War Diaries (April 24) (nonfiction)

War Diary entries for April 24

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Diary

Reina Spiegel: April 24, 1940

Terrible things have been happening. There were unexpected nighttime raids that lasted three days. People were rounded up and sent somewhere deep inside Russia. So many acquaintances of ours were taken away. There was terrible screaming at school. Girls were crying. They say 50 people were packed into one cargo train car. You could only stand or lie on bunks. Everybody was singing “Poland has not yet perished.”

About that Holender boy I mentioned: I fell in love, I chased him like a madwoman, but he was interested in some girl named Basia. Despite that, I still like him, probably more than any other boy I know. Sometimes I feel this powerful, overwhelming need...maybe it’s just my temperament. I should get married early so I can withstand it.

—Renia Spiegel began her diary in January 1939 at the age of 15.

• Excerpts from the Diaries of Renia Spiegel @ Smithsonian Magazine

Henry L. Stimson: April 24, 1941

[Frank Knox] kept reverting to the fact that the force in the Atlantic was merely going to be a patrol to watch for any aggressor and to report that to America. I answered there, with a smile on my face, saying, 'But you are not going to report the presence of the German Fleet to the Americas. You are going to report it to the British Fleet.' I wanted him to be honest with himself. To me it seems a clearly hostile act to the Germans, and I am prepared to take the responsibility of it. He seems to be trying to hide it into the character of a purely reconnaissance action which it really is not.

—Henry L. Stimson (diary)

• https://archive.org/stream/onactiveservices006603mbp/onactiveservices006603mbp_djvu.txt
• Frank Knox

James S. Browning: April 24, 1943

Two years ago tonight, just as it was growing dark, our troopship slipped down the dirty brown estuary, dotted here and there with the masts and funnels of sunken ships, and we put to sea. Speculation ran high as to our possible destination. Was it Canada, Rhodesia, Middle East, Iceland, even the United States, in front? Was it any of the countries in the world to which there was the slightest possible chance of our going? This was our sole topic of conversation as we slipped out but it was a topic which soon exhausted itself and bowing it ship's discipline we retired to our hammocks in the hold. There were three hundred and fifty of us in this small hold originally constructed to take the light luggage of pleasure cruisers and we found to our dismay that this was to be our dining hall as well as our sleeping and living quarters.

—Flight Sergeant James Smith Browning, British Army (diary)

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Reina Spiegel (nonfiction)
• War (nonfiction)
• War Diaries (nonfiction)

External links

• Excerpts from the Diaries of Renia Spiegel @ Smithsonian Magazine
• WW2 People's War @ BBC
• WW2 People's War @ BBC