Eighty-second 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. It is with this entry here that the calendar in Latvia changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

November 7, 1918

A clear autumn day. The last leaves are falling, and so with them we hear the end of so many leaving this life. The last migratory birds are leaving, and the heart sorrows at the sound of their farewell song, quiet, quiet… As the rays of the sun set, I thought of so many sung songs, the sun flows, flowing. Flow along sun, wait for me, wait for what I will tell you. Take my mother a hundred lovely evenings… The sun is so low low, mother is far, far, I run run, don’t get anywhere, I call call, and can’t call her…