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Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM San Francisco, California
29 May 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Monday

There is quite a lot to tell you today for quite a bit happened. For one thing I spent the night driving a one and a half ton weapons carrier to a show on the other end of the island. But as far as I was concerned it was just another drive for I had to sit in the car throughout the entire performance under the regulations which do not allow a driver to leave his car at any time. Quite a gang went along including Milligan, Grauel, Mathis, Goldenberg and a few others. The attraction? It was "The Song of Bernadette." They said it was terrific and for my sacrificing my evening so that they could see it, Lewis said that no matter where that show is playing that we know of it, he will personally drive me down to it and he will sit in the car and watch it. That is how good he thought the picture was. That was a strange experience for me, at least one which I haven't had for a long time, and that was sitting out there in the country underneath the stars with nothing to do but think. I thought of a lot of things and also cooled off my temper at the same time.

That is the next stop on this retelling of the day's events. My temper hit the roof at four-thirty this afternoon when this Acting First Sergeant Spinelli (or whatever his name is) went out of his way to tell me that a fellow who writes carbon copies of his letters should be prevented from writing letters altogether! In the first place it isn't any of his business what I write, how I write or who I write to. And as far as a carbon copy is concerned, it isn't putting any extra work on anyone except for the addition of one more censor stamp, signature and sealing which is insignificant compared to the time spent in writing a letter. Lt. Podelwitz had called me on that back in New Caledonia when the censoring first began but it wasn't because he had any interest in whether I sent home one carbon copy or ten carbons. He was wondering if the censor at the base would approve of such tactics. Since they did, he said nothing more about it to me ever again. What all of this started over was Mersing and talking about how these new censors returned a letter because it mentioned the sickness or illness coming to this island. I will omit its name in this letter but tomorrow I'm going to look up that Island Memorandum on which specifically states just what we can and what we can not say. I don't care if I or anyone is allowed to say it or not because it is just a matter of conversation but since I'm positive that I'm in the right, I think it is only right to defend myself for consistently and repeatedly talking about it. If it were wrong and something which hindered the prosecution of the war by giving aid and comfort to the enemy, I would no more think of discussing it than I would tell you about the countless interesting things of a military nature which we see day by day.

That just about sums it up for the two main events. But one more thing, I do not believe I write excessively for my two typewritten sheets of V-mail which go to you without fail every single day are only equal to the multipaged letters I wrote to home back in the states. And when you count up the number of people I carry on a correspondence with, it easily takes at least one letter a day to the other people to keep up with it. Those along with the carbon copies and the extra letters I write once in a while plus stuff such as Bulldozers which are intended to be sent home make my letter writing average about three a day throughout the month, although I too must say that this last month of May 1944 has been my most prolific letter writing month since being in the Army or during my entire life for that matter. As time goes on and correspondents drop off and as the island becomes "old Stuff" once more, that average during May of five letters a day will drop. Yet there again, when using V-mail almost exclusively, I see no reason for anyone criticizing the amount of letters one writes so long as he uses his own time for writing them.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman