Diary of Annie's War Read Online Free PDF

blacked because when the sun shone they glittered.
    Often I have seen a few hundred young men come in for inspection. There are placards at the stations telling them where to go. They are then examined and towards noon you see crowds of them going into a large building where they get their clothes.
    These are the clothes left behind by the soldiers who got their grey uniforms the day they left for the front. These old blue uniforms had to be well cleaned and given up on the day the men received the grey ones. They are quite ready. The men are then billeted out on various householders. According to the size of your house you have so many.
    Our house in Wörth Strasse must have three soldiers. They must be up and have a cup of coffee and be at the barracks by six o’clock. They return to dinner at noon and go away at one o’clock. They get home at various times. If they are only drilling they are home at six o’clock for supper.
    If they are on a march the time varies. Often they are put on a night march. They set off about eight or nine in the evening and march ten or twelve miles. They make a meal just as if they are in the battlefield and then return early in the morning. I often hear them pass the hotel and sometimes it pours with rain all the time.
    After a month here they are sent away, perhaps to Goslar, to finish for two or three weeks then they are ready for the front. George (the coachman) was at the front in seven weeks after leaving us.
    It makes me sad to see the young men come in. They are all sorts. Tradesmen, clerks, farmers, shop assistants etc. and you can tell them in a minute. Then there is the boy from the comfortable home who is well fitted out and looking quite contented. I often wonder how many of them have left aching hearts at home. Many sad tales are told of old parents left without one son at home. One family has five sons at the front.
    Hildesheim is a beautiful town but in these dreadful days and a very sad place to live in. The beer garden was turned into a nursing camp in a very short time and every big concert hall has been fitted up with beds. They send the cases here that are not too severe and the men that can stand a train journey.
    I often wonder if the women of England are working as the German women work for her soldiers. Every woman is knitting something and every child ditto. The amount of stockings, cuffs, scarves, jackets, stomach binders, knee warmers and ear covers that are knitted in a week here in Hildesheim is simply enormous. Every shop is full of grey wool and everywhere you go the people are doing something for the soldiers.
    I went into a shop the other day and every young lady assistant was knitting. On the railway train it is the same; always grey wool. The shops are doing nothing in the way of business, only in such things as is necessary for the soldiers. You can get anything in the food line ready made up for the field.
    A young lady told me they had given her brother enough food for a fortnight and it was all packed in a fifty cigar box - tea, sugar and rum (ready for hot water) and all kinds of soup and coffee. Cocoa is in small ‘wurfels’, the size of a lump of sugar, and all of the best. Small quantities of butter, sausage, meats, tongue and fish, enough for one meal, are all nicely packed up. It really is a treat to see how the soldiers are catered for.
    Food up to the end of November is no dearer though there have been notices that flour (white) is getting short. The government has issued notices forbidding a rise in the price of eatables.
    Two shopkeepers, here in Hildesheim, put up the price of sugar and coffee in the second week of the war. The police got to know of it and they were at once ordered to close up their shops. Later a few shopkeepers refused to accept paper money and a notice was issued that such people were liable for imprisonment.
    Within the second week of the war there was no gold to be seen. All was paper money. For the