Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM SF Cal
28 July 1944

Considering the fact that our mail has to travel completely to the other side of the world each trip, two weeks is very good time. That is just how long it took for your air mail letter to arrive. V-mail between Cicero and the Canal takes just seven days flat with two weeks for the round trip. This was accomplished by the fact that there are now smooth working V-mail stations both in Chicago and this island. How does your mail between River Grove and England work out?

Incidentally, this is the first week that we have been allowed to mention where we are, since before that it was a deep, dark military secret. Now you can understand perfectly why it is impossible for me to recount to you in turn the places I have seen and been to. They are nil.

Say, that must have been something to visit Cambridge and its colleges. One of the greats which I always call to mind as having gone there was Shelley who, I believe attended Trinity college. I agree with you that it does seem rather odd that so many world famous figures should have received their instructions in greatness at Cambridge. The United States will probably not have any such place with its vast number of universities. I can see now that in the years after this war is over should we ever get into some of those all night conversations, I'll have to do the listening for with your travels through the civilized world you are picking up a considerable number of topics of conversation.

By the way, George, what are your plans for the post war years? Are you going to go back to photo-engraving or advertising once again or has the Air Corps changed all that? As for myself, I can definitely say that I'm going to accept my discharge with alacrity and then do one of three things: (1) take advantage of the GI Bill of Rights and go to either Chicago or Northwestern for that last year, (2) pick up where I left off at Rathborne, Hair & Ridgway or (3) open up a small business someplace close to home.

How are things going along back home? Nothing has changed very much in Cicero for some time and that is alright with me for I would like to come back to the same kind of place I left. I may or may not have told you that Jimmy Kotek and his wife have become parents. O yes, my younger Aunt finally quit Ackermann's printing across from the Franklin Bindery and got herself a job at Western's.

I'm glad to hear that you are teamed up with a new crew that is more or less of your mind. That helps quite a bit to have the fellows you associate with interested in the same sort of things and thinking along the same lines. Your new position in a lead crew sounds rather good since first things are usually coupled with good things but is it really so?

How does your return to the US work, George? Does the entire crew return immediately after so many missions have been made or do they work it on a basis similar to the rotation of army personnel after two years of overseas duty in that it is more or less up to chance in a lottery? Personally, if I see the US again, it is going to be at the war's end and not before --- not of my own choice of course but I have a hunch that is the way things will turn out.

My work continues along the same lines with the spare time taken up by inspections, Retreat formations, movies and letter writing. That is about all there is to it. O yes, I finally got around to reading another book. This time it is "The Song of Bernadette". The old days of book reading week in and week out seem ages away now.

I wish you the best of everything . . . luck, health and happiness.

So-long,
Rom