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Camp White, Oregon
16 March 1943

Dear Aunty Clara:

I am writing this at eleven o'clock at night (Tuesday). Regardless of the fact that Pvt Harvey has seen fit to take his three day pass at this time I am going to take my morning off anyway. Perhaps they will send a special messenger down to get me but that is the only way they are going to see me. There is a boxing tournament in the afternoon so once again I will have the entire day free from work.

With the accumulation of work on the war bonds and Harvey's not being here, I had to work the whole day straight thru and did not have the opportunity to write anything in the afternoon. This evening was bingo night at the Service Club and I went over to see what it was like. I'm sorry I can't tell you how I won any prizes because I just didn't. I thought surely that with about fourteen to twenty plays for the price of a quarter I would win once but such was not the case.

Just before the bingo game, I played Curry a chess game. It was a freakish game to start but then settled down to be a swell contest. And can you beat that, in the closing minutes of the game I had wrested the advantage and had a win game in my hand when I fell neatly and swiftly into a simple but clever trap and lost the game within several moves of the end. That was a laugh on me. Curry and I talked over that ending for some time. That is the first time he has pulled a coup upon me and he was rather elated. We just played the one game because I planned on spending the evening at bingo as I did.

During the day I received another letter from Uncle Jack. Stack is a lot better by now and in a few weeks will be up and around (at a limited pace, of course). And you remember our saying that it never rains but that it pours? Well, after looking for my Army Institute course for two weeks, it finally arrived today along with the stuffed dates and a package from Ulysses. The dates are swell, Aunty Clara, and I am trying to conserve them. So far I have only eaten half of them. The package from Ulysses contained a writing kit with envelopes, paper, postcards, V-mail and a blotter.

I'm not going to be able to write anything tomorrow because I will be in the barracks and away from a typewriter at least until noon.

My cold has finally grown up with running nose and all.

And tomorrow I must begin answering my mail to other people, start studying my mapping and surveying and get a haircut.

I've meant to ask you for quite some time if you have ever heard of the new cereal Rice Flakes. They are on the order of corn flakes but melt in your mouth much faster. I walked out of the mess hall with ten of them this morning. Now all I have to do is get myself a bowl and a quart of milk each morning and I will be independent of the kitchen.

There are countless little details I would like to tell you about but at this late hour they are slipping my mind and I haven't the time to write them all down. I thing I do remember is that I managed to get hold of a cardboard tube for the picture but it is so small that the picture had to be bent to get it in so it isn't such a hot set up. At least it will come in one piece. I'll tell you more about it and the OCS in my next letter.

Solong,
/s/ Roman
Roman