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Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM San Francisco, California
4 July 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Tuesday

I received seven V-mails this morning plus one Daily News. Four of the V-mails were from you dated the 25th, two the 26th and one the 27th. The others were from Mrs Reed, her darling daughter and Mrs "Red" Keeling. But more of that later.

Right now, I made a deal with Sackett where I take over his CQ for the entire night while he takes charge of the crew putting up the logs for our "blanket airing line" outside out barracks. Of course, that wasn't the deal at all for he would be nuts to give up a quiet evening in the office to go out there and work. The incentive was that after the job is thru this evening, he will be able to go to the show (no movie this evening but a stage show with gals) whereas I will have to remain in the office until eleven bells. It works out okay for me because I was wondering how in the world I was going to get all my letters answered this evening by first working on the project and then going to the show. This way I can devote most of the night for answering letters which now include the following: One birthday card to Marvin, one to Uncle Jack, a letter to Uncle Jack, another to Mrs Reed, an answer to Myrtle, a thank you to the Infiestas, a note to Mary, a letter to Harvey and one to Mrs. Boyer. From a clear slate to ten behind in two short days. That means unless I begin answering them all immediately I will have to go into one of those hectic periods of writing ten letters every nite for a couple of weeks trying to catch up with myself. So far this month I have only written to one person other than you and that was a short line or two to Mrs Svolos' little girl Pat.

My work is turning out rather well so far today. There are only two officer pay vouchers still out and six officer qualification cards in a Company Commanders hands being initialed. After that little job is taken care of I can devote a day or so to a little plan I have thought up which will simplify to an amazing degree, the task of gathering information concerning the officers.

Now to answer your letters. One of the things which interested me the most was the talk about Junior Barta being in India and your discussion with Mrs Barta concerning the length of time it takes a package to reach him as compared to those reaching me. You must realize that I'm practically speaking just on the outer fringe of the Asiatic Theater and just as close to the US as anyone in these parts can be. When a soldier moves on to India, he is really shoved into a corner, so to speak. It is a highly inaccessible place by land and only be devious roundabout routes is it reached by water. The Japanese control all those old peace time routes between the Pacific coast of the US and India so it is necessary to either go around the other way or else cut all the way around the Japanese held territory. What that means is that the water journey is lengthened considerably and the four to five or six weeks it takes me to get a package from home constitutes but a small leg in the journey to where-ever he may be stationed. Frankly, I'm not complaining about my overseas jaunt at all for outside of the fellows who were stationed in England and Australia which meant civilization, there aren't many places that could beat New Caledonia or this place. I'm knocking on wood, but hard, that the remainder of this trip continues to be as pleasant as it has been up until this point.

If Aunty Florence is a good girl and continues to plug away at some war industry or another until this duration is over with, I'll let her help me out in either my grocery store or my roller rink until the thing gets underway and we can all retire. Maybe she can sell the tickets in the roller rink. That is a nice easy job which she ought to like since she can work all by herself in that little cage.

The bugler blew his call so I guess I'll have to get started finishing this letter. We had some trouble with our calls today. Group blew the calls five minutes early at noon and we followed suit. No one objected at that time but now it is a different story. We all want to begin by our watches after quitting by their time. Nice work if you can get it.

O yes, I'll have to go down and get that cold water for the afternoon. That has been unofficially assigned to Mathis and myself.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman