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

Dear Aunty Clara, Monday

Slowly but surely the job of answering all the unanswered letters and sending out all the thank you notes is being finished. First of all, after writing your letter in the afternoon, I followed it up with a short note to Aunty Florence. This evening I have written letters to both Mrs. Reed and to Aunt-Aunt. All that is really left to write are letters to Marie, Uncle Jack, Mrs Boyer and to George. I'm afraid that with this mass production of letters the quality of them has slipped to a very low ebb. You can judge for yourself.

Anyhow I received two letters today. One was your letter of the 26th of November and the other was an elegant Christmas card from Mrs. Boyer, Muriel and Bob. The Christmas card has a small perfumed pad on the cover which smelled rather nice. Believed it or not, but that Christmas card was sent slow mail on the 20th of November at 6 PM and it arrived here in the AM of the 6th of December which only makes slightly more than fourteen days traveling time. Almost as fast as V-mail, eh? Mrs. Boyer enclosed a clipping to bolster my morale and it had to do with the prediction that by the end of January or the beginning of February at the latest Germany would have been completely lost.

Larry received two packages this evening. One of them was a Dutch Mill Candy Box filled with sixteen bars of Williams Shaving Soap. The second package was a little better and contained what he claimed to be "an old Jewish cake" called strudel. What it was was nothing but good old fashioned Bohemian Apple Strudel. Unfortunately, the first piece he gave me had a long hair baked right in with the thing and I guess you can predict my actions. Yes, I didn't eat any of the cake but when he got sort of huffy about it that I should object to eating cake with his wife's good clean hair mixed in it, I said that I did the same thing to you and that you used to get mad at me for it. By saying that, he became reconciled to my not eating any of it.

Do you happen to recall that in the first letter today I mentioned my intent to begin work on the payroll at seven o'clock this evening? Well, several things stepped in the way of that noble ambition. For one thing, the outfit up the road came here for a moving picture and before we finally discovered that it had been brought back downtown, it was just about seven o'clock. Here I had intended to write to Mrs. Reed to match the letter I sent to Myrtle this afternoon yet it was time for the payroll to begin. I wrote the letter instead. Then, still in the mood, I wrote the letter to Aunt-Aunt. Before that was finished with all the innumerable breaks for conversations with Ralph, Larry, Hill, Campbell and others it was too late to begin the payroll. It was then that I discovered that I couldn't have started it anyway because there weren't any payroll sheets in stock.

Each time we have a big mail like yesterday and today I feel sure that those two lost packages will turn up at last but no such luck. It is too bad that it had to be those two which I have been waiting for rather than some packages which I never expected in the first place. Also, regardless how well you may or may not have packed the Mallow Delights, I think that by this time they must have felt the effects of sixty days en route.

Tomorrow evening we have "The Falcon's Brother" for the picture. It sounds good but I haven't the slightest idea as to who plays in it.

What I would like to do is to be able to do the payroll, have it signed, write the remaining letters and begin reading Galsworthy's Letters and Life but I'm afraid it won't be for several more days that those things shall all come to pass. I'd like to be able to prop myself up on my cot, with a box of Mallow Delights by my side and read for about two or three hours each evening.

So-long,
/s/ Roman
Roman