Diary Entry from a Britsh Nurse on the War Front

Dear Diary, 2nd of June 1915

Well, times haven’t been all that easy these past months. The sights I’ve seen lately grip my heart terribly and make me worry heavily. I see the wounded men around me. All I can think is that this war has just begun and it can only get worse from here. And the stories I’ve heard from back home make me worry for my family and for my fellow countrymen.

Due to the war, the British government has declared that their citizens lessen the amount of food and provisions that each family gets. But instead of doing that, the richer class is buying up all the food from the stores. Big stores have run out of food and small stores are being forced to raise their prices. Of course, this leaves barely any food for the poorer classes and some groups of people have attacked the stores that are being bought-out by the richer class. Also, the richer class is taking out all their money out of the banks to keep in their houses. The fear of the banks closing for the war is the cause of this. The war is causing people to act differently and irrationally.

Thankfully, my brother, Richard, wrote to me a couple of months ago and let me know that my family had enough to eat. I hope they can last this war. I worry enough about them possibly being attacked by those brute Germans and their allies. I would hate to think that they didn’t have enough food to eat as well.

The Germans led a raid on Great Britain using aero planes on the 19th of January. At first, I heard that it was successful and that many had died and were wounded according to the newspapers. This frightened me greatly. Fortunately, later on, I came to find that only four people were killed and sixteen were wounded. To be honest, the news raised my spirits somewhat. It didn’t really seem like the war would go on much longer with the Germans leading attacks like that and with such little affect. Unfortunately that all changed soon enough.

On the 25th of May, we received a large amount of critically wounded soldiers. I had never seen so many. They were all on the floor moaning, coughing and puking up blood. However, there was something different about a lot of the men. For some reason, most of the men were choking and gasping for air. I had never been so confused in my life. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t breathe. The men would begin grasping their chests out of excruciating pain and agony. It tore me apart that I couldn’t help the pain go away. I didn’t know what to do.

Later, after all the nurses had attended to the soldiers, I came to find that the Germans used a new weapon on the troops. They used a type of chlorine gas. It spread to the trenches the men were in and forced them to climb out of them. Unfortunately, when the troops came up to higher ground, they were immediately hit by German ammunition. The gas that they used is supposed to make it hard for you to breathe and kills the lungs slowly. Oh I couldn’t imagine enduring pain like that. I truly admire those men fighting.

It pains me that I could not relieve the men of their agony. I wish this war would end. I wish the Germans would stop their war-mongering on the countries around them. Why can’t this end? Why do our people have to suffer for the German selfishness and greed? I hope that there is a change for the better soon.

Sincerely, Elizabeth Gordon

My Walk as a Mexican-American in 1920

My name is Alonzo Vasquez and I am a Mexican immigrant. I brought my family here to escape the political turmoil and poverty that has devastated the Mexican population after the revolution. I have a wife and three children, two girls and one boy. I love my family and upon moving into this country I thought that my worries for them would drift away. Unfortunately, I have become burden by different worries. As much as I want my children to experience this new country, I want them to still hold true to our Mexican culture and traditions. I fear that my children are becoming too American and are losing touch with their Mexican heritage. And it is causing troubles in my household.

My children, I fear, are becoming more and more like Americans. They are beginning to speak English more than Spanish. They are showing independency that only adults should have that worked hard for a living. And what I think is most disgraceful is that they are making decisions and doing things without my consent. My son started seeing a young girl without asking my opinion or telling me first. One of my daughters went out and got a job working in a store down the street and didn’t consult me first. And she doesn’t help care for her family with the money. She spends on clothes and make up and for going out all the time. The other started dating a White-American man just a couple of weeks ago even though I was completely and utterly against it. My children have even engaged in American celebrations and have begun to hesitate when it comes time to celebrate ours.

All these actions have caused countless arguments in my household. My daughters are becoming more and more outspoken and disrespectful towards me. They feel like they have this right to express their feelings to me. I blame that on that whole feminist talk. My daughters have forgotten their place in the home and especially in my home. My son fights me on everything. He feels he is free to do whatever he wants without my consent. He refuses to help care for his family and is disrespectful to me. I do not like these behaviors in my household. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to put my children in their place, the American way is overpowering me. I have begun to question if my choosing to bring my family here was wise.

I am a very proud Mexican. I believe that it is important that certain family values and traditions should be kept intact and passed on from generation to generation. This should also be the case when you are in another country. It doesn’t matter what land you stand on, your culture and yourself is still the same. As Mexicans, my family and I need to preserve our ties to Mexico even though we live somewhere else. I think that if we do not celebrate or recognize our up-bringing and where we come from, we are disrespecting our ancestors and our heritage. We are treating it like dirt. We are dishonoring our fellow Mexicans and the wars that have been fought to keep our way of life alive. My family must value and remember their homeland or else I have done them harm by taking them away from it.

Immigrant Girl Point of View

My name is Esther Klein and I am a 17-year-old who works in a textile mill in the United States. It’s 1892 and conditions for me and for people like me are not so good. I came to this country in search of the “American Dream.” This is an idea that anyone, regardless of ethnicity and social upbringing, can make a decent living in America. Of course, when I finally came to America, my experience was very different.

I came here like everyone else, on a steamship, because my home country is struggling economically. Because I am Jewish, I also wanted to leave because I suffered from political and religious persecution in my homeland. That is why I was so desperately seeking to come to America; the so called “Land of Opportunity.”

As an immigrant woman, I experienced very little satisfaction when I finally had settled here. When I was working on my parents’ farm in my home country, I never experienced working in industry or outside of my home for that matter. Here, I was introduced to the textile mill and sewing trade. This is among the few jobs offered to women here. Mostly, we either are allowed to work in factories or as domestic servants. We can never move up in the job position that we are in. That is because of the sexists views of the higher power held only by men. Not to mention our wages are so low that we are stuck in poverty. Also, there are many dangers that come with working with the machinery that scare me. There have been accidents before. I just hope that it never happens to me. Day by day, my hope of ever having or being more than this is slowly dying.

Not only am I a poor woman, I am also a Jewish immigrant and is not respected at all in this country. It’s as if there is nothing here that is different from my home country. I am still seen as nothing more than labor. People look at me and my people as if we’re diseased. Their looks make me feel dirty and worthless. Like I am not worth the money I earn every day. I feel unwelcome all the time.

I think about standing up and challenging the authority over me. I want to take a stand. I want my work to be seen as more. But, after seeing and hearing about other workers organizing against the owners of the companies we work for and failing, I begin to have second thoughts. A lot of the labor unions here try to improve the working class. They demand eight hour work days, and higher wages. These demands go unheard and then the workers begin to get restless and violent. They hold strikes that sometimes end up with many workers dead. Owners even fire off the strikers who work for them. The government does not care either way. They are always on the side of the owners. They don’t care about the poor.

I want to band together with the other girls that work in the textile mill with me and rise against the company owners. But, as much as I want to do this, I cannot. I cannot afford to lose my job in the textile mill. I need all the money I can get. This fear that I have is so overwhelming that I stay where I am and all I really have left is the hope for a better day than the last.