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

Came the double-cross by either our Special Services Department or that one downtown and instead of having "Crossroads" for the movie this evening, we had a reshowing of "Stand By For Action" with Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton and Brian Donlevy. That was one time I was roped in because I would never even have gone to see the thing over again but here I had to run it and there wasn't any way of getting out of it then.

Today has just been utterly wasted excepting for the time I took out to write letters and that hour or so I had to read a part of Galsworthy. Captain Hanton came in to the office while I was reading and asked if I was doing anything. I informed him that I was on duty as CQ until four o'clock. He said he had another letter for me to type up (just the first of a series of revisions of one of the letters I had typed earlier in the morning). Well, the letter got to me exactly at four and when I brought it back to him, he told me that I had better "Stand by for action" because, no doubt, there would be several retypings of the thing before it was finished. However since I had to run the movie this evening, he said then it would keep me pretty busy tomorrow.

Luckily I had time enough before supper to take a shower. I never would have found the time to do so after supper because there again that time was taken away from me by outside sources. The movie projectionist from another outfit came around looking for a replacement tube for his machine. We ransacked the projection booth without finding the bulb he needed and then looked around for Lt Yantis for more than a half an hour before we located him only to find that we didn't have any spare tubes after all. By that time it was movie time and I had to go on duty.

To crown the unhappy events of the day, we had trouble with the movie projector. For the first thing, we couldn't get the picture in focus. The reason was most peculiar. The front section of our large lens happens to be reversible and whatever outfit borrowed our lens the other night turned it about so that it was impossible to get a clear picture. Then the film broke once and jumped the sprocket holes at another time. But that was not all. Beginning with the second reel, a loud buzzing noise got into the sound and persisted in different volume thru the end of the movie.

Not contented with all those out of the ordinary occurrences, Harvey Beaumont and I had raised the flood lights beyond their usual height and the combined strength of Lt Yantis and myself barely was enough to lower them again.

And even the mail was a sorry affair tonight because I received no letters. However, here I was saved a mail-less day by receiving four Daily Newses and one Reader's Digest. I hadn't even opened the Reader's Digest I received the other day but I imagine that they are from November and December. I now have about fifteen Daily News unread and thirteen of them still not even opened. What I am going to do is read them one a day from now on so that I'll always have a paper to read instead of trying to read two weeks of newspapers in one day as heretofore.

The time now is shortly after ten o'clock and I believe that I will brush my teeth and toddle off to bed to try to sleep off this nightmare of holiday. At least I am thankful for Christmas Day having been so extra good.

By the way, I have come to the conclusion that when my beard really begins to grow, it is going to be darkish which means, Aunty Clara, that when I come home from the wars, you are going to have a man on your hands instead of the boyish looking shaver that went away. Time marches on!

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman