Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/p SF Cal
Dear Aunty Clara,
The only reason I have been handwriting these V-mails is because I come up to the office before Captain Cook unlocks the room in which the typewriters are kept. Do you know that writing and typing answers to everyone I owed a letter to was and still is work? One is hard put to think up something original and I've almost descended to a rote theme of we were busy, we are not busy now because we are on board a ship and I will try to write more often. That line is getting pretty dead & well-worn after about 20 letters. Yesterday I wrote letters to Mrs. Reed, Frances Jastrebski, Tommy Mashos, Jerry Barta, George Prokopec, Virginia, Marie (nee Volenec) Tobin, Dotty Barnett & Blumenfeld (Robin). Today, if time and ambition permits, I could possibly finish up the works with letters to Bob Boyer, Dolores, Eleanor & Pat. Then I would like to drop Mr. Hackbarth at the office a line or two about moving.
Now the problem is going to be, "Can I keep up the correspondence when the letters begin back?" as they most surely will. If I could once get the habit again of writing one or two other letters daily just as I write to you, things would then be simplified a great deal. But that procrastinating policy of putting off answering a letter until a more favorable time just doesn't work out.
Yesterday I didn't do much else besides getting the Morning Reports out & then stay up here in the office until about three o'clock to bat out some of the letters. When I did go down, it was almost time for chow. Afterwards I remained on deck until dark reading a Coronet from cover to cover. Then down to my cot where I sat cross-legged handwriting two more letters. For the first time since being aboard ship I felt really tired & I hit the hay hard when I finally went to bed. Then I had a more difficult time getting myself awake this morning until after I was under the shower for a spell.
There are other things which happen that would undoubtedly be interesting but they would hardly be permitted as topics of conversations in letters, so, if my memory is good, we can store up these anecdotes for parlor chats in the post-war world. Sometimes I think we are going to have to sit down the minute the war is over and begin talking for the rest of our lives to make up for all this lost time.
Maybe this will sound funny to you and then again maybe it won't but it has handed us a few laughs in the hold. An aisle or an entrance to a row of cots will be a bit congested with a few fellows chewing the rag and a fellow wanting to get by will sound off with "Ship's crew coming through" and everyone will act out the part by standing aside and yelling out "Make way, ship's crew coming through."
Yesterday was also my lowest candy consumption of the voyage - 6 bars of candy scattered throughout the day. Today, as yet, I have no taste at all for any & will see if I can get thru a day without the stuff.
So-long, /s/ Roman
Editor's note (December 2004): Letter written aboard ship on May 14, 1945