have these extra to eat we haven't the craving for an after dinner snack. Just wait a few days and it will come back again.

Your package was the one I had been making such a fuss over and which I had Burkard and Edie watching out for and when they saw that all it contained was tooth powder, flashlight batteries, bulbs and news clippings they were disgusted in me. The extra bulbs will come in handy because those little things do not last forever. The batteries will be further insurance that I'll not be without light and now it seems I have an overabundance of flashlights themselves. The plastic one doesn't work but the one I got from John Edie works perfectly so that makes the two that came in the mail today good reserves for future needs.

Thanks to both you and Uncle Jack for fixing up the paper clippings in the box. But because of those same clippings I have wasted the first two hours of this evening. It took me all that time to read thru those papers. All those sports columns and news about Chicago, baseball, politics plus Yankee articles take a lot of time to read.

I never did get to the showers after receiving the first package, writing the answer and then coming back to the tent to find the second package there. As a result, Larry is now waiting for me to finish this letter so that we can take one now.

The evening is still young, eight o'clock and I hope before it is over, to have written a word to one of the following five people: Dolores, Marie, Anita, Aunt-Aunt or Virginia. I owe each one of them a letter.

There is only a half of a fruit cake left now because late last night Larry and I dug into it again. At that time I noticed that most of the fruit in the fruit cake has become raisins.

My exposed limbs and face are usually covered with the insect dope but during the brief times which I leave my guard down those mosquitoes swarm over me in droves. The other day while I was sitting in the mess hall one of those things bit me three times in a row on my forearm and each time I felt his sting and inside five minutes there appeared three big welts where he had bitten. I'd hate to be in a malarial zone because at that rate I'd be a goner in no time.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman