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Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co A 353rd Engrs APO 502
c/o PM San Francisco Calif
23 February 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Tuesday Eve in New Caledonia

I've just come back from another hilarious picture, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." It was a comedy riot and Mersing and I laughed all the way thru it. I was glad I went in spite of the fact that by going it put a kink into my program.

Do you realize that by tomorrow evening I had intended to have my lesson number three completed in addition to having my entire correspondence caught up with? Well, it is a cinch that neither of those things will be completed by tomorrow and probably not for the next day or even the day after that.

I'm very tired for home again. A soldier always wants to go home but there are times in which you can bear up under it and other times when you are actually tired and fatigued for wanting to be home. Sometimes I say to myself that I wouldn't care if I was a complete wreck and had to spend the rest of my life in bed if only I could be home once again. Then, at other times, I say that by adding day upon day the war itself will soon be finished and we can all go home once again for keeps.

Just think, Aunty Clara, it won't be so many months more and we will have been overseas a complete year. Sure there are a lot of fellows who have been over that long and some a lot longer than that but that doesn't make it seem any shorter to the individual soldier.

There are things which I want to do again like going off to Stanley's candy store and buying a few ice cream cones to bring back and eat on the back porch on a warm summer night. Or go once again into Lenke's Ice Cream parlor and order a cherry-flavored lime rickey. And get dressed up in a suit in the morning and then walk down to the 56th Avenue "L" station to go to work. Or have my own desk again at Rathborne, Hair and Ridgway Company. And put up a new pulley line for you on the back porch. Or even take down the ashes on a brisk autumn day (even though I never did like to do that when I was home).

I'd like to have a double chocolate egg nog for a nightcap along with a huge piece of sponge cake or chocolate cake with coffee frosting. Or ride down to the Karmel Korn shop next to the Berwyn Theater and bring back a big box of Karmel Korn on a Sunday evening so that we could sit thru Jack Benny, One Man's Family and all the rest of the programs while munching away on the stuff. I'd like to spend another of our famous Saturday nights with such guests as Senor Gonzalez, the Infiestas, the Millers, the Reeds et al.

I'd like to go to the library and pick out a good book to read. I'd like to walk along the lakefront. Or take a trip out to George Prokopec's house. Or go play a game of golf with Jerry at Columbus Park on a Saturday afternoon after coming home from work and managing to gulp down a glass of milk, a half a sandwich of bread and frankfurters and a piece of coffee cake before leaving the house dressed in brown pants, old shoes, blue sport shirt and sun glasses.

I want to be able to answer the telephone when it rings or go down for the mail after the mailman has slammed shut the front door. Do we still get those Polish papers? They will still be coming after we are all dead and gone. I want to spend a morning playing records on the Victrola and an evening studying some lessons in the dining room while coming into the kitchen every once in the while to eat up the chocolate and vanilla cookies you just took out of the oven.

Then there will be the times when we will go visiting and ride the "L" and street cars just like always and talk, talk, talk all the way to where ever we are going and then talk all the way back home. We will transfer on Crawford Avenue "L" station or wait for the "Ls" in the Loop or even waiting for a connecting suburban car. Those are the things I miss and thoughts like that run thru my mind when I get homesick.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman

Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co A 353rd Engrs APO 502
c/o PM San Francisco Calif
23 February 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Wednesday in Nouvelle Caledonia

The letter situation continues to be good as I received three V-mail letters today from Bob Boyer, Uncle Jack and yours of the 13th. Bob's letter was dated the 10th of February and since you received it in Cicero on the 11th of February, he must have gotten it a few days afterwards. In his letter he complains that he wrote to me and received no answer whatsoever yet I had answered his letter immediately after receiving it.

Uncle Jack bawled me out for writing so many letters to him but he has since discovered that I have obeying his orders to the letter by not answer his letters. The only trouble is that I haven't answered any letters at all for the past two or three weeks.

That was pretty good, just yesterday I mentioned eating Carmel Corn on a Sunday night and your letter arrives today telling of eating that very thing on a Sunday evening.

I did not know that Betty Hutton had a sister called Marion Hutton. All the articles one reads about her (and there sure do seem to be a lot of them these days in all the magazines) just speak of her and her mother and how they were poor when they were (or rather when she was) young. This Betty Hutton herself isn't so very old so if her sister is younger she really must be young.

So Senor Gonzalez liked the booklet on New Caledonia, eh? By the way, please salute him the next time you see him and tell him it's for him from me. That is another thing I would like to do, sit up to all hours on a Saturday night and Sunday morning talking to Senor Gonzalez about the world situation. No, from now on we will talk only about the nicer things of life and leave the world to the crazy people.

Today was another miserable day at work. I worked but I haven't got any satisfaction of having done so very much. For the most part I was working on my informational roster and that is more or less a tedious job.

I bought a few more Lucy Ellens and ate them in addition to eating a few more Mallow Delights. I'm afraid that tomorrow may see the last of the Mrs. Snyder's candies. All I can say is that they are the best candies that are barring none.

At odd times during the day at noon, before supper and after supper, I read thru a few Saturday Evening Posts. I should be glancing through some of the Daily Newses I have laying around but I put them in my barrack bags and my habit is to open the thing about once in a coon's age.

The outfit across the river where we have been showing a movie three nights a week has purchased their own movie projector out of a fund. That means our machine which is the property of the Special Services office of the Service Command of this Island will not be in use but four times a week. If we can procure extra films to show on those days, our regiment could have pictures seven days a week. That would be a little too much. The fact is that there aren't enough new pictures coming to this island to show a different movie each day. That is almost hard to do in the city. Movie goers like Clarence occasionally would scan through the amusement pages and discover to their sorrow that they had seen all of the pictures.

There is a fellow in the office now, Welling, who is supposed to be writing letters but all he has done for the last half hour is to type a few words and then sit back and complain about how he can't think of anything to write. This distracts the attention of the other fellows who are trying to write until they are finding a hard job to keep on with their letters.

The big news today is the flare-up which occurred in our tent. It was Censky versus the other occupants. We have a trash can (a five gallon tin) which must be emptied every morning for inspection purposes. We have adopted a rotation plan whereby we circle the tent and each day one fellow empties the can out. That is, all but Censky. When his turn comes, he just ignores it and some one else must do it for him. They have been threatening for several weeks now not to empty it when it is his turn; yet no one has said anything to him about it until today. I stay our of the arguments with Censky because we have found on that previous occasion that when we go to it we really rile each other up; therefore, we tactfully keep from getting on each others nerves. One of the fellows told Censky that it was his turn and all he did was swear and walk out of the tent a half hour early saying that he didn't have the time for such stuff.

But today it was different after he left because they set the can right next to his bed where it stayed the entire morning. At noon, as he half threw it back to its place in the center of the room, he was asked to empty it. He refused saying that he was the non-com in charge of the tent and it wasn't his place to empty the can. They mentioned that fact that they also swept under his bed which he said was as it should be. This made everyone hopping mad because they said the tent should be run on a cooperative basis and suppose everyone should assume his attitude. The argument ended at that point as everyone walked out to lunch.

That was a running fire subject from morning until evening and most likely isn't the end of the story yet.

Today was also the deadline for the Bulldozer News and the Home Edition is coming up next. Most of the Bulldozer news is a lot of baloney anyway. Sometimes when we are hard-pressed for information, we just sit down and think things up out of the clear sky.

Reverting back to Bob's letter. For a moment I couldn't imagine where the thing came from as I read my typed name in the capital letters which are similar to those on the billing machine at RH&R. Could it be one of the Rathbornite's said I? Of course, it turned out to be Bob who was trying to type on an official air force typewriter. The nut salutes me at the beginning of the letter with a "Dear Uncle Roman" and ends with "Your Son, Bob."

By the way, please amend my date line on the other sheet to read "Ash Wednesday in New Caledonia". I didn't know it was Ash Wednesday until Jack Molyneaux and Welling went off to Mass at three-thirty. The army sure does mix up the religious practices, doesn't it? They have masses in the afternoon or even in the evening. The fasting and abstaining is just about done away with and it seems that the time of the mass is cut down considerably because those fellows return mighty fast.

Yesterday morning, the very morning after having that Western, we had fresh eggs for breakfast in the mess hall. Along with the fresh egg done sunny-side up we received a perfect piece of toast which took the butter like a sieve. That tasted super especially when you could dip the buttered toast into the egg yolk and then eat the same.

For a while we were getting this combination grapefruit-orange juice drink for two meals a day although now it is mixed in maybe once a day or once every two days. During the days when we were having it twice a day, it received the moniker of "Battery Acid" and we still call it that to this day.

The picture for tomorrow night is "China Girl" but I'm making my mind up right now that I'm not going to go and will study my lesson instead.

It is not quite nine-o'clock yet this evening so I'll go back up to the tent, brush my teeth, get ready for bed and then come back to the office to write a few other letters.

Sometimes I think that there are twenty letters to answer instead of the mere, fifteen or sixteen I have to wade thru.

O yes, the old tope (meaning me) had another bottle of beer. Hick! Ooops, pardon me.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman