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Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
August 31, 1943

Dear Aunty Clara,

Tuesday evening

This letter is a sort of apology for the other letter I wrote this evening. Every once in a while I just have to let some of the steam off and that is the result. Like a watched pot never boiling so a watched war is never won. It seems we will just have to wait and forget until someday we will wake up and find that it is over. Towards the close of every day I say to myself that this is another day finished, one day less of war and one day nearer to being home. At the beginning of each new day I look forward to reading the news bulletin to see what progress has been made towards winning the war and I am glad that the night passed so quickly which again means that time has been passing rapidly on towards that day we all await.

Jack Molyneaux says there isn't a moment he doesn't think about going home and that even during his best times he still had that in the back of his mind. All I can say is that it is wonderful that people can enjoy themselves no matter what the conditions. All thru the day we find incidents of humor, incidents which keep our mind occupied and which all add up to shorten the duration. But then come those times like now on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the opening of World War II when it seems time has dragged so long and will continue to drag on into the indefinite future.

We, my fellows and I, talk about the days when we will be home again and what we will do and how we will act yet it is seemingly into another world that we must go to to enjoy those dreams.

This momentary depression now being put into words is not similar to that which hits me at camp before the furlough. Then it was not so much the length of the war or the future but it was the fact that I had lost my home. I don't know if I ever really made you feel what I felt but I think I did. Here I had been, gone from home for such a long stretch, my correspondence limited to only you, overseas duty in prospect and the picture of home growing fainter and fainter and finally fading into a nothingness. Home was a mere dream which at sometime in the past had been a reality but now was just a bunch of words and a few pictures. Nothing more.

The furlough cured all that. It gave me the spirit and the faith in the permanence of things. I knew then for sure that no matter where I went or how long I was gone, I would still be able to come home and find it and you just as I had left them. And there would be no more fading out because there was a new strength to keep me going. In a few more weeks I will have been gone away from home once again almost as long as the first period yet I am closer in spirit, in thought and feeling than at any time during those first four or five months. Even the psychology of travel had something to do with it for going away from home took five long days which seemed to have placed an insurmountable distance between us. Coming back in one day not only overcame that barrier but it broke down psychological effect, if any, the best trip to this island might have had. There the distances are tremendous yet the thought that home is still physically very close is a heartening effect.

As I am writing this and unloading it unto you, I am beginning to feel a lot more cheery. I'll probably walk back to my tent from the office with a new outlook and enough energy to live through a few more days of the duration. And I hope that these words have an equally beneficial effect on you.

There is nothing like a good talk to lay the way for a new start. Maybe a few more conversations like this will see the end of the war. It will happen someday and all we need is the patience to live it out. And if the worst comes to the worst and I get three years service in this army that will mean 5% more pay for longevity --- approx $3.30 a month.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman