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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Thursday



A very good meal was served this noon hour and I am still smacking my lips over it. What a menu: macaroni, French fries, radishes, rice & raisins, cherries, peas, bread & butter, and a drink made out of water and cherry juice. I'm sure that Senor Gonzalez and Mrs Infiesta would have enjoyed the radishes immensely.

No mail has come in for me this morning and I'm now dependent on this afternoon's mail as to whether I will go without mail today. It is a rare day when such a thing occurs but it does happen occasionally when Uncle Sam slips up --- I wouldn't think of such a thing as people not writing to me. I've still got a lot of crust in expecting a letter from Pat when I haven't answered her last one.

I haven't mailed out the elephants yet because the containers are not yet available. I expect to send them out by Sunday at least.

The morning's work has been moving along rather slowly. One of the first interruptions began with the first job of the Morning Reports. Two of the companies had to do them over again for they had prepared them incorrectly. It took some time waiting for them to come in once again. Then when I thought I would get to work on OPVs, the wind began blowing so hard that I couldn't work on those forms and instead, the war bonds became the next job on my list. As I was working along on the war bonds, Lt Suiter wanted a rush job done on canceling an allotment for another Lt because the Lt was in the office at the time and available to sign it then and there. I started out to type it up but didn't have the information and the officer didn't know it so the thing is now in the typewriter --- half completed. The Lt never did return with the information so I spent the last bit of the morning in reading a little blue book story on the Amazing Career of Alphonse Capone which Jack had just finished reading and after which he kept kidding me about Cicero and Chicago especially since it tells about Lombardo, Capone and the rest of them in Cicero plus the street fighting that took place between the rival gangs.

From the papers these days, gang war is flourishing once again in Chicago. I surprised Jack by telling him that I remembered Lombardo's funeral. That is one of the distinct memories of childhood. It was inconceivable to me how a gangster could have such a huge wake with his fellow gangsters coming right out in the open to pay their respects. In my childish mind, I thought the cops were always looking for the robbers but since then I have awakened to the fact that they may be shaking fists at each other with one hand but with the others they are shaking hands.

There hasn't been anything exceptional happening so far today and there isn't going to be any show this evening at our theater area but at a local theater down the hill we have playing "See Here, Private Hargrove" and I may go to see it. Methinks that I have been more than making up for my years of not going to the show during these last eighteen months or so from the time Jack Molyneaux took me to the War Department Theater #2 in Camp White where I saw my first show in the Army "Truckbusters".

As so many of our plans and ambitions have a way of not panning out, I try to keep from saying things which are beginning until I am sure it is going to turn out. For instance, one of the major fiascos was when they began having Spanish classes. Naturally, I was all for that but didn't go to more than two classes when it was all called off. Had I gone saying that we were going to learn Spanish etcetera it would have sounded okay but then the whole business would have to be crossed off the list a short two weeks later.

I was trying to rush this off so that I could mail it when the clerk came in but he is gone now so I'll keep on typing until I get to the bottom of this thing and then carry it down to the mail box myself.

I'm looking forward to my four to five nap today as I am tired --- definitely.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman