War Diaries (March 20) (nonfiction)
War Diary entries for March 20.
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Diaries
Richard Frethorne, letter: March 20, 1623
For we live in fear of the enemy every hour, yet we have had a combat with them on the Sunday before Shrovetide [Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, of the week leading to Easter Sunday]. And we took two alive and made slaves of them. But it was by policy, for we are in great danger, for our plantation is very weak, by reason of death and sickness of our company. For we came but twenty, for the merchants [for the men who had bought the contracts of indenture], and they are half dead just. And we look every hour when two or more should go. Yet there came some other men to live with us, of which there is but one alive, and our lieutenant is dead, and his father, and his brother, and there was some five or six of last year’s twenty, of which there is but three left, so that we are fain [we need] to get other men to plant with us, and yet we are but thirty-two to fight against three thousand if they should come. And the nighest help that we have is ten miles of us. And when the rogues overcame this place last, they slew eighty persons.
- Richard Frethorne, letter to his parents. Frethorne had been sold into servitude by his own parents. Except for this letter, no shred of evidence about the life of Frethorne has survived.
Harvey Cushing: March 20, 1917
The Mayor is out with it in the papers this morning---unfortunately giving the impression that the encampment may be permanent. Pituitary operation. Executive Committee meeting. Dictating laboratory notes in afternoon. At 5 p.m. to a Red Cross organization meeting in Brookline.
Fever, backache, and herpes from my inoculation; so a milk-toast supper and then to the Medical School to persuade the artisans, who have volunteered for the Unit, formally to enroll on the Red Cross blanks. Most of them refused---only 36 signed up (to qualify we need 150). Others wanted to know about wages---and what if we should be called out? This is patriotism.
—Harvey Cushing (diary)
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External links
- Diary of Donald W. Panek @ navy.mil
