War Diaries (April 11) (nonfiction)
War Diary quotations for April 11
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Quotations
Benjamin Gilbert: April 11, 1781
Our situation is peculiarly unhappy as the Troops that are with us have not drawn one half of their winter Cloths and received but one month pay for more than a year.
[In a letter to his father and stepmother.]
Benjamin Gilbert was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War whose kept a diary and wrote letters. The diary entries are terse and heavily abbreviated. They nearly always include a comment about the weather. There is very little information about actual fighting or battles, but they do frequently describe preparing to fight and moving from place to place. They contain information not usually found in descriptions of the typical activities of continental soldiers.
- Benjamin Gilbert @ historyisfun.org
Reina Spiegel: July 18, 1942
Days go by. They’re all the same, like drops of rain. Evenings are the most pleasant. We sit in the yard in front of the house, we talk, joke and—breathing in the fragrance of the garden—I manage to forget that I live in the ghetto, that I have so many worries, that I feel lonely and poor, that Z. is a stranger to me, that despite all my longing I cannot get closer to him.
Here, in the yard, doves coo. The moon’s crescent silently floats into the sky. I was on the verge of tears three times today. I blamed the living conditions, but love can flourish anywhere. And yet, shadows always flit on my path. Where do those shadows come from? My heart aches so badly.
Renia Spiegel began her diary in January 1939 at the age of 15.
- Excerpts from the Diaries of Renia Spiegel @ Smithsonian Magazine
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External links
- Benjamin Gilbert @ historyisfun.org
- Excerpts from the Diaries of Renia Spiegel @ Smithsonian Magazine