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Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/p SF Cal
15 April 1945

Dear Aunty Clara,

Sunday

Well, it is another way late letter again tonight. This evening I was pre-occupied with talking things over with Andy Mathis and also reading a story on the life of President Truman. It came from an old Life magazine which was published at the time he was nominated for Vice-president last year. It seems he has been an extremely ordinary person all the way through his life and he has had no burning ambition or desires to get to places high in political circles but has merely found himself in the right spot at the right time and has thusly been shoved progressively ahead in spite of himself.

I also went to the show again this evening and this time it was Winged Victory with Lon MacAllister and Jeanne Craine although they only had a little part in the picture. Lon MacAllister gets out of the picture right near the end of it when he is killed as his plane crashes during his basic pilot training. The entire story is about fellows taken up air cadets courses to the time they are in actual combat here in the South Pacific. One thing that was good about the picture was that it was not corny or flag-waving the way most of them are these days. The reason for that is this picture was because it was made by army personnel and planned, directed etcetera by the army and they must have looked at it from the realistic standpoint and also in view of the fact that is going to be a must list for the soldiers. Hollywood pictures looked or have looked at war from the civilian aspect and they go in for a lot of this humbug which just isn't true but a picture prepared by the army itself gives it to you straight and there isn't so much humbug in it.

Today I received five pieces of mail plus another Time magazine to read (with compliments of Delf Armistice Norona). The five letters consisted of two envelopes from Blumenfeld. One was another CCCR with a note asking me to write and also telling me that he was sending me the Curly Caminita Capital Roundup Pin-up Queen, Miss May Peterson, a Rockette girl from New York. The CCCR advertised her as the only pin-up girl in captivity who absolutely refuses to give her autographed fotograph to any one civilian or military that is stateside and she is exclusively reserved for the overseas individuals. After all that hullabaloo we thought she was going to be a dazzler but she wasn't. She is just a pleasant looking girl in a bathing suit.

The other pieces of mail were V-mails from you dated the 5th, the 6th, and 7th. Well, one thing I trying to do for sure and that is to keep the mail coming with at least two a day again now that I am off Sackett's job and not fall off as I did during that spell. That non-letter writing because I was so busy was getting me down too, let alone you with not getting letters from me for so long a time.

Say, that was pretty good that the operation went to so well for Mr. Infiesta. I'm glad to hear that. You know, that spinal anesthesia seems to be the thing. When I heard that is how they operate for appendicitis on solders out here I thought it very odd but Owens from the Medics informed me that it is getting to be the thing for the patient has a quicker recovery under the new method and doesn't suffer from any ill effects as he would from chloroform.

By the way, Lewis's dog Chowhound has disappeared and hasn't been seen at all for some three days. It doesn't seem as if Lew is very interested in finding her for he hasn't made a search to date. I know that the minute Snubby disappeared I practically had the battalion looking for him and inside twenty-four hours the pooch was located even if it didn't do me much good.

Speaking of Lewis and operations above, he is going to get a partial plate from the Army in the near future which is pretty lucky. And he isn't going to have to have any more teeth pulled on account of because he has been taking these calcium tablets or wafers for some while now and Captain Stieler was actually amazed to see how they hardened up his teeth so that no new cavities developed. Bill Grauel also takes them and said when he was in the hospital they examined his teeth and didn't find anything wrong either. It must do the trick.

Tomorrow we are going to have a parade in honor of the President (late) and also will have the official proclamation of his death read to us at that time. At five minutes right after twelve noon this afternoon, all operations ceased on the island in memory of Roosevelt. I read that they tried to time this slow down or shut down of all activities so that it was approximately the same all over the world. If it inactivated about 120 million people for five minutes, that is quite some effect he had on the people reaching from the grave. It reminded me of the time when Edison died and we shut off all light for one minute.

I was CQ today but I didn't do a stitch of work. All I did was sit at my desk, read magazines and go to the PX every once in a while to buy an ice cream and a coke. That combination sure does taste good.

The eye is still swollen and has a nice big red gash seemingly going right down into the eye itself but that is just the way it looks on account of being swollen. Actually the gash doesn't even descend to the eyelid. It still attracts attention. I also noticed today that I must have clipped my nose at the same time for I have a thin red scar across the ridge of it and down one side. Combat material, that's what I must look like now.

Gosh, Aunty Clara, this waiting for the German war to be over with now that it is so close to the finish is awful and I can just imagine how slow time is going to drag when perhaps a year or two or more from now Japan will be on her very last legs and will be expecting the capitulation daily only to have the end drag on and on for an interminably long period of time.

Those fire bomb raids on Tokyo are heartening. A person thinks that maybe they will or are so terrible and destructive that coupled with all the rest of the disasters Japan is experiencing, she might give up the ship and agree to an unconditional surrender. Pipe dream number one thousand and one.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman