War Diaries (June 26) (nonfiction)

War Diary entries for June 26

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Diaries

Irving Greenwald: June 26, 1918

Up again at 6. We all stand to in trench. Order not understood. We can see no reason for it, but we obey. Wash in a little stream in the fields. Visit our comrades with whom we chat while waiting for breakfast. Told happenings of the day in their sector. The fourth platoon has been under shell fire, shrapnel hitting among the men and whistling around their heads. Vitkin comes nearest to being hit. Corp. Fox, PT Thompson and Carney meet with an accident, which severely injured them. They had picked up a detonator from somewhere in the trench. In spite of repeated orders not to pick up or fool with anything in the nature of an explosive that might be found. It is never sure that such an object is dead. There are a hundred reasons why it has not exploded, but it may if tampered with. This same detonator had been kicked about by Clark all day, when Fox, a brave, picked it up and examined it, perhaps hammering it. While taking it apart, it went off, blowing his hand to shreds so that he may lose it, injuring Thompson along the arms and on the chest painfully, and cutting a jagged gash in the hand of Carney, whose life was probably saved by providentially having the injured hand up to his face in the act of eating a piece of bread, else his head would have been blown off. Pvt. Rodder was so frightened during the shelling yesterday, that he ran back to barracks ...

—Private Irving Greenwald (diary)

• https://memory.loc.gov/natlib/afc2001001/service/101358/pd0001.pdf?loclr=blogloc-ww1

Reina Spiegel: June 26, 1941

I can’t write. I’m weak with fear. War again, war between Russia and Germany. The Germans were here, then they retreated. Horrible days in the basement. Dear Lord, give me my Mamma, save all of us who have stayed here and those who escaped the city this morning. Save us, save Zygus.

I want to live so badly. I’m humbling myself before you and begging on behalf of us all. Tonight is going to be terrible. I’m scared. I believe that you will hear me, that you won’t leave me in this awful hour. You saved me before, save me now. God, thank you for saving me.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. Almost the whole city is in ruins. A piece of shrapnel fell into our house. These have been horrific days. Why even try to describe them? Words are just words. They can’t express what it feels like when your whole soul attaches itself to a whizzing bullet. When your whole will, your whole mind and all your senses hang from the flying missiles and beg: “Not this house!” You’re selfish and you forget that the missile that misses you is going to hit someone else.

Dear diary! How precious you are to me! How horrible were the moments when I hugged you to my heart!

And where is Zygus? I don’t know. I believe, fervently, that no harm has come to him. Protect him, good God, from all evil. All of this started four hours after the moment he blew me the last kiss up to the balcony. First, we heard a shot, then an alarm, and then a howl of destruction and death. I don’t know where Irka and Nora are, either, where anyone is.

That’s it for tonight; it’s getting dark. God, save us all. Make it so Mamma comes and let there be no more misery.

—Renia Spiegel, civilian (diary)

George Beck: June 26, 1944

Mad all night with stomach trouble again. Today I was writhing in agony, couldn’t get no relief. Vomiting all morning and couldn’t get anything up. Roll on England. Get it seen to.

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

• http://www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/george_beck1.htm

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• George Beck (nonfiction)
• Irving Greenwald (nonfiction)
• Reina Spiegel (nonfiction)
• War (nonfiction)
• War Diaries (nonfiction)

External links

• https://memory.loc.gov/natlib/afc2001001/service/101358/pd0001.pdf?loclr=blogloc-ww1
• Excerpts from the Diaries of Renia Spiegel @ Smithsonian Magazine
• http://www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/george_beck1.htm