Seventy-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.

July 8, 1918

And so the longing has been fulfilled. I visited LÄ“durga, I visited Kroņi, I visited all of my old acquaintances. It felt like in each place I was greeted with the phrase “Do you remember?” Do you remember, how in the quiet blue evening, on my way to the cradle of dreams I was thinking about life, and I dreamed that LÄ“durga was destroyed, especially sad and terrible was our church, the wind howls through the broken windows and doors. I don’t want to believe that people can do such mindless destruction.

It was nice in Kroņi, we lived as our hearts desired. It was sad to say goodbye to my old dear lake, where once the sun lit it up like gold and that which I felt, I believed… and so passed the days in my homeland’s paths and memories.

Now back at Anna estate, it is also very good here, everything is bountiful and peaceful and it is good to be alive!