Sallys Diaries

One of the reasons (and there are many) why I love reading diaries of those who have gone before us, is eyewitness accounts. Writers for novels, movies, TV shows, etc. do a great job making the viewer feel like they are there, in the action. But when you get an actual, genuine account, there’s nothing like it. For example, this entry is written by a soldier who is with the 887th Signal Corp. Army during World War II. He stationed in London and witnesses an intense night of bombing. Instead of going to the bomb shelters, our author decides to take to the streets to watch the action……

“ September 15, 1943. Was watching planes go over by the hundreds till it got dark, they were still going till about 9:30. I could hear them droning overhead while I was writing a few letters and all at once the sirens started to blow their alarms. The guard yelled for everybody to go to the basement to the bomb shelter, but I wanted to see the excitement so I went outside in the street. The plane circled over our billet twice and then they dropped a flare. You could’ve read a paper by the light it made. Then there were hundreds of anti-aircraft guns went off. When the first gun let go, Bob Cody, standing by me, jumped about 2 feet off the payment and said good God. The thing cracked so loud he thought it was a bomb, but by the time the flare was almost to the ground the plane dropped a blockbuster. It shook the streets when it hit. I don’t know how much damage was done, but it sure did make a noise, sounded like the world caved in, and they dropped a number of smaller ones. They caught the planes in the search light beams, but they didn’t hit them with the anti-guns, there was shrapnel fell all over the streets. The people run for the street shelters, taking blankets and things to sleep there all night. They said we were crazy to stay on the streets and I guess they were right.”

When I share these photos of my collection, it is by no means to brag or boast. It’s to express my feelings of this overwhelming desire to protect and safely keep family memories that might otherwise end up in a dumpster.

I get a bit overwhelmed at the amount of work I have in order to keep up with reading, researching and cataloging them all. But I really shouldn’t call it work, it’s a blessing and something I think of almost every minute of every day.

In one of the photos of the larger safes, on the bottom, there’s a brown box. Inside the box are 7 diaries from the late 1990s. I found them listed on eBay about 10 years ago. The seller talked about how inside the diaries the woman wrote about her life of terrible family abuse. I thought these things need to be off the web and to be taken care of and I wanted to make sure to do that. Needless to say, I won the auction and when I got them home and browsed through them quickly, I found the following entry written by our author, “I hope and pray my “life here” doesn’t end up in a storage unit.” I asked the seller where he got them and sure enough, in her storage unit. Well, they aren’t there any longer, they are safe, sharing a space among other families who have gone before her and I vow to try to keep it that way.

For those of you who wish to read a diary in its entirety, I just finished a three part series on my Sally’s Diaries Private Collection website. It’s titled, “The Château Lafayette, and the Women it Captivated.” It’s all about one woman’s adventures as she travels to France in 1921.

You’ll be able to share in her story while she sails across the Atlantic to experience Paris during the great Roaring Twenties; all the while being surrounded by a colony of artist friends and visiting some of the most iconic places Paris has to offer. But the most important aspect of this trip is her time spent at the Château Lafayette. It’s at this time in history that the Château has been purchased by a group of wealthy Americans and turned into a home for orphan children. And Mary is right in the mix of these exciting events...link in bio ☺️