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Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
September 8, 1943

Dear Aunty Clara,

Wednesday

I just can't figure out where my day is going to. For the second successive day in a row I have not been able to write you a letter before suppertime and it has been all I can do to get back to the office in time late at night to do any writing at all. The time now is edging on eleven o'clock and I am first sitting down to the evening letter.

In brief review, this is what happened to my working day. Breakfast, and to work by 0700. We started the day off right by working in the office for a change instead of out on the labor battalion. But sure enough, comes 0930 and they wonder how come we are not out helping the boys on the barn project. Says we, we have work to do. Says our superiors, let the work go and go outside and work. So with work spread all over the desk, with work sticking out from our ears and with work piled from the floor to the ceiling, we go out and load scrap lumber into a truck and cart it over to a scrap pile where we unload it. Then we do likewise for a couple of piles of scrap canvas. By that time the morning is shot and we get none of our regular work done.

Comes the afternoon and we get started working again until at 3 bells, an hour before quitting time, they decide to clean the office. So there you have it, from 1 to 3 are our new office hours. It is well known that once the work of a Company Clerk is running smoothly there usually isn't enough actual immediate work for a full eight hours, just seven and a half. But that's the limit when you try to keep up on two hours a day.

Nevertheless, with a week's accumulation of letters, forms, entries etcetera still to be done, we must start on the payroll in the morning. I would like to be able to start it and finish it tomorrow but chances are that I will not have the records in sufficiently good order to begin for the next day or so. We shall see what we shall see.

During the noon hour I came into the tent back in the Company only to find it was just about torn apart as Burkard and Mersing were constructing a new type clothes rack to be used as a model for the rest of the company to duplicate in their tents. The thing looks like a regular monstrosity and doesn't serve the purpose as well as the one Censky and Burkard had built a few weeks previously. Since they had the tools in the tent, I decided that was a good time to begin construction of my foot locker. I did but the noon hour wasn't long enough for that purpose so I had to leave for work with tools and materials scattered hither and yon all over the scene.

Back from work at four and I tackled the problem in earnest and by five o'clock I had something tacked together which began resembling a foot locker. If I get a chance to work at it tomorrow, I think I will be able to whip it into usable shape. Then I will be able to pack almost all my belongings in it and dispense with the other Klick handiwork in the cabinet line. I rather like the cabinet better but the foot locker is more GI, will be less in the way, and will be much more sturdier than the cabinet which was made from scrap box wood instead of scrap lumber. You know that box wood is the poorest wood used.

I didn't know for sure whether or not we would show a movie at the other outfit this evening or if we did whether or not I would run it. I couldn't wait around for Lt. Yantis to return from town because I was busy on the construction in my tent so I left a note on his desk asking him what the story was. About ten minutes to five, I got my answer. It was yes there was to be a movie and I was to run it. That didn't leave me much time to get ready because I had to get rid of the tools, clean up the mess, change clothes, eat, wash up, etc all in about forty-five minutes.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman