Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
15 October 1943
Dear Aunty Clara,
Friday
I received two letters from you today dated the 4th and 5th of October. So once and a while those Monday's actually swamp you with mail, eh? I wonder what the mailman must think having so many letters come from the same person at the same time? But I should talk about sending mail when Larry Isaacson some times writes as many as six letters a day. Jack got 5 letters today to my two so he is 2 up on me for the week.
My goodness, Aunty Clara, you've already sent out an Atlas and toothpowder and flashlight batteries and flashlight bulbs to me so what more do you want to send? That is all I asked you for anyway. And then you sent me the Christmas cards when I asked you to send them but for those I instructed you to take the necessary funds from the allotment check. In the letter of the 5th, you tell me of receiving September's check so I suppose my next letter from you will tell me how you fixed the situation up.
I don't see how my letter to Aunty Lilly could be any shorter and still be polite enough to send. Just to say, "I've received your gift. Thanks a million," sounds much too curt than a little hello and how are you preceding it.
Uncle Jack must keep that phone humming since it seems he is calling up every day asking you something or another. Maybe he is doing that extra lot to give Anna a hint he wants to get home for a change after being back for three months and still wandering around. But in something like that you could hint until the house fell down before she would take it while on some other trivial she will snap you up quick as a flash. It's wrong to be speaking about someone that way but the trouble is that we both know it's true.
The Personnel Section may become something like the old time office when we used to have our own special coke machines etcetera. We were talking to Lt. Carryzozo (Carrozza) and he says that nobody in our regiment need to be without ice cream if they want it because as long as he has the container to put it in and the proper insulation for it, he will be able to get all that we need and more. Therefore, Beaumont and I plan to build a double box affair with sawdust used as insulation and get a five-gallon tin can from the mess hall. It will cost five dollars for the five gallons but when the cost is defrayed by all the of the section and other offices around us that care to join in, it will be well under fifty cents per man with plenty of ice cream of all. We could get twenty men in on the deal and have enough for one quart per man.
Please, Aunt Clara, don't send any hard candy out because we can get all of that we want to both at the PX and the mess halls. And in spite of the fact that we can get so much hard candy very few people take advantage of it. The PX is always stocked up with lemon drops and hard square candy. The Mess halls will give away the extra hard candy which they have on hand. In fact, there is a five gallon tin of that stuff sitting in the Company H&S dayroom right now and it has been there a long time without going down too much.
I started off the day with a burning ambition of being able to complete almost all my immediate work by noon but the immediate or sooner work started to pour in from the Orderly Room at 8:00 and kept up until about 11:00. That caused a postponement of my regular work until the afternoon.
I must be dense not to have noticed a connection between the vacation on a farm for Dolores and what Eleanor told me in her letter. And here I went ahead and made some crack about her vacation. But then again she doesn't know what I received such news from her working partner. I wonder if she'll write anything about that in her next letter?
So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman