Dear Aunty Clara:
That Application for Family Allowances which I put in at Camp Grant has not been worth the trouble. First of all it is rarely anyone just applies and then forgets it. This being the case, I could find no one in the office who could supply me with the information as to the correct procedure to follow. Some said I couldn't do this and another said I couldn't do that. It all ended up by me sitting down at my desk last night equipped with AR 35-5520, the Company Administration book of the office, and a pamphlet concerning Allotments and Dependent. The final result was that I can automatically let the original application expire in a period of six months. This is done by simply not submitting those affidavits to Newark, New Jersey. So you can tear them up. Now the second thing I had to read up on was whether or not I could currently begin a Class E Allotment which merely sends money home to you with none added by the government. This will save me the trouble of having to make out money orders each payday and will also prevent any possible holding up of my pay because of a redline or something to that effect. Regardless of whether I receive my pay each month or not, you will receive each month I remain in the army a check for $30.00. This check will be mailed from the East on the 1st of each month.
$30 x 12 (months) = $360 (a year)
$ 7 x 52 (weeks) = $364 (a year)
Therefore we must procure an extra four dollars from somewhere else every year I am in the army. And here is where it will come from: You now have enough money in the weekly fund to carry you thru March 5th with $2 over. The checks should start coming the first or second weeks of February and every month thereafter. Technically speaking (because in a transference of this sort, it is difficult to figure dates exactly) you will have $37 left in the weekly fund by the time the checks start paying up the months in advance. But we can not take this $37 out of the fund because if a check is ever held up we must have a reserve upon which to fall back on. However, with this $37 dollar reserve, the war can last 9 years and 3 months before we run out of money to add that extra $4 dollars. Do you think the war will last that long? No, I didn't think you did. I hope you can get along on that.
If I only have $3.25 left in my personal fund or thereabouts you will have to withdraw the whole thing to get the prints made and I will have to send you the difference. And that will end that fund.
And about that income tax. When I get my report from work and check it against what we have marked in my little book and I add my Army pay to it we will know what I earned. And when Aunty Florence gets her slip we will see what she earned. Then we will compute to see whose tax is the most (it will still be mine, I believe). If it is, we will reduce it as we did last year and I will pay that part of Aunty Florence's tax which she will have to pay extra. I have the choice of either paying mine outright or letting it go until the end of the war. I don't know which is best right now.
This is the way it would work.
If I have to pay $150 alone and would only pay $60 with the deduction and if Aunty Florence pays around $80 and would pay $30 with a deduction she would be saving $50 and I would save $90. I would then pay her the $50 that she is losing by not taking advantage of the deduction and I would still be $40 dollars ahead. And remember 2 years back when I accidentally thought my tax was to be somewhere in the forties whereas it was in the four dollar brackets? And when you said in a horrified voice, "Forty, why O, Roman, it can't be that much, why that would be horrible". Ha Ha Ha Poof on $40.
Goobye,
Roman
Editor's annotation: This letter was presumably written 12 January 1943 @ Camp White.