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Camp White, Oregon
15 February 1943

Dear Aunty Clara:

It is 1:15 A. M. on the morning of February 15. The reason I am writing a letter this late at night is because I figured that I wasted the time when I could have been writing you a letter and as a consequence must get one out without any thing interfering.

About the income tax situation: I have enclosed in this envelope the two income tax blanks. One is for Aunty Florence and the other is mine. This year it is not required that they be notarized. All that is necessary is that the taxpayer sign his or her name on the first line for the signature and remit the check in the amount of the tax. What Aunty Florence must do is to put (1) her social security number in the section for it, (2) her name on the line for signature.

Then you must make out a check for one dollar for my tax and a check for 80 dollars for her tax and mail them (IN SEPARATE ENVELOPES) to Collector of Internal Revenue, Carter H. Harrison, Chicago, Illinois. I believe that the fellow who will make the check out for you at the bank will also take the blanks at the same time and the bank does the convenience of mailing out the blanks to Carter H. Harrison.

Under ordinary conditions Aunty Florence could claim you as a dependent and would only have to pay a tax of $61 instead of $80. By not claiming you her tax is $19 greater than it would be. I spoke to Bob Richards at Rathborne who is the tax man for the company and he said that it would be perfectly alright for me to claim you as my family and I am the head of it. So my tax figured at a single man1s rate would be $128 but as the head of a family it is only $1.

Looking at it from that angle you can see it would be better that we do it this way than pay $120. Since Aunty Florence's tax would amount to $61 anyway she is losing $19 which I will pay for her. You probably haven't got the money to pay the rest of it ($61) so I suppose you may take it out of my bank account if there is enough in it and pay it from that.

Then again we could look at it this way. Aunty Florence claiming you as a dependent would pay $61 and I as a single man would pay $128. That is a total of $189 which is terrific. This way the total tax only amounts to $80 plus $1 which is the not so bad figure of $81.

I don't think you should withdraw all my money to pay the tax. Some of it should be paid out of funds on hand if any.

Boy this seems a far cry from last year when claiming you as my dependent I paid no tax and then paid Aunty Florence's tax of only $7 or so. Or was it that Aunty Florence's tax was more than that and my share amounted to that. I don't remember now.

Enough of that. I am anxious to pull out of this joint. This is Monday and I'll bet any money that my mail has already begun to accumulate at that A.P.O. address. That would be a laugh if that mail caught the first boat out and beat us to our destination. I might as well kiss goodbye to that five bucks if you sent it out in one of those mails. I don't mind not getting the other letters but I sure am going to miss yours if we stay here much longer.

After writing a letter to Dolores, Lt. Hanton had some work for me to do. Do you know what our company has gone ahead and done? We are promoting our company to authorized rating strength according to the Table of Organization. In other words, all the Sgts, Cpls, Techs, Pfcs that the T/O says we can have, we are going to have right now.

But instead of doing those immediately, I met Jack Molyneaux who wanted to go to a movie. I told him I don't bother going to the movies and suggested going for a walk even though I had just returned from a short after dinner walk with Blumenfeld. So we walked. We walked from 6:00 until it got dark and by that time we were out in the foothills at the edge of camp. We finally turned back, came up to Headquarters and then took a walk over to his barracks. This certainly did take a dig into my time. I had always wanted to go for walks like that around camp but never did seem to find the time.

I didn't work on the payroll today and it is still in its early stages. Incidentally, for the second month in a row, I am having difficulty making my first page of the payroll. I have typed it over three times now and I think it will have to be done over for the fourth tomorrow.

I don't see why we even have to bother with that payroll because the deadline for them is the fourteenth of each month and that past by an hour and a half ago.

The Pfcs (20 of them) which I made for Hanton today, I dated back to Saturday as the effective date of their becoming first class privates so will have to enter them on this month's payroll. It creates an extra problem this time but next time I will not have to worry about them. I only wish that the 30 other ratings which are being pushed thru would materialize tomorrow also and I could start my payroll from scratch once again to get them on it. That would mean that all my future payrolls would be almost free of such items as promotions and the beginnings of allotments, insurance etcetera.

It will be bad enough when we will have to make out an overseas payroll giving each man an extra 20% increase in salary. Do you know that it will mean about $13.20 more a month for me if we do go across? That is a $3 raise per week. By gosh, I am even doing that raise stunt in the Army too. Of course, this possible $79.20 per month does not compare very favorably to the $125 a month I was making at the end at RH&R.

I guess I will have to end this letter even though I am in the mood to rave on and on and on and on. It is ten minutes until two o'clock.

Solong,
Roman

I just glanced through your last two letters and see that there are a lot of questions I did not answer but I am sending the letters back anyway. I hope I can remember them the next time I write.

Ro