Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
25 November 1943
Dear Aunty Clara,
Thanksgiving
The show, "Talk of the Town", turned out to have your favorite actor in it, Ronald Coleman. Also in the picture were Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. It was a rather long picture but it was entertaining and that is what counts. Prior to the showing of the picture we had a show that was a show. The band played as usual and they had a nurse there who sang four numbers to the accompaniment of a guitar and a piano accordion. Needless to say, she made a sensation and would have regardless of what she sang or how her voice would have sounded. In addition to the band and the singing nurse, we were entertained by the regiment's prestidigitation or the art of legerdemain as presented by Dock Haley, the Chaplain's assistant.
You know, I am surrounded with people who go to the shows and forget all about them the next day. I do that to a certain extent but it seems I am becoming like Clarence in that I like to spot those small players and recall the last picture or pictures in which I saw them. But if I talk to any of my associates about them, they don't even recall seeing the picture in question.
The big supper was all of that although several things were changed from the original menu as I gave it to you. For one thing, we were only served beer which both Larry and I gave to John T. We also gave him the Pall Mall cigarettes which we were handed as we walked into the mess hall door and which we had no use for. The sweet potatoes were the one item n the menu that I missed the most. The ice cream tasted like ice cream and everything but was a liquid and not the stuff we got from town last week from the regular ice cream machine. By the time I got around to eating the pie, I was stuffed to the gills with the best turkey meat you would ever want to taste and bushels of mashed potatoes. Believe it or not, but I left half the pie uneaten. Had it been real pumpkin pie I would have crammed it into myself whether I was filled or not but it was actually a squash pie and I'm not exactly crazy about squash.
We got out of the shower away past ten o'clock and made the showers later than ever and it was while "Call to Quarters" at quarter to eleven was being blown that we were first underneath them. It was surprising that at that late hour the place was jammed and the water was so hot that we had to let in the cold water to cool it off.
Just before inserting this V-mail into the typewriter, I typed out an airmail envelope and put the Sopac's Thanksgiving-Christmas Greeting in it. What in the world do you with this junk and other things like that which I send you from time to time? Maybe you do not care for me to keep sending them?
Although it is half past eleven at the present time, I am going to do a little bit of work tonight just to see if the plan I told you about in today's earlier letter is feasible or not.
Lately, during the past two or three nights, I have been deliberately ignoring people who come into the office at night and attempt to strike up a conversation with me while I'm writing a letter. Tom Campbell is one of the chief victims of these snubs. If I didn't do that I would never get my letters done.
I have been reviewing the French vocabulary I learned and find that already it has become rusty because of disuse. The best way would be to get a good basis to work on with and then to devote a certain amount of time each day to the reading of various French works from ordinary newsprint up to the works of the better French authors. That is the one way to get a vocabulary, hang on to it and enlarge it all at the same time.
I take back what I said about the mosquitoes last night because since then I have been bitten again and again and again.
So-long, /s/ Roman Roman