Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM SF Cal
12 July 1944
Dear Aunty Clara,
Wednesday
I guess you know that tomorrow is my dentist day and I'm praying hard that I can keep a stiff upper lip throughout the gruesome operations. Perhaps you don't realize it but the GI dentist has a habit of filling more than one tooth at a time!
Well, I received a letter from Miss Marion Kuehnle this afternoon for my only letter of the day. Evidently she is curious about how Yzzi got her address and she is trying to find out if I had anything to do with it. In my answer, I kidded her along pretending that she is asking me to talk to him as if he were an old friend of hers. The not at all formal salutation and closing which I write to her is just a lot of prune juice. It is funny that you can sign off to one girl "Love and Kisses" and not mean it yet to another one to whom a person would like to close that way, it is not the wisest thing to do.
The work today was highly successful for I completed my check of the Morning Reports of H&S Company and discovered the error which I suspected as being in there. I also straightened out this new checking system I have fixed up which will further decrease the possibility for error.
We also listened to the radio at work or while we worked and heard the All-Star game between the American and National Leagues. It is funny that this time I was pulling for the American League and the National League cops the game 7-1. Boy that sure was an awful drubbing.
Then the Hit Parade was on and we heard Joan Edwards and Frank Sinatra sing all the latest songs. Some of them we all listened to and Captain Cook called Jack Molyneaux, Douglas Leishman and myself --- "Bobbysockers." All that Frank Sinatra news gets quite a bit of popularity over here and occasionally you will hear a lot of faked screams and moans when Frankie's voice is heard. Honestly, Aunty Clara, do they go thru those antics or does that just make for news in one or two instances?
My stare is at the 8,000 mile mark now and I have to work to concentrate on anything in the present. It is my attitude which in the back of my mind tells me that I'm home. Strange? I'll say it is. I have the feeling that it is summer vacation or something on that order and I will walk into the Dining Room and lay down on the cot ready to go to sleep for about four or five hours. I just can't understand it. Here I am away out here in the South Pacific yet my mind is right in the very room you are now reading this letter. Maybe fourteen months overseas is my limit. What is going to happen after two years?
Incidentally, an incident was published in today's Radio News which makes it possible for me to tell you something which I thought would have to wait until the war was over and I was back home again. There was a news write up about the USS President Grant being stuck on a reef for three months and finally splitting in two and sinking after many attempts to get her off. It was strange to read about any ship in the paper and coming over the radio like that but stranger yet was that was the ship which took us over to New Cal. She was a round the world liner before the war but she's washed up now.
So-long, /s/ Roman Roman