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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Monday

I received your V-mails of the 11th and 12th plus a package from Aunt-Aunt. The package was a huge tin with probably five pounds of assorted nuts. She sealed them shut with Scotch tape just like Anita's and just like Anita's package they are still fresh. Now, more than ever, I hope that you might have sealed the box of candy from Mrs. Snyder or the wax paper keeps them fresh. That is all I have been doing all afternoon, eating the nuts and drinking water while putting away the different things in my new footlocker.

I worked in the office until 9:30 this morning and then had the rest of the day off. Here is what I did in it. I went back to my tent and started the articles which the St. Valentine Church sent to me and then I fell asleep while reading a Time magazine. I slept until noon which didn't do me any harm with all the sleep I'm not getting these nights. It was at noon that I received the letters and the package.

In the afternoon I began chewing the fat with Larry and then Cain walked in the tent and kept talking for more than an hour. It wasn't until past two o'clock that I managed to empty my barracks bags and pack the things away in the footlocker what needed putting away. Believe it or not, but the mice had already been in it and did their business all over the thing in the twelve hours I had it in the tent!

To safeguard my clothes (underwear and socks) and handkerchiefs from those little mice, I have out them all in boxes. The arrangement I have now is this. In the little shelf like compartment in the front over which the canvas flap extends I have put my mess equipment, my utility kit, two flashlights, one box of underwear, two boxes of handkerchiefs and one bag (the Red Cross bag given to us aboard the boat) with socks. Those are all the things I need every day and which I want to have right at hand. All the other things like shoe polish, civilians shoes, the old blue house slippers, boxes of soap, candles, matches, winter underwear etcetera are either in boxes or wrapped up in paper in the compartment with the cover. I know the rats will be in there visiting because the cover is warped at the corner allowing enough room for them to enter. I hope that the boxes and the paper wrappings will discourage them after they get inside.

Speaking of these little mice, they don't just come into my footlockers to look around or to find something to eat. The other night fellows in the tent had some bread on the table and this afternoon I found the crumbs in the corners where the rats had been.

Larry's guard days are over and he is now working around the company area. He had the life on guard with one day off and the next day on. Incidentally, Larry has now begun to write V-mail letters to his wife. The reason is not so much that he accepted the V-mail form as being better than free postage or air-mail postage but he has run out of envelopes.

For this evening we have scheduled a warm up rehearsal for our company show this Thursday evening. I hope it works out all right because the rest of the regiment doesn't like it when a company doesn't put on their show or if it puts it on, they don't like these horrible flops.

I never did get to call up Blumenfeld today as he wanted me to do. I tried once but the line was busy and I just wasn't in the office the rest of the day to do so. By now he is in his tent area and out of the office so it wouldn't do much good.

This letter is being timed just right. It is two minutes until five o'clock. It is strange that no matter when I start writing it either at four o'clock or four-thirty, I still wind up just as the clock says five bells.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman