Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/p SF Cal
29 November 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Wednesday



What a mail call! Jack and I were both called in from our training today to help Lynd sort out the mail and he goes back this evening for more of it. But as far as the packages go, I didn't do so well at all. My net for the day has been three V-mails from you dated the 19th, 20th and 21st plus two Chicago Daily Newses.

Carol sure knew what she was saying when she said I might have some fun with the fellows by displaying her pin up picture on my desk.

We had the "Mask of Dimitrious" at a neighboring show but I did not go to see it. This evening, I've been ordered to run the film and it is "Tampico" which I believe you saw and said that although it didn't rate the good advertising it received, it was still a fairly decent picture.

So Senor G is still full of the tricks, eh? I wouldn't mind eating some of those charizos right now. They would be a good substitute for Vienna Sausages - the army's name for hot dogs. Does Mr Lopez still go out with Dorothy Gill?

How come the "One Man's Family" program wasn't on that Sunday? Your reminiscing or rather your telling me that you have to bring up a pail or two of coal up from the shed brings the coldness of the winter months to my mind more poignantly than if you had said it was cold outside. Since I was the kind of a guy who didn't like emptying the water from the ice box and was glad we got a refrigerator so that task ended and didn't like to bring up coal and oil and wished we lived in a heated place so we didn't have that problem on our hands either, you can imagine how I like the Army in which for over two years all those little tasks have been part of the soldier's heritage.

I forgot for a moment just what went on with Mrs Reed's "borrowing" and it is actually obvious in retrospect that there never was such a thing going on but merely a cover up for her producing such large sums of money at various intervals. O well, if she is happier that way, I guess it is alright. Just like with George Prokopec and Clarence Boyer. Clarence and I knew each others finances to the penny and thought nothing of it since we were friends and instead of trying to hide things like that, we found it to be an interesting part of our conversation yet with George it worked just to the converse and he shut up to or like a clam when that subject was mentioned and it naturally made me react the same way so that we two kidded ourselves along the way Mrs Reed does.

By the way, I say once again that I'm glad to see you have "written out" my name and address on the V-mail instead of going thru that long process of printing it. Printing it takes so terribly long.

There goes the whistle for chow so I'll be taking off. But I'll write again after the moving picture.

The time is not quite nine o'clock and the movie operating job is finished. The picture was not bad but it was not good. The operation did not go entirely smooth but my conscience does not seem to bother me - I'm a hardened man. Back in New Caledonia, my ears would burn etcetera whenever anything went wrong and the catcalls sounded from the audience. Now, I can just tell them to go to the hot places and forget it without even battin an eyelash.

While the show was going on, Lynd came back with some more mail from the post office but it is sitting in the mail room unsorted. I suggested to Jack that he and I sort the stuff out but he wants to know where I want the lump. With the possibility of a package in any mail shipment these days, I could stay in that mail room sorting out packages all night long.

I can't figure Jack out right now. He usually hangs out around his cronies in B Company all afternoon and all evening long but for the last few days he has stuck to the company area, eaten supper in our mess hall and then after the show is over, he comes up to the office instead of going down to B company for an hour or two.

The Bulldozer news went in today and the clerks (reporters) rebelled and did not turn in any news. For my part, I had but two items as my full contribution. In spirit, I agree with the clerks in that unless they want the job or are appointed to it by their company, there is no reason they should have it because it becomes more of a drudge than anything else and no one is going to get good news from them. However, Lt Suiter appointed all the clerks the company reporters, made Jack sports reporter and made myself the General Reporter with the additional duties of collecting the news from the boys and turning it in to him for censorship.

So today he reads my two articles - one of them described just what happened at the dinner dance which H&S Company held tomorrow. Yes, for lack of anything better to write about I was forced to call upon future events. If things turn out the way I wrote them down, it will be the most red hot news that paper ever had for the party will be over late Thursday night and will be published Friday morning. An all time record.

Anyway, he read those two articles I had and then asked where the rest of the news was. Not believing that those two items were the sum total of the days news, he said it was probably stuck at the bottom of his basket someplace and I had to set him stright-straight and tell him that there was not any other news. He said there had to be some. I said that the clerks turned in news for the last two weeks which hadn't been used and that Dock Haley could use that news for a change. He said that all the news had been printed and that we would just have to have news. So what did I do? I wrote up an entire sheet of typewritten pep talk to the clerks in which I proposed that they all hand in five articles and named just what each article would be about. Then, on top of that, I even gave five sample articles which they could use to get their news together on. But even with that coaxing it was a hard job but by twelve-thirty we had the news and while it all forms the same pattern, no one would know it and a person reading the paper merely sees twenty different articles. The clerks say they can't think up things but I told that one to write about his company's favorite sport - that it was changing from tiddly-winks to dominoes. They think that is wonderful but it is lousy news yet it gets by these army papers which don't have very much in them to begin with.

Holy cow, I didn't send out any Christmas cards today. I almost forgot to. I'll have to take care of that right now so please excuse my not writing any more tonight.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman