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Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM SF Cal
10 August 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Thursday

I can't recognize myself as the same fellow who was writing such a terrific amount of letters but a few months back. Here I am receiving the fruits of those letters and just letting them lay around. As it is now, I owe fourteen answers and I have not even so much as attempted to write a letter this evening --- a non-show night in which I had nothing in the world to do. Had the company been forced to work on some after duty hour detail I would be one of the first to object to having our letter writing time taken away from us yet all I did this evening was go down to the barracks at four o'clock and read the last of the Daily Newses which I had on hand and then go to chow at five bells. Immediately after chow I returned to the barracks where I promptly fell asleep laying on the cot and I did not wake up until ten o'clock. At one time along the sleeping hours between six and ten, I woke up and was conscious of the fact that I had not gone to the office to write letters and for that matter, that I hadn't even written a letter to you yet for the day. So what do I do, I go back into slumber land and when Lewis came in with a lot of noise and talk at ten and re-awakened me, I had at least written two letters to you in my dreams. After laying there, flat on my back for some five or ten minutes, slowly bringing myself back into the world of the living, I realized that I just couldn't settle for such letters for not once have I heard of dreams coming true to such an extent that you would receive letters which I wrote in them.

So now it is almost eleven o'clock and I am beginning my writing spell for the day which will end rather soon if I have anything to do with it for I'm typing just about as fast I can go thinking up things to say at the same time. For instance, today was a busy one and a non-busy one. There were several things which needed doing this morning and which I had all straightened out by ten-thirty or eleven o'clock. After that I should have begun on some more ambitious undertakings such as I discussed last week but I just could not bring myself around to working for I was terribly sleepy. It is surprising how tired a person can get in spite of having a sufficient amount of sleep to go on. Perhaps I'm coming down with TB and have a perpetual fatigue hanging over me! Anyhow, I was that tired so when I found out Jack was not going to take the afternoon off by going down to the Post Office with Lynd, I went along instead. There is something about a jeep (as a passenger) which can let a person fall asleep especially when bouncing around in the back seat. Then the fresh air coming in off the ocean helps keep a fellow going.

We received some twenty of so bundles of letters and since we had several stops to make before getting back to camp, I had time to sort thru every single letter to look for possible ones for me. I'm never any too hopeful when it comes to getting airmail letters although more and more people are writing me that way who formerly used V-mail or two at the most from her --- ever. But the search was all in vain for I did not find a single one for myself although I did find one for the driver, Howton, three or four for Lynd, himself, and three (all in the same bundle) for Andy Mathis, who also came along for the ride, since he was merely the runner or the bugler today and didn't have much to do.

They are having Illinois day down at the Service Club Saturday and we are seriously thinking of going there to see if we might not know some of the fellows from Illinois in the army and just because they are on this island doesn't mean that you will see them for you know how hard it is to see people when a lot of them are put together in one spot. For the continuation of my rapidly spinning yarns, please refer to the next page.

So it's like I says. We goes down to the PO and comes back empty handed as far as I was concerned. Now I still don't cater to the idea of falling asleep at work so I gets the brain storm of doing a small typing job over again and it was a very neat piece of work if I must say so myself. Now I am just ready to get a copy of this typing prepared to go in to the major, another to Cook and another to Suiter when a wind and a rain suddenly comes ablowing into the office. The new fellows are taken somewhat by surprise to see the sudden power of the wind and the rain as it howls thru the barrack-office and the rain managed to sift in despite the closed doors and lowered windows. Jack and I are taking it all calmly and I says to him I says "After experiencing that hurricane at the beginning of this year at the old place, the weather will have to be mighty severe before I'll even notice it." At those very words, the door suddenly blew open and a most terrible angry and vengeful wind came ablowing in. I moved calmly to shut the door and then turned around in dismay for the tricky current had caught up my completed officer pay vouchers from in all my work, taken them out of the folder and somehow or another in the short space of some ten of fifteen seconds, had separated all the triplicate copies away from the original and duplicate copies, spreading them hither and yon around the rain soaked room. That was fate. The wind stopped immediately as it had begun with the net result that I wasn't going to talk agin it any more after what it did to me. Fortunately, none were so bad that they will have to be done over again although it could have happened that they might have fallen in a combination of dirt and water which they didn't.

But all this talking about this afternoon doesn't touch upon the fact that this morning I did get a letter when we received all V-mail. Regular as clock work is how they are coming in these days for I received your letter of the 3rd in which you mention not receiving the card Myrtle sent to you for your birthday. That was pretty good time to get there to the Reed's inside a half an hour but with our car you will get there in less time than that

O say, Johnny Marth, who has been the mess sergeant since Nugent left us, is the mess sergeant no longer. He never did get his Staff rating for the job since there were none open because of all the first three graders coming in from the other organizations when the 1393d was started. Just what goes on in the mess hall I don't know but I do know that right from the beginning we did have a mess sergeant in the company with a Staff rating and he was put into the Motor Pool where everyone seem to go when they aren't doing the job they usually do. Anyhow, this fellow, S/Sgt Halcomb (from Kentucky too just the same as one of the cooks T/5 Halcomb --- no relative though) is who they brought back to run a mess hall. Of course it is much too early to say how his meals will turn out and judgement can only be passed after a month or so but if today's mess was any example, we will have to rename the place restaurant or Eatery for it was okay. He sweetened up the battery acid (grapefruit juice) so it was very drinkable and then for supper made some excellent corn fritters which we have never had prior to today. From what fellows in his old outfit say, he knows how to put a meal together but whether he can get the cooks to do a good cooking job on it remains to be seen. As for Johnny Marth, we don't exactly know what is going to happen. It is hardly likely he will leave the kitchen for they will need him around but should he take a different job, he can turn to carpentry for that is the job he did before coming into the Army and he is very good at that.

By the way, tomorrow is my turn at CQ so I don't see how I can miss but to write some letters at least since I will have to remain in the office. I sure do hope so for it is beginning to hurt my conscience this letting the days slip by without any work being accomplished in that direction.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman