Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM San Francisco, California
29 June 1944
Dear Aunty Clara,
Thursday
It is almost ten bells and I have just come back from a movie at the outfit down the road a ways. When I say down the road these days, I don't mean it the way I did back there in New Caledonia when a fellow could walk it. The way we are situated up here on these hills, it takes a car to even get you out to the main road whereas by shortcutting down in back of H&S and through the camp of the outfit below our hill, you would find yourself on the main highway also. Anyhow, once you get on the highway it is still a long way to go to the Navy show area and I wouldn't care to walk it back. This walking back business isn't a joke either for I became separated from Bill Grauel and Jerry Angert and it wasn't until our truck was beginning to move out of the parking lot that I noticed it and managed to be the last man to climb on as she took off.
I haven't mentioned the name of the show as it was one which you and I have seen before. As a general rule, I wouldn't think of going to see a movie over again but this one was an especially good one. Remember "Penny Serenade" with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant? And Applejack? You should, seeing as how I bought the record "Penny Serenade" after seeing that show and probably played it every time I opened up our Victrola. I enjoyed reseeing it almost as much as I did upon seeing it the very first time. The fellows I was with and almost everyone else liked it too. There is a timelessness about that picture and I knew that no one would realize it was such an old picture unless they had heard of it before. Sure enough, the fellows were saying on the way back that they were glad that a picture came out without a lot of infernal war propaganda in it and the picture was out long before we dreamed of a war.
Needless to say, my "aims" for this evening are completely shot. But what does it matter for I cheated a few more hours out of my Army life and am also that many hours closer to coming back home again. This overseas life is getting to be pretty good, nineteen months in the army and thirteen of them in the other parts of the world.
The radio is playing and guess who is on? ---- Baby Snooks! Oops, I thought the radio was on, just now the power went down and lights and radio both went off. The lights are back on, but dim, while the radio is still not getting enough power to operate. Perhaps it is just as well for Baby Snooks would most likely detain the completion of this letter.
Did you ever realize that these soldier letters home and the letters of the people to their soldiers constitute a continual day by day history of the present day world? In it, historians of the future will be able to find out what people thought, knew and dreamed about during these hectic, world-shaking years during the "War for Survival", as FDR now chooses to call it.
Since Myers moved across the ball field, I haven't been over there except to pick the boys up and drop them off during my "water run". Lewis and Sackett go over there every evening and instead of going around the Engineer Bowl (our theater area plus the baseball diamond) along the road that rings it like a horseshoe, they tumble down the hill on this side, walk around the field and then scale the heights on the opposite side. The climax comes when Lewis just gets over there and he is needed back in the office by the Major.
So-long, /s/ Roman Roman