War Diaries (September 18) (nonfiction)

War Diary entries for September 18

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Quotations

Benjamin Gilbert: September 18, 1778

Serjt. Peck of Capt Bensons Compy got Reduced to Ranks for Going into an oarchard after apples. Adjt Trotter and Lieut Cooper had their Swords Taken from them for Getting into a Turnip yard after Turnips.

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: September 18, 1939

We’ve been in Lwow for almost a week. The city is surrounded. Food is in short supply. Sometimes I get up at dawn and stand in a long line to get bread. Apart from that, we’ve been spending all day in a bunker, listening to the terrible whistling of bullets and explosions of bombs. God, please save us. Some bombs destroyed several tenement houses, and three days later they dug people out from the rubble, alive. Some people are sleeping in the bunkers; those brave enough to sleep at home have to wake up several times each night and run downstairs to their cellars. This life is terrible. We’re yellow, pale, from this cellar life—from the lack of water, comfortable beds and sleep.

But the horrible thoughts are much worse. Granny stayed in Przemysl, Daddy’s in Zaleszczyki and Mamma, my mamma, is in Warsaw. Warsaw is surrounded, defending itself bravely, resisting attack again and again. We Poles are fighting like knights in an open field where the enemy and God can see us. Not like the Germans, who bombard civilians’ homes, who turn churches to ashes, who poison little children with toxic candy (contaminated with cholera and typhus) and balloons filled with mustard gas. We defend ourselves and we’re winning, just like Warsaw, like the cities of Lwow and Przemysl.

Mamma’s in Warsaw. I love her the most in the world, my dearest soul, my most precious. I know if she sees children clinging to their mothers in bunkers, she must be feeling the same way we feel when we see it. Oh my God! The greatest, the one and only. God, please save Mamma, give her faith that we’re alive. Merciful God, please make the war stop, make all people good and happy. Amen.

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