Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
26 October 1943
Dear Aunty Clara,
Tuesday
So I'm sitting in the mess hall minding my own business eating my own meal when suddenly I hear my name called out by T/5 Hill who is distributing the evening mail. Hark, says I, perhaps a few letters came along with the packages in the afternoon delivery. Unfortunately, I was being buffaloed for when I got around to picking up the said letter it was none other than an official acknowledgement of someone's allotment. Hereafter, says I to Hill, you will sing out my name Klick only when personal mail is involved. For that kind of trash I asked him kindly to say something like Company Clerk so that I'll know what to expect.
Another heart failure was the package delivery. Package after package was doled out some from Macy's, some from Field's and some the General Store on Main Street; some fellows got one package, then another and even a third but there I waited and waited but that package now forty-one days on the way did not arrive.
The film problem settled itself nicely for Lt Carrozza brought back with him the picture which was scheduled for this evening, "Woman of the Year" with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. It certainly was a long picture but all of it was entertaining. Although the theme of career versus marriage is as old as the hills, the different angle and dialogue plus the top flight stars put it across with plenty to spare.
The most hilarious scene of the show was the windup with Katherine Hepburn trying to putter her way around the kitchen. It has been a long time since I have laughed so heartily at anything and I went to town with belly laugh after belly laugh. I suppose that, if you saw the picture too, you got a kick out of the way she puts a couple cups of coffee in the bottom half of a silex coffee pot and just one cup of water in the top. She really got everything backwards on that one.
And then trying to separate the eggs was another good one. To top all of it off Spencer Tracy was a riot just sitting there taking it all in.
So much for all that. I now sit here at 9:30 P.M., covered with mosquito lotion, typing out this evening edition of my life and times.
I guess that just about everybody on the Allied side, or for that matter, maybe the entire world is supremely confident that someday this war will end as all wars do and life will once again resume a normal course. I feel that way more and more every day. Sometimes the news is good and I feel that that day will not be so very far off. Other times the news is a shade darker and it makes the return seem a bit further from view; but still in all there is something which says that we'll all be back again and the war will be only a nightmare to be remembered.
But in spite of this confidence, every once in a while a dread and sinister thought comes into my mind. What can prevent this war from dragging on and on indefinitely? While it is highly improbable that the war would last another ten years let along another five yet supposing it did. It is hateful to even think of two or three more years in this lousy army away from home but it is almost sickening to imagine that the possibility still exists that there shall be no early culmination of events.
My mind is funny that way in that almost in the same thought I can picture how the ex-soldiers will be living as civilians once again and starting life all over and also a terrible prolongation of this conflict with many many people never seeing the end of it. A lengthening of the war which would see fellows like Jerome Barta coming back as veterans into a world they had never even known before they left.
So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman