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Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 75
c/p SF Cal
6 June 1945

Dear Aunty Clara,

Wednesday

I'm seeing if I can dash a letter off in what is remaining of this noon hour. It isn't much, I know that, because we are on the far side of the monastery from the companies so we don't hear the bugle when it is blown and worked a full five minutes overtime as a result. Then too, we have to walk quite a good distance at the present time to H&S Company for chow. It rained today so that made it still more late in getting to there and back again.

For a while we were eating chow with A Company and it is surprising to note the difference between their kitchen and ours. While we have what has been called ten o'clock chow with a snack to eat at that time, A Company has an open restaurant affair all night long beginning around eight or eight-thirty and I have yet to see them close. It must be about midnight before they finish serving bread, jam and coffee. I understand that their mess sergeant "Beef Stew" O'Connor, a Chicago boy, goes out on his own to procure extra rations for his company. They must or else he couldn't be getting all that to the men. Not only that, they have deserts almost every afternoon and evening plus some kind of raspberry flavoring to their iced water. In fact, it is something like eating in H&S Company of the old outfit - you remember the time my company went out on a job and the ones who stayed behind rationed with the other companies.

One thing about our mess hall though is that when they do back any cakes or biscuits they are the tops for they excel any kind of pastry cooking in the outfit with about three fellows who are crackerjacks at that type of baking.

Say, I got hold of a twenty centavo coin today (10¢) and it is different than the others. It is silver and about the size of our nickel with the exception of being a bit thinner. Instead of having a blacksmith sitting on an anvil it has a woman standing up and holding the hammer on the anvil. O yes, I forgot to mention that all of them have a picture of a smoking mountain in the background. Right now this Filipino money is a novelty but after we keep getting paid off in it and handle it a lot, it will become commonplace to us, just as American money is today. I will try to keep hold of one of each of the lower denominator coins and bills for souvenirs. I know that it is okay to send the pesos home but I'm not quite certain about sending the coins home, there usually are restrictions when it comes to coins.

Someone has a little pet monkey around here and Ike Moreno brought it down to work this morning. It is just like the kind the organ grinders bring around the streets although it isn't dressed up nor does it know any tricks.

This is pretty good. The headquarters sets up office in the Chapel and now the Chaplain has to set up his Chapel and office in the inner court. It is too bad that they couldn't leave the inner court as it was for it is actually beautiful just to look at. I would have liked to take a picture of it before it gets cluttered up, but I guess that is not to be.

O yes, another thing, starting tomorrow we have to go back to the old routine of khakis and GI shoes. I've worn fatigues and moccasins for almost a month straight now. And we have to work seven days a week.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman