Home | Return to Index

Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 75
c/p SF Cal
16 Jun 45

Dear Aunty Clara,

Saturday

Although the letters were some of the missing ones and not any of a later date, it was still okay to receive them. Quite a haul too. Your V-mail letters of the following dates: 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of May. Also arriving in today's mail was another V-mail from Uncle Jack. I'm going to be hard put to keep up with Uncle Jack's correspondence alone at the rate he is throwing them across. But I like it, especially now that I am working on this selfish drive of mine to receive a lot of mail.

That was funny about you finding out about the condensed Tribune being printed right here in the Philippines. At that time when you wrote that you still had no idea as to my destination. I'll have to scout around and find out if this battalion can't get in on the distribution of those Tribunes because I believe they are free overseas. Why I say that is because in the corner of one of the pages is a little advertisement which states that if you can provide the printing facilities and the paper, the Tribune will send all the plates necessary to run off the mail edition once weekly. Therefore it must be free. I had thought however that it was possible to get a copy mailed from Chicago.

For once I am stumped too as to what Senor G might have meant concerning our date. Maybe my mind is backtracking on me but I can't seem to recall what he might mean by that. Perhaps after I think of it a couple of days it will come back to me. By the way, Senor G must really need the cigarettes if he makes a special trip back the next day to get them because he was out of his supply. It is too bad he can't smoke his own cigars, then he wouldn't have to worry about this shortage.

I'll say that must be something to go back to using an ice box after being accustomed to a refrigerator for so long a time. I hope we never again have to suffer with one of those archaic relics of yesteryear. You know, just a thing like Mrs. Reed having to go back to an ice box shows how far the American standard of living has been torn down by the war. However, (and this is an incidental comment) one never truly appreciates how wealthy we are until he sees the destitution of the other peoples of this world. Our just day to day ordinary getting along is actually wealth compared to what people here have.

At last I received the letter in which you tell me you received those pictures I sent towards the last on Guadalcanal. Heretofore your letters had been telling me what you were doing with the extra copies. About Bob Stone being a double for Van Johnson, you are wrong. Perhaps the picture appears that way but actually he is not even similar in any respect to the movie actor. I imagine that Bill could remind you of me for when I see him (especially these last few days) dressed up to go dancing, he reminds me of my Dad. Ike Moreno may be the tallest of the four of us but since we are all short fellows that doesn't make Ike a big man. I guess the negative of myself alone is lost because I have been able to find no trace of it anywhere among my belongings and neither can I remember actually sending it. It was surprising to find that all that slow mail arrived air mail. That is a particularly nice gift by Uncle Sam in view of the fact that I write "Free" on most of the envelopes I send home.

For once I hope that Aunt-Aunt's package of peanuts she sent out to me make good time - what with the PX short on the food rations and myself short on the pesos, I could use some of this nourishment through the mails. Your attitude towards veal in that after the war you will not be able to stand the sight of it is comparable to the GI's attitude towards such things as Spam and dehydrated foods. I guess because of this war and the necessity of sticking to more uniform diet than heretofore, is going to make a lot of people dislike certain foods in the post-war years.

I like some "saur brauten" meat balls you make almost as much as the meat balls you make for spaghetti.

Gosh, Uncle Jack hit it right on the head when (during the time my letters weren't getting home) he surmised that we might well be on our way to the Philippines.

Today has been just another work day as far as I was concerned although I didn't actually do much work. In the afternoon, it became hot and stuffy and it was all I could do to keep awake let alone do my work.

I tried to get to the barber again today but now he was busy building up his barber shop annex next to the PX with Sammie Alderete, the Company B barber. My hair is getting very very shaggy and even I want to get it cut off but the opportunity just does not arise.

We had a tent boy today and he was doing an alright job. He filled our helmets with water so that when we came in for the twelve o'clock chow, we could wash our hands and face first for a change. Then be began polishing all our shoes and then would have begun cleaning the rifles. However, the Colonel saw him laying on Norona's bed and shouted to him to get off the bed and to get out of the tent. Lewis paid the boy a peso for the day's work and said he was sorry but we weren't allowed to have tent boys anymore. There is a regulation that civilians are not allowed inside the camp areas but it is not enforced to any degree because we have been having tent boys and then the laundry women have to make their rounds of picking up the dirty laundry and returning the cleaned clothes.

Speaking of laundry, a girl returned some of Lewis's suits all starched and pressed and I gave her two of my mattress covers which just arrived in Lynd's foot locker today. They were pretty dirty from the long haul and since the GI laundry does not take mattress covers as yet, that is about the only way I could see to get them cleaned.

While I am thinking of the subject there are two things I have wanted to mention for some time and which I do not believe I have mentioned heretofore. One of them is that the women around here after they reach their teens, wear a type of shoe which strongly resembles our shower shoes. And they keep falling out of them, especially in all this mud when it rains. Very few of the children wear shoes of any sort but just go around barefoot. That is another surprising angle, and that is the number of people in this world who are shoeless. The other item I wanted to mention was a cute little girl about ten or eleven years old who hangs around the H&S Company kitchen. She is no ordinary waif for she is dressed in slacks and halter or little green and red blouse. She also wears these wooden sandals which is most unusual for a girl of her age. She is very pretty and, like everyone else in the Philippines, has black hair and a healthy tan. She reminded me of Mary Kuehnle when I first saw her and by golly if her name didn't turn out to be Mary. She is the sweetheart of everyone over there and they will say to her, "Who's girlfriend are you, Mary?" and she will sort of flutter her eyes and smile a very pretty smile. She will be a real killer diller when she grows up.

For chow this morning we had duck eggs! I can't say that I cared for them because they look more like ketchup in the inside - blood red. The taste, though, was not bad.

Well, a pause took place between this and the last paragraph. The reason for it is that I went to the show. Yes, I broke my own promise but this is the way it happened. A fellow, a relation of Sackett, came in to see him and I said he was out in the theater area and that I would find Sack for him. Eventually I found Sackett alright, just outside the door of our tent. By that time I had seen enough of the show to become interested in it and I went out to stay until the finish. I was only for one reel and part of another one though so it wasn't a complete movie. That is the way it is with the pictures. Allow yourself to give in and you must see them. The only way is to stay away for, in effect, what you don't see won't hurt you.

Another factor that was instrumental in my going out there to watch the show was the fact that the lights kept going out in the office and I was sitting here in the dark listening to the sound of the movie outside the monastery. So, in that event, I believe I am partially excused - to myself. The reason I could not use the flashlight to type with this evening was because the light was drawing all sorts of big bugs and I didn't like them bumping into my face.

We had our second cooking or baking today as we had chocolate cake for lunch. In the evening we had applesauce and that also hit the spot.

We aslo/also received our monthly ration of four cartons of cigaroots and half case of near beer or whatever it is and I had to be present as Bill Grauel drew mine - just to make it official. They can get real liquor in the distilleries in town now so the fellows mainly use the beer as an oiler (that is what they call it when they chase a short with a beer). It seems that for eleven pesos ($3.50) they are able to by a beer bottle of whisky but they also must take home a beer bottle of gin. They tell me they take the gin straight and from what I remember of the taste of gin at home, it even sickened my liking for Marty's gin fizzes because I could then get that gin taste. There are a lot of boys who aren't going to save much money here in Manila with wine, women and song being so free and easy. I repeat Guadalcanal was better without civilians than Manila with them. As much as I don't like the army, it proved on the Canal that when it was in complete control a place would be immaculate and healthy.

Starting today I'm taking vitamin tablets. Everyone else takes them and I read that over a long period, they give a person better stamina that if you don't take them. The Medics gave me a whole bottle of them. Maybe I'll get over my tired feeling.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman