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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Friday



This evening was spent in some more of this cooperative affair of putting up the door of the tent and the mosquito netting around the sides. It isn't done yet and there is still a lot to do on it. With the limited number of tools and such, three of us were generally standing around watching the other three do the work.

When it was all over for the night, five of us (all except Burkard) went down to the shower room to take a refresher. It was much earlier than my usual time and the place was packed so that you had to wait your turn for an empty shower. When Larry and I go there, it is either empty or there are very few people in it. Anyway the water suddenly became unbearably hot and then it just died down into a nothingness. Fortunately, most of us had time to get the soap off of us before the showers turned themselves off.

I finally opened up the remaining portion of the nuts which Aunt-Aunt sent but am eating them sparingly.

Incidentally, mail cell was almost a complete bust for me today in spite of the fact that there were so many packages and letters. I received the Daily News of the 19th. Gosh, the three most important packages are taking the longest time of all. I'll bet that by some perverse trick of fate those packages have all been lost. They claim to have gone to town this evening to pick up 29 bags of mail but it doesn't phase me any more because I have given up all hope of ever receiving those aforementioned packages.

Believe it or not, I can hardly keep my eyes open or my mind working. While I'm typing this I'm going thru the funniest sensations. For instance, my eyes are shutting themselves intermittently yet I go on typing and seem to be getting the words out in somewhat of a proper order. Then I'm looking the sentence over and it seems that I go off on a tangent and dream of anything and everything. The probability is that I am not making much sense.

Larry had a cold this evening and since his tent bunch has delayed their construction job until Sunday he wrote his letters in the Dayroom this evening and instead of taking a shower, he went to bed early.

It is definite now that tomorrow morning is the morning for the refresher shot in the arm. The boys have been reminiscing of late on the good old days in Camp Grant when the veterans of five days service or less began yelling "Harpoon" at us the very minute we stepped off the train and whenever they would see us marching around the grounds in a group. Since that day, however, we have become blase about the entire affair and a shot is just a shot to us but we like to recall the "Harpoon Days".

According to the news dispatches, we are really trouncing the city of Berlin killing civilians by the thousands as well as destroying the war plants. Although they are human beings dying in those ruins, it is hard to feel sorry for them after what the German Air Force did to London three years ago and because the people getting this are the Germans who got us into this lousy war and whose destruction will help bring about a swift conclusion to this war. Then they are so far distant that their sufferings seems like the Chinese. First hand suffering is not easy to bear as words in a newspaper saying that so many people lost their lives.

A devastating blow like that against the largest city in Germany must have a terrific effect on the morale of the fighting men of that Third Reich. I know it wouldn't be a nice feeling to know that Cicero was blasted off of the map by bombs and then having to wait an eternity to hear news from home, always expecting the worst.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman