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

Did I say something about packages? I received three packages and one Daily News. The packages were from Anita, Eleanor-Dolores, and the Reeds (I think). The one box which comes from Mrs. Snyder's is still unopened because I have so much other stuff to eat now I want to save it in its sealed package as long I as I can; so I can only presume it is from the Reeds.

Anita sent me a Crisco can of peanuts. I opened that up to be sociable but never did get around to taking any of them myself. I had to rush off to the show but I'll get to them later on tonight or tomorrow. Eleanor and Dolores combined for the second year in a row to send me some candy. This time it was not sweet chocolates but hard candy. The package was a squarish cardboard box with four boxes of assorted hard candies inside of it. The candy is made at the Flavour Candy Company, a customer of the Dearborn plant, and believe it or not, the cardboard box itself is stamped The Dearborn Paper Products Company! Evidently they bought it in the office thru the Dearborn salesman.

I'm not going to send out full-fledged letters on these presents but will send short thank you notes. It is rather late this evening so I guess maybe it will be alright if for once I postpone the sending of them until tomorrow.

The Daily News is alright too, although I only had a chance to take a quick glance at it. According to the headlines the Yankees won the World Series. Hot dog, one month late. What bothers me though is what happened to all the in between papers and what happened to your package with the Christmas cards and the Atlas?

This driving to the new outfit is a joke. In the first place it is within sight of our camp just across the river. But to get to it is another story. We have to ride and ride to the main highway. When we get on the main highway, all we do is ride across the bridge and turn down another side road and ride and ride all the way back in again.

This mail call today was rather humorous. Quite a few of the fellows collect the mail for several others and are sometimes quite loaded down with the various items. Since, as a general rule, we, in our tent, get our mail thru the Orderly Room, we haven't been subjected to that experience. However, this evening, I was the sole representative of our tent at mail call and believe me you couldn't tell the difference between me and the mail man. You know about my four articles but I also was there to receive a package for Edie, one for Mersing and another for Censky. Then Edie had three or four Times delivered today as well as two V-mail letters. It had me loaded down with things in my pockets and under each arm and hand.

Mersing and Burkard and Driscoll and Hanton and a few other all went out today on a spur of the moment hunting party and they tell me that it was quite an affair with their guns actually smoking by being fired so much.

By the way, the four boxes of candy from the two girls were 1) Hawaii Pineapple Crystals, 2) Michigan Mints, 3) Crystal Rock Candy, and 4) Wisconsin Dairybutters. That last mentioned isn't hard candy at all but good old Bull's Eyes.

I'm sorry, Aunty Clara, but this letter has sort of bogged down. You, reading it at one sitting, can not see the delays and the breaking off points. For the last so many minutes I have been looking over the Daily News and alternately talking the situation over with Larry and Tom Campbell.

It is a fact that with all this mail coming in from home and the Daily News to read and the Daily Times to read and so much talk about the good old places in the Loop and the environs of the Windy City, that I feel no further away from home than if I was at a friend's house visiting. My first five months in the Army at Oregon were so lonely that it seemed I was off in another world from which there was no return. Contrast that to the feeling I have now that sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize that I am so very very far away. That just shows to go you that it is only in the mind.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman