War Diaries (July 18) (nonfiction)

War Diary quotations for July 18

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Quotations

Benjamin Gilbert: July 18, 1781

I dread the march, our men having not more than one pair of shoes or hose to eight men, and the sands are so hot in the middle of the day that it continually raises blisters of the mens feet.

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

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

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

External links

• Benjamin Gilbert @ historyisfun.org
• Excerpts from the Diaries of Renia Spiegel @ Smithsonian Magazine