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

Because Leishman was kept up until four-thirty this morning doing company work a la Hanton style, which you well know can mean any hour of the day or night, I took his place on CQ for this afternoon and ate an early chow. I will probably also take it for him this evening also if he still needs the additional hours to catch up on his lost sleep as he is now doing. Anyhow, I thought it would be a lucky break to eat early and have the full noon hour to write letters in. Unfortunately, that was not the case and the lunch hour is practically over and I am just beginning to get started on the letter. For one thing there was a business matter to take care of. Lt. Suiter already had me type a long piece of work over because someone changed their mind about something or other in typical army style and I was about to be handed a whole day's work to be done over again, not because it was wrong or anything, but rather because the form wasn't according to the standards that are customary. For that I was going to argue or at least try to do something about it for it is my belief that there is more than just one correct way to do a thing and just because a book or AR gives merely one illustration it doesn't mean another way isn't just as acceptable. It is going through now and my face would be red if it should happen to bounce after all although the only reason it should bounce is because it has hit another GI stone wall of regulations. To close this rather bitter first paragraph I would like to ask you if you remember the picture or the book Les Miserables? And Javert as played by Charles Laughton who had to obey the law for it must be carried out to the letter? Well, in the army a person runs into quite a few Javerts and it is they that turn the Army into an impersonal machine which keeps the individual down. Of course, everyone isn't that way or else it would be an unbearable prison.

Three letters or rather three pieces of mail arrived today. Two were V-mails from you dated the fourth and fifth of September and a congratulatory postcard from the Michalaks with a dollar bill in it. Goodness only knows but I'm going to be able to put that dollar bill to some use during these next two months. Anyhow, it seems because they just heard about my becoming Sgt at this late date, it wasn't going to stop them from observing the usual formalities. It is lucky I didn't answer Dotned's letter or theirs for now I can kill three birds with one stone. Funny thing about that change in rank. I didn't tell anybody about it really outside of you and everyone that noticed the change on the return address got a bit huffy or peeved about my not telling them, with, of course, a few exceptions.

When I read your letter saying that Labor Day was a holiday back home I suspected that the accumulated mail would certainly come in droves the next day and sure enough, 13 letters is quite a haul for one day. How in the world do you have the patience to read all of them? Or don't you? A lot of times I like it when I receive some two, three or four days of your mail in a row for it is like having the next day's chapter of a serial story right at hand.

There is no doubt about it in my mind but that sometime during the year 1945 I'll be home again even if it is merely for a month furlough. I can see myself being detained in the Army even as far into the future as the early months of 1947 but to remain continuously overseas for all of next year, no!

This is one time Mrs. Reed and Myrtle didn't get their letters answered along with the regular run of answers although they would have had I gone through with my plan of answering the mail this last Sunday. Perhaps tonight I can get at that job.

Jack drove Lynd in with the mail this morning and I would like to drive him in this afternoon but Jack usually doesn't give up his chances at going in either.

So-long,   /s/ Roman
Roman