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

So far today, everything has turned out miserably. For one thing, at eight o'clock in the AM, Pvt George H. Busecky walked into the Personnel Section Office and asked me to step into his weapons carrier and go for a ride to see Captain Hanton. The result was that Hanton had some special work to be done which was to require a lot of typing. But that wasn't the drawback because if just plain old typing would ever stop me, it would be time to quit. The trouble was that the tools, equipment and materials which I had to deal with on the report were all very unfamiliar and I had to take a lesson in those fields right on the spot from fellows in the office who had some knowledge of these things. Just as I could talk rings about somebody in the field of mathematics well a plumber, carpenter, electrician or any other such tradesman could talk rings around me in his field. Well, in order not to bungle up the works, it took me just about the entire day and my head was spinning when I finished it. There is something very disconcerting about working with a problem you know nothing about and then having to hand it in for expert criticism. Just to give you a concrete example of why my head began to swim, there was a list of things written out in long hand and a corresponding list typed-up. I had to match the two lists but the catch was the written words did not always correspond exactly and I had to find out just exactly what was meant. That is where I kept asking people to explain the situation to me. As it is, Captain Hanton was not there when I finally did bring it back in and I do not yet know what kind of a job I did on it. Whew!

Another thing which banged down my morale at mid-day when it needed an uplift after morning struggle with the job was not getting any letter for the second day in a row. Isn't that a terrible state of affairs? I go along for the first two weeks of the month by missing only one day's mail and then comes the third week with three mail-less days and two of them in a row. That makes four days for the month which ties the mark for last month. I should kick when you have to go quite a few more days without mail, as I believe I remarked once before, because there isn't any delivery on Saturday and Sunday back home.

On the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining and today's silver lining was the fact that the half hour refresher training courses in the morning have been called off after just having been rescheduled again thru February. We are now back to normal starting Monday and we will know that after eating breakfast we can get right out on the job instead of first taking a course in basic training.

The PX had a lot of candy today so I bought myself nine bars of Hersheys with almonds and plain milk chocolate. There are still two Mallow Delights left so maybe now I can save them for Christmas week thus making at least one present last to the time of the year it was originally intended for.

The weekly Saturday inspection was held today and Edie thinks he was gigged because he happened to leave a package of cigarettes on his cot. They tell me the inspection took place this afternoon and if that is the case, I might have been gigged too because thinking the inspection was over, I left all the candy on top of my mosquito bar.

Speaking of that mosquito bar reminds me that this morning when I woke up, I found a blood-glutted mosquito resting on the inside of the netting. That thing had bloated itself with so much of my blood that he couldn't fly away and fell down when I went to hit him. A guy like that would be mighty dangerous to have around in a malarial zone.

It looks as if Sunday night Mersing, Burkard, Edie, Hill, Murray and I are going to do our stint at watching the fellows as they come into the theater area to see that they are all buttoned up and in proper uniform. For that hour or so, we will have to wear MP brassards on our left arms.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman