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

Your letter of the 4th of December arrived in today's mail and along with it came Aunty Florence's Christmas card. I'm fortunate in having Aunty Florence's air mail letters of the last few weeks come thru so shortly after the V-mails. Most of the fellows are waiting patiently for letters over a month which means that the air mail has been going by boat in a number of instances.

When I told Ike Moreno that Carol didn't have any more pictures left, he was disappointed for he really expected to receive one in return. I hope that she does get more made to send one to him.

That Red Double Cross Tuberculosis Christmas Seal with the mail man and his load of packages is about the best one the organization has put out in a long time. It is the first Christmas seal with a touch of comedy in it. That card which Aunty Florence sent is a nice one with the snowman on it and the verse is good too. Her card is still one of the pioneers for the deluge of cards hasn't really come in yet - only the merest trickle.

The day was a pleasant one although the afternoon was rather hectic. Once a fellow is in high spirits, it takes quite a big jolt to knock him down off his perch and even though this afternoon would have been enough to do it ordinarily, I just laughed it off today. For one thing, I hadn't even reached the door of the office before Sackett was out in front of Headquarters asking me to quick like a flash type up a Detachment order promoting a man in the Medical Detachment to Pfc. So I walks in and gets the things ready only to have Lt Suiter tell me the identical thing. But before I can finish or even get into typing it, he asks me to find a brand new Army Regulation on something or another and I have to stop to work on it (it was work trying to locate it). And before that is done, I had to look for a letter which I should have had but Sackett was holding and no one knew just where it was. And then I had to type out a couple war bond purchases and then Captain Cook tells me that I made another mistake on the weekly strength report and wants me to straighten it out (this was erroneous). Last week Group Headquarters called up and said I made a mistake but it turned out they were wrong and not I. This week they became confused once again and accused me of making another error which again I hadn't done but Captain Cook has it in his mind that I'm the one who's wrong so he cheerfully calls me over each time saying, "Klick, come here, you've messed the strength report up again." Naturally, under ordinary conditions I would get kinda peeved but today I laughed it off how he convicts me way ahead of schedule. So it went. Captain Cook asks me more questions about reports I have nothing to do with (Sackett was compiling some sort of data and I had only a vague idea of what it was about) so I told him I would try to find out. I had to ask Lt Suiter for the information and he was talking on the phone for about five minutes and soon Cook bellows at me to find out why I'm not doing anything about it. Says I, "I'm waiting to ask Lt Suiter who is busy on the telephone." Finally, I have to make out two beautiful officer pay vouchers which have me in a dither because there is every exception to the rule in them and they are what I really wanted to work on this afternoon although I didn't get a chance to work on them until late and then it was too late. But without feeling disgruntleed or discourged, I merely --- holy smokes, I've got to take my typing a bit slower --- I repeat, without feeling disgruntled or discouraged, I merely closed up my work at four bells and hot-footed it down to the barracks as if nothing had ever happend. I repeat, happened --- my spelling is atrocious to say the least. One thing I can say is that with all that hub-bub etcetera, the afternoon hours fairly flew by and instead of seeming like the three hours they are, they seemed nearer to one hour or even four times ten minutes.

Norona's latest edition of the Time magazine arrived in this afternoon's mail and I borrowed it from him and made it a point to read it from cover to cover although by the time I reached the home stretch in the last quarter of the book along about seven-thirty, I literally scanned the pages instead of reading them. It was one of the least interesting Time magazines in a long time mainly because the news has been rather static of late and no big developments or speculations are in the offing to make news.

Bill Grauel struck it lucky this morning. He was driving Moreno down to the ice box to get cold water for the office when a cook from C Company was trying to put five boxes of candy in the reefer without luck since the thing was too crowded as it was. Therefore the cook gave a box of candy bars to Bill and the office has been eating them all day long.

Our H&S basketball team is being dogged by bad luck. They've lost every game to date and this evening they were leading 21 to 22 in the closing minutes of play and then had to have two fouls called against them so that the other team won 23 to 22. Lewis is on the team and Grauel tells me that he is a fairly good player. I told the fellows that I wouldn't mind getting in a game just to see what I could do and they said sure thing, anytime they are out in front about fifty points they will let me play. But that will be never if they keep up at their present rate.

I got off a thank you note to Rathborne Hair and Ridgway Company last night and it was a fairly good one --- so I think, because it was short, sweet and to the point. This evening I'll try getting out another thank you note and so on until I've got all the presents thanked for.

Holy smoke. Guess what I just did? You'll never do it so I might as well tell you. I was looking at some old V-mails (I have them in a box which is filled almost two inches above the cover with your letters) and they all fell on the floor into a heap. Now, I've got them together again but I can't guarantee that they are in order anymore because almost 600 V-mails are rather hard to go thru in short order.

There is still one more weakness I have to correct. I have gotten so that I do not waste much time either at work or down in the barracks but when I get up to the office to write a letter, that is where the time begins to fly by with a lot of talking.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman