Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
June 22, 1943
Dear Aunty Clara:
This business of not having enough time to write letters will have to cease. Here I(ve been receiving a million and one letters from you and all I have written in return since arriving has been a mere pittance of three or four letters. I don(t like having to put off writing a letter anymore than you like not getting them every day. From time to time during the last four or five days of no letters I have thought of things I wanted to say but now that I am ready to type them down I just can(t remember them.
One thing which I still have to do is to answer your letters and that reminds me of something. You can send the watch. You will have to wait for a written request from me which I will send on a separate V-mail form and also by airmail today. A new army regulation came out which permits the folks at home to send one package a week to their APO. The package cannot exceed five pounds in weight nor can it be more than 15 inches long. The total girth of the box should not exceed 36 inches; that is, if you measured completely around the box it should not be more than 36 inches. By presenting a written request for the article in question from the soldier and a postmarked letter, envelope or a V-mail at the post office you are allowed to send it. Previous to this new regulation only 8 ounces could be so sent and anything above 8 ounces to 5 pounds had to have a written approval of the commanding officer of the APO.
What type of wrist band has the watch got? I would rather have a metal band than a leather one because you recall the irritation caused by the leather band of the other watch.
The freshly cut earth in these hills is red. Does that sound familiar to you? In the picture "Gone With the Wind" the earth of Georgia was rich and red and Scarlett and her dad stood in the fading light of day overlooking a field of that red earth. That is when he told her that Tara was her home and that she should hold onto the land. It was the only thing she had and she was a part of that land. That is what I called to mind when I saw that red earth.
In connection with the color red I thought of something which seems a bit odd but really isn(t. For instance, the army is uniform in everything they do. Not only for simplicity but for neatness. One type of color throughout quite often looks much better than a motley display of hues. It first came to my attention at Camp White that the patients in the hospital wore deep red (probably more of a maroon color) bathrobe. They looked so colorful that it did not seem like the army. But then again on board the ship there was a sick bay and when the patients that were strong enough to sit up came out onto their section of the after well deck they wore those identical deep red bathrobes. To top it off they have those same colored robes on this island. I(ve never had occasion to feel the goods of those robes but from all appearances they seem to be made of a heavy corduroy.
There isn't much more room on this V-mail form to tell you about the latest swimming exploits of your kidlet but it will follow in the second page.
(Page one of a continued V-mail letter)
Solong,
/s/ Roman
Roman
Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
June 22, 1943
Dear Aunty Clara: (Page two in the V-mail letters of this date)
The last time I told you I had gone swimming with Larry while Edie sat on the river bank watching us, I remarked that the river current was rather swift. Well, since then we have discovered a much better place for swimming. The river is quite wide at this point and towards the center it is about ten feet deep. At the side we enter the river it is good enough for a shallow dive while on the opposite bank it is very deep and they have built a small diving raft at that point. Because of the width and depth of the river the current is almost cut down to a minimum. Harvey and I went for a short swim after work Sunday afternoon and yesterday --- Monday afternoon --- after recall we three --- Larry, Robbin and I --- went down for a swim again. And yesterday was the first day of winter!
Do you realize that I haven(t gone in swimming regularly since junior college? As a result it is impossible to keep on swimming and swimming the way I used to. Then too ever since I had that cramp in my leg at the 56th swimming pool, that evening Clarence and I went there, I have been rather leery of overdoing it after a spell of being away from the water. Robbin is a fairly good swimmer although he is not very fast. He was half the way across the river before I started yet I caught up with him by the time he reached the other side. However, on his backhand stroke laying on his back in the water he outclassed me by a mile. In fact, he swims just as fast that way as he does with an overhand stroke.
Incidentally, I was in town several nights ago. At first I walked around with the two Frenchmen of the company --- Maynard and Gradler. That wasn(t getting me anyplace because Maynard is French in the first place and has spoken it in his home since he was a child. As a result it is Greek and not French when he gets to rattling away with a native. Ray on the other hand was rather silent also so I meandered off by myself and a few other fellows trying to practice French. Unfortunately a person doesn(t have to know one single word of French to get along. The storekeepers understand American currency and they know how to count. On top of that the signs for lemonade, coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches and so forth are all written in English and all you have to do is ask for them as if you were in any store in the U. S.
The one trouble I have is that since I know that the people will understand me with my ordinary English why should I make a fool of myself trying to speak French which probably would mess up with such a heavy American accent that it would be incorrect to them. Then again I am not sure of my vocabulary. I would like to have a wealth of French words to back me up in a real conversation. As it is the few hundred words I do know would hardly be sufficient. I think that perhaps one of these days it might be a good idea for me to have you send my Fraser and Squair French grammar for me to brush up on it. We shall see what we shall see.
In addition to going to town I had to take a fairly long ride through the country which I will tell you about on the next page of this continued narrative..
Solong,
/s/ Roman
Roman
Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
June 22, 1943
Dear Aunty Clara: (This is the third page of a V-mail letter dated today)
I typed up this third page of the letter once but had to tear it up! Why? Well, I did a bit of my own censoring and discovered that I was giving an excellent description of the roads and then I inserted a lot of French words which you see on the signs which say (slow( (curve( (narrow bridge( and the other usual road signs. It is permissible to write in a foreign language but it takes a bit longer to get through because it must be marked for a special censoring. Because of that I decided we will forget all about my motor drive through the country Saturday night and then a duplication of it again on Sunday morning.
Incidentally, you have probably gathered this by now but I do not believe I ever told you this before in a letter. You and I are not living in the same day anymore. Here it was Sunday afternoon and I was wondering what you were doing when it dawned on me that you were still living in Saturday. You see, we crossed the international date line during our trip and where we had been gaining time we suddenly lost the whole day. But is it odd to think that on a Monday here after the weekend is well over you are still in Sunday and in the weekend.
We all thought that when we would be serving overseas we would no longer be able to spend much money but to take care of that situation an army post exchange follows wherever you go. As a result the money goes just as fast as it did back in the States. My steady expenditure has been on O(Henry candy bars and pound boxes of Whitman candy. The pound box of candy sells for 80¢.
How much does 500 sheets of Pond(s tissue cost back home? It seemed rather foolish for them to sell such an effeminate item in the Army PX yet many of the soldiers are buying them and putting that tissue paper to various uses. It costs a quarter and someone said that back home it costs 39¢.
By the way, another thing I will be asking you to send me is a good strong flashlight. It seems that I bought the wrong thing. I am glad I sold the knife because I would have had no use for it anyway but I would have been wise had I bought a flashlight to begin with. You can begin scouting around for it and I will send the request along shortly. O.K.?
Two letters arrived in the mail the other day. Both were Rathborne, Hair, and Ridgway envelopes. One was from Hackbarth with a list of all the fellows from work now in the army and other branches, their ranks and addresses. The other was from Bob Hesser who wonders where I am and what about the chess game. He must have kept himself well supplied with envelopes if he can still send them out after quitting three months back. He works at the Atlas Box Company now in a position similar to the one he had in the Dearborn Paper Products Company. Within the next few days I will have to drop both Hack and Bob a little answer.
I have a new system for keeping a copy of outgoing letters and will let you know about it in the next letter I sent do you. Solong for now. This finishes this letter.
/s/ Roman
Roman