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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Tuesday

Now this is more like it. I received two additional V-mails from you today dated the 28th and the 29th of May. However, in these letters it is you who are doing the worrying about not getting any mail from me and you also answered my question of yesterday in which I asked if the stretch was anything similar to the one when I went overseas. However, it didn't last close to the six week mark I'm pretty sure of that unless my letters got tied up and remained tied up the way the incoming mail was delayed. In a few days I will expect to receive my first letter from you with the first APO I sent you. Then I know that things will be copasetic from then on in.

If we stay in this place much longer I'm not going to have any sun tan left for from the office to my tent is but about fifty paces and more often than not I get a ride over to the company to eat chow so that I'm scarcely out in the sun at all. In the Canal I was not out overly much but it was sufficient to darken the skin. By the way, did you have any bread with your "one meat ball" lunch? If you went according to that song, you just don't get no bread with one meat ball.

Yes, I guess Mrs. Reed doesn't look much like a grandma yet, but then again in olden times grandmothers used to be just as old or young as the present ones but in those days a woman stopped prettying up past the forties, right? I wonder if my dad is ever going to have the opposite experience of someone thinking he is Rosana's grandfather instead of her dad?

Gee whiz, of all things to do, getting sick on your furlough home. Good grief, I keep from going on sick call and all that in the army when I would have a good excuse to hit the sick book frequently and if I ever got home and was still in the army, it would take a twenty mule team to budge me one inch out of the house towards an army camp. But then again Charles Matcha was sick for quite some time previous to returning home on furlough so he has more reason to look after his health than indestructible Klick.

It is strange that with 45 days on his hands, Charles did not visit Blumenfeld's wife or ever write a letter back to him. Why it would be a pleasure to visit Robbin's wife - seeing she is a real live pin up queen.

In addition to your two V-mails of today I received a book from Mrs. Boyer. It is an Esquire Date Book which you have undoubtedly seen on newsstands. However it is a "civilian edition" and is not quite as good as the "service edition". The main difference is that the civy one is mostly pin up queen pictures with blank spaces for the dates while the army etc one has the same pictures plus a few more and it had quite a number of pages of reading material and jokes and drawings. There is one place where it asks for favorite numbers and just for the heck of it, I filled it in with something on the order of Uncle Jack writing to me about famous lines like "base line, middle of the road line, cigarette line, Line O'Type or Two and so on to end of the line". I am going to write him the list I made up and I hope he gets at least half the kick out of it as I got from reading his list. That means I have two additional letters to write now. One to El and another to Mrs. Boyer. And now is just as good a time to get at them as any time ever will be.

Incidentally, I guess maybe I just should have signed off last night with a hello and a goodbye for by the time I was finished writing those letters to you and I had gone to bed (reading one of the stories from the Damon Runyon book El had sent to me) I was dead tired. And this morning I woke up with my flashlight burning very weakly (under my neck) and a book under my stomach. Yes, I did what I used to do back home with the bed lamp - left the thing burning all night while I dozed off to sleep. Consequently, when time for breakfast rolled around I merely rolled over on the other side and continued sleeping until it was fifteen minutes to seven. Somehow or another our entire tent was lazy this morning and none of us got up before that time. Naturally it did not leave me time for the usual washing and I went to work both dirty and hungry.

And I was a sad sack all day long. So tired that I almost fell - did - fall asleep at the typewriter. Of course, added to the tired feeling was the stuffiness of our end of the office since the colonel had his tent built up and thus effectively blocked off the breeze which formerly used to sweep thru it from outside the chapel.

The officer pay vouchers went from bad to worse. I couldn't type at all and went so very slow. The fact of the matter is that the first copies of them aren't done yet and then I have to retype them all over onto the white copies. If only the two forms would match up, I could put carbon paper between the two and save myself quite a bit of work, but no such luck. In addition to that I was CQ and almost missed dinner by coming there at eleven-thirty instead of eleven o'clock which was the time for regular early chow. In the evening I got there at the correct three-thirty time, however. Eating at that early hour had its advantages for we could then sit at the unoccupied officer's table underneath the shade of three trees.

Also today was laundry turning in day and I turned in my fifteen pieces which I am entitled to turn in. We could have turned in a blanket but you never get the same one back again and since I am way over here in the monastery and the company is way across the road, I would have a fat chance of getting there before the best blankets were sorted out when they return from the laundry. You see, once before I lost a good blanket that way and had to wait for the next sending of laundry before I could manage to get another long blanket. That one time I got a puny little blanket which would not cover me all up and that was in New Cal where a fellow really suffered at night without enough covering.

The PX opened up today during the evening hours and after all that talking up I did about it, all I bought was a candy bar and I didn't like it for the ten centavos I paid for it. They haven't any popular brands, just Zagnut and Payday and both those are stinky candies. Other things to eat are boxes of crackers or cookies but I didn't get any.

The other commodities such as beer, cigarettes and other tobacco articles are being sold thru the Orderly Rooms and must be paid for in advance. It is a cinch that I am not going to advance any of my money on such foolishness and will just sign up my name for some other guys.

Being CQ this evening made it impossible for me to break away for a shower and now I've gone two evenings without a shower thus making me dirtier than I have been since first landing on Luzon. And I don't like it, a person can just feel all that clammy dirty sweat sticking all over the body. Until we have screened in showers the hours for taking them are limited as always.

Say, I broke myself in on a new job this evening. For a long time I've wanted to take a crack at the switchboard and although I've been instructed on just how to operate it, I never had the opportunity to do so. This evening as the new shift went on (Fricke) I took over instead and remained there at the board for three hours. It is a lot of fun and nothing to it at all. That is the job, no worries or responsibilities and when the day is over you are free to do what you want to do and don't have to have anything concerning your work on your mind to carry over until the next day.

My day off is just a dream I was carrying around with me for a week or so just like I used to dream of getting a furlough. With all this work piled up I can't see how in the world I can take off. In fact, I couldn't do it because Joe Suiter would never permit it seeing as he wants all the pay vouchers and pay rolls in and signed on the next day. And I also can see my next day off flying with the wind right now for this month ends the first half of 1945 and each officer has to have a special efficiency rating turned in and that in itself is a two week job. Someday, if we stay here long enough I'll get out of this monastery. The difference between me and the monks is that the monks stayed here because it was their chosen way of life but I'm remaining here because of military necessity and for no other reason.

That is about all the news on the fire right now. Here are some general thoughts and comments collected concerning my surrounding locality. Tent boys for instance are paid a peso a week per man in a six man tent amount to $3.00 each week for which the boy, cleans all the rifles, washes the shoes, airs the blankets, makes footshoe racks, clothes hangers and small stands on which they can keep everything off the floor.

Carrying my oversized bundle of laundry from the monastery to H&S Company I decided it was getting rather heavy and cumbersome under my arm, so I promptly shifted it to my head Filipino style and immediately had numerous remarks thrown at me such as "Dirty laundry, Joe?" "How much peso you do our laundry, Joe?" and also some looks of laughter from the Filipino women who passed me by carrying their laundry bundles no handy. That is another thing, one fellow said "Balance it, why hold it up there?" But they have something with that head stuff for outside of not balancing it very well, it was effortless carrying it for several blocks. What I can't understand is how come such a habit was not carried over in America.

The Philippine Free Press is written in English as is the Manila Journal but the people naturally speak Tagalog. At first I thought they ought to speak English since everything else in the country is in American but on second thought they ought to get rid of all the English because it just causes bilingualism where it isn't necessary and their native tongue is more natural to them. Pedro said English was necessary for anyone with commercial ambitions.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman