Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM SF Cal
27 July 1944
Dear Aunty Clara,
Thursday on Guadalcanal
So what do you think I did this evening? Work? Well, just a little bit. We policed the company area and it didn't take but twenty minutes at the very most. After that I came back up to the office with the fullest intention of writing Uncle Jack a letter and got so far as to put the V-mail in the machine and begin writing. That is when Jack Molyneaux told me that the other theater area was showing Sweet Rosie O'Grady this evening and that he was in the mind of going. That was a quandary, such a good show wasn't likely to come around again and especially to our theater area and then too, perhaps tomorrow night I wouldn't be going to the show anyway. And then I figured I had in spirit given up this evening of writing as a lost cause and it was just good fortune that things had turned out so that I had it free. Needless to go any further with this question, I went to the show with Jack and Bill. The picture was in Technicolor and I enjoyed it.
Going down to the theater area we were given a jeep ride all the way from the office to the theater. Coming back we didn't have much luck at first as we looked around for a 1393rd truck. Finally the Chaplain came along in his jeep with room for just one more and I was lucky enough to be standing far enough out in the road so that he recognized me and stopped to pick me up. Meanwhile Jack and Bill had waited with a bunch of Company B boys who were having a truck sent back to pick them up. As a general rule, H&S Company has two trucks going down there every night but this evening we didn't have any at the show.
Holy Smokes, Jack and Bill just walked in from the show and are they ever giving me the going over. Jack hasn't gone to enough shows down there to know it is catch as catch can on that ride back home to camp and he didn't think it was cricket at all for me to go back all by myself and leave them down there. Jack kids me by saying that I'm now on his black-list while I in turn tell him that I'm not going to sleep well tonight knowing that.
Before show time we had another jam session talking about Jack's Norristown, Bill's South Bend and our Cicero. Say, another thing Jack and I noticed was that the Reader's Digest is almost answering our prayers. Beginning in the next month's Digest they are running a contest on Small Businesses for returning veterans. That is just what our main topic of conversation has been for the last four months or so. We hope that the Digest prints all the suggestions as the contest goes along so we can get ideas to supplement our own and then we may even enter the contest jointly and split the prize (confident, eh?)
If only Aunty Florence could forget her work during the evening hours as easily as I have forgotten mine, I believe that she would be an entirely different person. I just happened to think about it while writing this letter that at five o'clock I was bitter and all that and now I'm on the top of the world almost thinking I'm not in the Army. I guess that's what they call that resilience or bounce which a person needs so that the next day can be met all over again like a fresh start instead of with all the grumblings and grouchings of the previous day.
The time is surprisingly early considering the fact that the show over there begins after seven o'clock and it takes time to come back. It must be about nine-thirty or so and that will allow me sufficient time to write at least one other letter to someone else. I think it will be Uncle Jack for he is the easiest to write to outside of yourself.
At supper this evening we were allowed to have as many apples as our heart desired. I took three after being offered six. Then, when I came up to the office, I had the surprise of my life as I saw a whole box of apples on my desk. The buglers and clerks from the other companies had kept asking Lewis to go down and get some apples since they were handing out so many. He goes down and brings back the entire box of them.
So-long, /s/ Roman Roman