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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Saturday

It is a good thing I said I was just going to try to write some other letters this evening because it is now past nine o'clock and I have first begun to type. My alibi is just this: I listened to the news broadcast at six o'clock this evening and then walked over to the office to write letters. Laying on our desk was a Reader's Digest which I glanced at. A glance that lasted just about two hours. I must have read that thing from cover to cover and by the time Larry walked in from the show, I was just winding up on the last item which interested me in the book.

So Cicero and Berwyn are suffering another epidemic. I remember the last time was during my first year in Junior College when the swimming pool was closed and George and Ray inveigled me into taking that dancing class (which I dropped like a hot potato the minute the swimming pool reopened). Somewhere, in a recent magazine, I was reading that this year and part of next year is going to be particularly bad for infantile paralysis which is hitting its cycle once again.

In connection with Pat's answer on my query on George Svolos, I might say that for further information see the letter itself which is somewhere in my dresser drawers. I put them there after reading them to you during my furlough. I believe she mentioned something about where her relatives live and knowing something about other Svoloses but that this fellow must have been some other kind of Svolos than her kind, There aren't but about five families with that name in all Chicago and one would think that they would be related. Then again that may be a common Greek name which just isn't popular among the Chicago Greeks.

By the way, last night, before leaving the office, I took one of my air mail envelopes which I had addressed a long long time ago and carried it over to the dayroom with me. There in the almost complete darkness I found two sheets of the Bulldozer, placed them in the envelope and sped them on their merry way to Cicero. It is funny but it seems that you get them just about the time I am sending out the next month's edition. You mention in your letter of the 13th that the Bulldozer finally came. This one has a crack which George Yantis made to Simanoff in the Personnel Office the other day.

Coming back from the show yesterday we had an incident which proved that sometimes even careful drivers can get into accidents. A truck was trailing Steinhauser by about three feet and started to pass us going around a curve. Another car was coming towards us on the road and in order to make enough room for the offender, The Mouse had to bring our car away over into the ditch. Nothing came of it but it just shows that the recklessness of others may hurt the careful one.

On the way to the other outfit we picked up a chocolate soldier who hailed from 43rd and Southpark Ave --- a mile or so away from the Mouse. He worked for Armour's in the Yards. Chicago and vicinity must sure have quite a representation in this man's Army because no matter where you go or who you meet, you run into a Chicagoan. That is like the news bulletin which came from an unusually unreliable source which stated that the Germans are claiming the Americans are not fighting fair. We are putting all our Chicago gangsters in the war and the Germen can't beat them, That news bulletin stirred up quite a sensation among the Chicagoans and the non-Chicagoans.

You don't have to worry about be getting any kind of special sicknesses while I am in the tired spells because first of all, I'm beginning to recover after getting to bed a bit earlier lately and this Island is remarkably free from diseases usually prevalent in this section of the world. For instance, although we have the mosquito we do not have malaria. That is a stroke of good luck for I was reading in the Time magazine that in all the fighting done in this theater there have been two cases of malaria for every battle casualty.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman