Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM SF Cal
12 July 1944
Dear Aunty Clara,
Wednesday
Captain Hanton is the cause of my typing you out this second letter of the evening. I was right in that more work was coming my way. It wasn't anything at all but a mere typing up of a true copy of a letter written several days ago. Those things can be dashed off in several minutes when the typing fingers are in the correct typing form as they were this evening. However, it is the principal of the thing. First there was the Courts-Martial case earlier in the evening and now this little affair. Why don't they bring them around during the daytime? I don't write letters during working hours so I don't expect to do work during non-working hours when I'm writing letters. But, of course, that is more of a civilian outlook than an Army viewpoint for in the Army a fellow is on duty twenty-four hours a day. In converse, I should lose a bit of my conscience about the matter and go right ahead and type up letters when things get a bit slack at work.
That is the complaint, now for the rebuttal. I know perfectly well why Captain Hanton wants things done at night and sends them up at that time like last night at ten-thirty he called up and I had to look through the qualification cards for a certain type of skill. He does most of his office and administration work in the evening hours and being the type of man he is in wanting things done immediately if not sooner, he sends up the work while he dashes it off or dreams it up. During the daytime hours he is usually out on the projects or inspecting the areas etcetera and doesn't come near the Orderly Room. It is just one of those things and there is nothing which can be done about it although by complaining now and then out loud, the tension is relieved. A person just can't keep everything inside of himself or he'd blow up, become a psycho-neurotic or something.
Jack Molyneaux came in at the time I was doing that retyping job and he asked what it was all about and disapproved of it when he understood what it was. He has the same attitude that I have or should I say that I got my attitude from him? Anywhere from there we began talking about the different Courts-Martial cases we had to do in our careers as Company Clerks and, although we were mad as could be at the time both at the fellows who got themselves into the trouble and made it necessary that charges be brought against them and mad at the people who were making us type these things in such a rush when the next day they would sit around in a box waiting to be signed or just plain waiting, we could look back at those incidents in the past and laugh about them. That is the way it always is with bad parts of life, there is always some good in them and you remember those things and in retrospect it all appears like those "good old days". Along that same line of reasoning, a soldier would shock you should you suggest that years from now he will not think so badly of the Army yet I'll bet that a great many of today's soldiers are going to say in some future year "Those weren't such bad days after all." Right?
Guess what? A bird was fluttering outside the window just now and Sackett went outside and caught him. Holy smokes, now Lewis went out and caught a gigantic butterfly larger than the bird!
So-long, /s/ Roman Roman