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Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
July 17, 1943

Dear Aunty Clara,

In Aunty Florence's letter she thought I might need a knife. Well, it so happened that when we arrived here the boys just stopped having any use for those gigantic knives, therefore, it just as well that I sold mine. The occasional use of a borrowed GI knife supplies most of my needs.

Jack Molyneaux went to the dentist yesterday and according to him our dentists do very good work. He has four fillings to be put into his mouth and the dentist is doing them one at a time. The chances are that I will not be able to have Dr. Kolar work on my teeth for the remainder of the duration plus; so it is a relief to know that his substitute will be a good one.

It seems that making clothes racks is going to be a permanent past time with me. In the old tent we lived in, we built our original clothes rack by tying a stick to the center pole of the tent. This first endeavor was not so successful because we did not have any braces on the pole and in order to keep it balanced we had to place an equal amount of clothes on both sides. Our second clothes rack was built on the same principle with the addition of a brace made of string. If too much weight is put on one side, the rope tightens up and keeps the pole in fairly level position. That worked alright but then we moved into another tent and we never put it in our new home. Our third rack was merely a T made of poles. This one just leaned against the side of the tent and was continually falling down. We adjusted that in digging it into the ground and fixing up the usual bracing system with the rope. Someone leaned against it one day and it caved in so that ended that. We built our final (we hope) clothes rack yesterday. It is the usual T shape design but the long pole is put into the ground about two and a half feet and the cross pole is grooved into the other pole so that there is very little give no matter if all the clothes are placed on one side or the other.

I thought that I was finished seeing something new in the way of unusual moonlit nights. Evidently, I was wrong. Recently during the last full moon the light it cast was brighter than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. I've read your letters by the light of the moon and back in Camp White we could see Mt Pitt by the light of the moon but never did I think it would be almost as bright as daylight. From time to time the clouds hid the moon but they did not prevent the valley from being flooded with light.

The mention of specific magazine articles by name etcetera is, I believe, censorable so I will not mention what magazine or issue I read this in but there was an article all about the ODB which stands for Office of Dependency Benefits. Probably Jennie has already pointed the article out to you or Mr. Infiesta because they would take an interest in it. It states that every month over one hundred million dollars in checks are mailed out to the dependents the soldiers and other fighting men. It details the entire history of its origin and the troubles which beset it from time to time. One thing is that the ODB is a paradise for these half-human machines. These machines print the checks to see if each envelope has one check and finally mails them. The article was especially interesting to me, of course, because I have been handling one small end of the ODB's business for some time and was curious to find out about the bigger end.

The chaplain's tent is directly across the walk from the personnel headquarters and one day during the week you could have knocked me over with a feather. There was that double of Uncle Joe dressed up as a captain (chaplain) in the United States Army: The only thing is that his double had not put on the weight the Uncle Joe has during the past years.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman