Home | Return to Index

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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Monday

The show for the evening was "Something to Shout About" with Don Ameche and I believe Joan Leslie. It was a musical and a comedy which, while not the best, did furnish good entertainment and a few laughs. One of the laughs was when Don Ameche is in a police station on the charge of disorderly conduct. He wants to telephone Jack Oakie for bail money and asks the policeman where the phone is. The cop says "There it is. Do you know how to use it?" The Don answers back, "Use it? Brother, I invented the thing!" It isn't very often that you will find such a humorous reference in one picture to a role played by that same actor in another film.

By the way, could I shock you with a bit of news? Nobody else but yours truly was in the driver's seat this evening. I was getting pretty tired of having other fellows risk my neck for me driving to the movies (Steinhauser and Red Barry excepted) so I thought I might as well do my own risking. I couldn't drive before because I didn't have a permit but I received one today just in time to take the car over there on the first day of the new schedule at the other outfit.

Several weeks ago I was laying peacefully on my cot when I heard a loud argument taking place It turned out to be Goldenberg trying to convince two of the men in his company that some relation of his was a top flight actor of the stage who had been dealt a severe blow by being drafted into the Army. To prove how good an actor this relation was, Goldenberg said that the fellow played at the Palace Theater in New York. His words almost seemed to be taken out of the dialogue of "For Me and My Gal" where the name Palace was a magic word. To hear Goldenberg talk it is a fact that you have reached the top of your profession on the stage if you have appeared in the Palace.

At last my eyes are opening up to a few of the beauties of this country. Of these mountains we have here, none seem distinctive or outstanding. They all seem to have a sameness in contour but, nevertheless, there are differences. The road which runs in front of our camp appears to run into the base (the very center part) of a symmetric volcanic shaped mountain. At various times it presents a beautiful picture. On occasion the top has been wreathed in clouds while the base is somehow bathed in sunlight. It is a queer little stage and seldom presents these nice scenes. They are very pleasing to watch but rather hard to explain.

The sun and clouds play tricks with your eyes. Today I thought I saw for the first time two identical hills at the far end of the valley. One was bathed in sunlight and the other not far behind the first was cloaked in shadow. It seemed strange to me that I had not noticed them before. Then, before my very eyes, the second hill seemed to become the shadow of the first hill cast upon a much larger hill. I was ready to settle with that explanation when suddenly the dark hill just disappeared and just wasn't there anymore. The only solution to that problem is that perhaps a cloud had cast a shadow identical in both size and shape to the single hill that really did exist.

The moon was out tonight, only a sliver of it. Yet joined with that clear, dazzling white sliver of moon was the remaining portion of the orb all misty like a ghost and barely visible.

But all these things do not compare with the wondrous beauty of Oregon. There was a country which I could sit and gaze upon for hours. Here one has to look and search and wait for the scene to change its face until it assumes one of something akin to beauty. Perhaps it could be called a strangeness.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman