Sixty-seventh 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.

February 22, 1918

Our little boy’s birthday, so quiet and sunny… I’m not reminding anyone, since we are not in our home and here with these three old shepherds all of my nerves are shot. For two years we lived as refugees with my parents in Kroņi in the upstairs room, my nerves suffered there as well, and now we’ve lived through so much, survived so much. Now it is as if new life has come, after all the sorrow and terror. When the German army moves on from Anna estate, then we will be back home. Now we go there every day to take care of the estate, the feeling is so strange – we were kicked out and still, after everything, victory is ours, for everything that was taken by the Bolsheviks is back in our hands.