War Diaries (May 9) (nonfiction)

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Captain Edward Hill.

War Diary entries for May 9.

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Diaries

Edward Hill: May 9, 1864

Charged at 6 and carried the enemies line after an awful struggle. Cost many men. A Rebel Col with a brigade advanced to our Colors stretching them and thrusting the shaft(?) we took him prisoner we lost quite a number of good men the Adgt [Jacklin] killed or prisoner. Colestock and Sieger of my Co. each a leg broken. Skirmishing all the day

—Captain Edward Hill, 16th Michigan Infantry (diary)

William Pitt Chambers: May 9, 1865

I am a soldier no longer.

William Pitt Chambers, Company "B," 46th Mississippi Infantry (diary)

Henry Cushing: May 9, 1915

The St. Paul, once a cruiser herself in the Spanish War, has been hitting it up very fast, so that we are off the Old Head Kinsale an hour earlier than the passengers expected. It is a bright sunny day with just a little sea, and we have passed a destroyer or two, but nothing else.

Most of the passengers were at morning service and I was writing here when Boothby looked in and said I had better come on the forward deck. This I did, but rather wish I had not. We were going through the Lusitania wreckage---had been, indeed, for the past half hour. Steamer chairs, oars, boxes, overturned boats---and bodies. As I came out we passed quite near a collapsible boat which was bottom side up, with the body of a woman and a child floating alongside; they must have been tied to it in some way, else with the easterly wind the boat would have drifted, from them.

All told, I believe some fifteen bodies were counted, and this was only in our immediate lane; the wreckage must have been strewn for some twenty miles or more---we at least were passing through it for considerably over an hour. Once we veered off to get a nearer view of the only boat which was seen to be right side up; but the officers, all of whom were on the bridge scrutinizing everything with their glasses, appeared satisfied and we went back on our course.

That was about all. No, there was something else: a single little trawler a long way off on our port quarter, evidently patrolling for corpses---at a guinea each---on this sunny Sabbath morning.

Henry Cushing (diary)

George Beck: May 9, 1943

We smuggled two Russian women into the camp today. I stood guard while two men were in the sawdust cellar with them and food was given to them and clothing. I was caught out by the guard and he searched all over for comrades but they got away. Later on I got and got the women through the gate showing them the direction to take, for the guard was coming round again. Latest news from the German wireless “British troops doing well for we have captured the town of Tunis and another. Arrival this week of two new lads to our camp from Munich.

George Beck,1st Battalion The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, prisoner of war (diary)

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