Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
Aug 15/43
Dear Aunty Clara,
Ever since that blonde bombshell walked into the office, we just haven't been able to function properly. She had a demoralizing effect on Welling for she had typed a few words on the V-mail form he was using and guess what it was --- her name and address. That is what I call fast work. Her name is Yvette Fayard and her dad owns the entire Valley in which our camp is in. The best part of it is that Lt Carrozza has informed us that she is going to be one of the gals who are going to come to the dances which are to be given in the Company Mess Halls beginning this coming Friday night. First D Company has a dance and then A Company. That way I can have a lot of fun kidding Welling along that I will get a chance to know her before he does as the H&S Company dance does not come for a few weeks after that.
But can you imagine this good news? We are not going to show the picture "Arsenic and Old Lace" but in its place will be a double feature with "The Palm Beach Story" as one attraction and LANA TURNER as the other attraction. O yes, Lana appears in the picture with Clark Gable, "Somewhere I'll Find You." Maybe it is a good thing that the possibilities of a beautiful romance turned into indifference during my furlough days because if I had to write home news like this to a girlfriend, I'm afraid there would be some long distance quarrels. That is the advantage of being footloose and fancy free, eh? You can love any and all of them.
I didn't tell you about my dream last night. It seems that I dreamed for hours of being home on another furlough for a ten day period. The first days passed as if I was going to stay forever and it wasn't until the seventh day that we realized I had to return to camp once again. And on the seventh day I saw that this second furlough was turning out just like the first one in that I wasn't going to see all the people I wanted to see and in particular, Bob Hesser. Everything seemed so detailed and plain. I talked to people and had logical answers. After I woke I began singing "Chong, he come from Hongkong" and it seemed as if I had been playing it on the Victrola just as I did one morning when I was home. These are the kind of dreams that we wish would come true soon, aren't they? You know, when this thing is all over --- and it will be someday --- we will look back upon it as such a short time. And it will seem as if only yesterday I had left for the Army and then there was that interlude of a furlough just so many short hours before.
That latter thought is so wonderful yet so terrible. It is the human capacity to forget. It will be wonderful to have several years of separation pass into nothingness as far as individuals are concerned but it will be horrible as far as the mass of humanity is concerned; for to forget means that we will have fought in vain, that all the years from home have not preserved their future sanctity. It will mean that we have forgotten a lesson and that the determination born of strife and hardship of war years will be lost overnight. And there can be only one result to such a failing --- there will be a continuation of conflict in years to come and future generations shall suffer again.
I hope though that for quite some time after this war is over we will be able to do what we want to do and have the things we wanted to have. It will be too good to be true but we can still hope that during the remaining portions of our lives there will be no more such upheavals in our brief period on this planet.
I can see my company filing in for supper so I had better sign off now. It seems that there is always a race between my finishing the letter and the ending of the chow line. So far the chow line has never beaten me.
So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman