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

Dear Aunty Clara,

Friday

I'm going to have to do a rush, rush job on these two letters tonight on account of because the time is five minutes to eleven o'clock and the company has done moved in on us. That means that at eleven-thirty this evening there will be a bed check and no one is going to realize that I'm not out of the area but merely right up in Bn Hqs typing; therefore, I would be marked absent, considered AWOL, be reprimanded and probably given some sort of punishment. That is something I do not care to have occur and naturally will comply with whatever regulations they set up unless otherwise excused. This bed check may sound strange to you but you must recall that we are once again among civilized peoples and soldiers are apt to overstep the margins with the various diversements now offered and to keep everyone fit, they have to make rules. On the Canal no one was going any place and to have a bed check would have been rather foolish.

Now let's see, for a rapid summary of the day's news: The first and only gripe: No Letters - not even a lousy newspaper.

Along about nine bells in the morning the company began coming in and this evening the camp is fully set up and operating in the new location. It is amazing the way and almost impossible to watch a mass movement like that take place. We had to move out of the tent we had just a minimum number of steps from the office and guess where we are? The last tent in the last row the furthest away from the office. I can't figure it out, why do we always end up away from everything. Because there was more peoples than tents, we had to add one man to our complement and we decided Ebner would be the best bet so invited him in. The set up is ideal right now even though we have six men. You see, we didn't arrange it GI with two men in the back, two men in the front and one man on each side. Instead we have it like a U around the sides of the tent with two men on each side and two men in the back. That arrangement will probably be changed shortly by company orders. I expect many changes and am steeling myself, psychologically for them.

This isn't a gripe but it is a comment in passing. The bamboo pole which I had so laboriously put up on our old tent was missing. Someone hijacked it for their own tent so that our new location sort of sags down where it didn't before. There is one bad feature about the tent and that is that the smells from another company's latrine can be smelled.

And we ate in the new mess hall at last. Gosh, it was a pleasure and a real treat to eat at a table again in the shade. And this new mess hall is the cats meouw as I described briefly to you at the close of one of my recent letters. This one is built with high corrugated walls so that you can not look outside while you eat. It has a good pitch to keep the place cool and the table tops are solid plywood which is the best we have had since the States.

The rest of the Battalion area is rapidly whipping into shape as the progress continues on the roof in the office and the recreational tents are being planned in the outer grounds of the monastery which the officers are to vacate shortly as the move into the area H&S company vacated today.

The theater area has also moved from its temporary location and is now in its permanent position which once again is strictly alright. And tomorrow night it is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" - the picture which was so rudely interrupted on the Canal.

Now for a brief summary of the office work for the day. I can safely say that things are progressing excellently. I've caught up on all the major work but it will come up soon enough next week to make things pretty hot and heavy once again. Lt. Suiter mentioned something about a day off but didn't actually say I could have it off. And what makes me doubt it very much is that Norona plus one of the clerks are off tomorrow and it would be hardly likely that I could go also under those conditions.

Norona has written a letter to Pedro Mangubat and I'm beginning to wonder about him also (Pedro I mean) because he did not answer the letter I wrote to him. The letter situation as far as I am concerned just stinks all the way around.

Lewis, Sack and Bill all wanted to go out again this evening but I had too much work to do around the tent fixing things up in the new location that I couldn't see gallivanting around the countryside. Besides once in a while is okay but to go dancing every night is too much. It ended up by Bill going to the Red Cross Friday night dance and coming right back because of the crowd. The Red Cross had a note in today's paper that the congestion will soon be relieved as there will be one new location after another opening up from now on all through the summer. They even have bowling alleys so they say and when the main building is finally completed with the Jap damage repaired to the three floors of the building, it will be the largest Red Cross center for soldiers in the world.

For some reason or another everyone was in good spirits today and Hipp and I had a great time joking and laughing. I can't understand how we can be happy at times all at once while other times some will be smiling and others not. I guess it just happens we all got into the same mood simultaneously.

Funny thing about this new command of ours. Back in the Canal we had to fix up all our army correspondence strictly GI according to a technical manual sent out by Washington War Department. Here they have set up their own system and ignored the WD manual. In fact there are a lot of things we are having to relearn. It is that way whenever a move takes place to a new location.

The time now is growing short: eleven-twenty-two. I can't think of much else to say now that I am in a hurry. To write a long letter something has to actually happen that I can just rattle on and on about or else I must sit back, be alone, relax and just mull over different things and as I run across what I think to be worth a few words, I type it down. That way you can go on for several pages.

The food continues on a high plane and the coffee this evening was super. First time I've actually enjoyed drinking the ten o'clock coffee for itself alone and not as the something that goes with the bread and butter. In fact they didn't have any snack tonight to go along with the coffee.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman