Fifty-third installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated (again) to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries” to see all of the entries that I have posted.

If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.

December 27, 1917

Yesterday we celebrated cousin “Lullija’s” wedding. Despite her husband’s flirting, she got an honest and good husband. He was a soldier only for a moment, and officers were having a terrible time of it. Stripped of ranks, lowered salaries, they are not respected. The strongest have been put in prisons or shot. A time of madness! The wedding was cozy and we did not feel anything of the impeding famine.