FOUND: WWI Soldier’s Notebook

August 15, 2022
By Vicki Entreken

I have no problem sitting on the dingy floor in a junk shop if it means I might come across a find like this. Tucked between an old book and a collection of trade journals on the bottom of a bookshelf, I found this super old notebook in an antique shop in Winter Haven, Florida. The pages are brown, there’s mold on the cover. I knew when I picked this item up that I was about to be transformed into the past. A few pages in, I found a date: 1918.

I carefully flipped through more pages and saw phrases like:

“One dandy dinner after fasting for two days.”

“My cootie won a race on a ten franc note.”

“We can damn the Huns for all this!”

“Holy crap!” I said. “This belonged to a soldier from World War I!” I looked up at my daughter in disbelief. It was her birthday and we’d been celebrating with a crab lunch at Harborside and now an afternoon of antiquing.

I was holding a WWI U.S. soldier’s account of his tour. How could this personal piece of history possibly be sitting on a dusty shelf? I wondered if his family even knew about it. If I had a relative that had fought in The Great War, I would be thrilled to read his words and hold his note book in my own hands – the same note book he carried in his pocket across the Atlantic Ocean, through France and back. I immediately knew I had to get this into the hands of his descendants.

Inside the front cover, there was no name claiming to be the author. However, I did find six names of men he was traveling with. This would require some research and I have no problem with research.

Inside the back cover, it seems the soldier was keeping tabs on phrases he found interesting or funny.

"Pull in your ears, the government is looking for mules." 
"Tankward Bound"
"Buttock Exercise"
"Third Lieutenant"

Buttock exercise? Are you picturing that? I hope you’re picturing that. I’m thinking that transcribing this man’s words will put me in his head for a time. Might be fun. Until the Great War takes over this narrative.

(By the way, if you can transcribe the one word above that I missed, please share in the comments. Thanks! EDIT: Thanks everyone for finishing that line for me. ‘Mules.’ How did I miss that?)

I was amazed that I’d found this note book at all. The price tag was unreal.

“How can this possibly be $3?” (May have been $3.50 or something close to that. Definitely under $5.) I sat there, on the floor, thinking it was mispriced, or that I’d get to the register and they would jack it up on me to $30 or $300.

“Get it.” my daughter said.

She knows me. She knows that I have a passion for saving documents, photographs, and stories. She knows that I’m always up for a new project. She knew that I needed help getting my tired buttocks up off that floor. (Word of the day?)

I did buy the note book and the man at the register said it was a good find. I agree.

Transcription of page on the left:

1-27-27-18-10-5
A glorious day. Went up and saw the boys who just come in. Elmer Close, Clarence Minard, "Stub" Clark, Fred Tierney, McGuire. Seemed to be feeling fine but a bit lonesome. Left them feeling better and got back to Btry just in time to pack. Busy day from then on.  Slept on springs that night. 

You know when I got home, I jumped on Ancestry.com and started gathering data in trees. I needed to find a common denominator between these boys. The only one I could find so far is that they all were processed through the 153rd Depot Brigade at Camp Dix. On BlackSoldiersMattered.com there are several names listed for the 153rd, but none from my list. It’s a start. More digging is required.

Now I have a project that involves digitizing and transcribing these pages, researching the names of the people he traveled with so we can identify the soldier, and most importantly, finding his family. Can I do it alone? Probably not. That’s why I’m going to share the progress of this project here and hope for help along the way.

This project won’t be all about the work. This soldier has given us a time capsule full of images, language, and travels.

My mission: Deliver this note book to the owners’s family.

Now I sit my buttocks on the floor all the time in these junk shops, no matter how grungy it is. Sometimes you have to get your britches a little dirty to find the good stuff.

Want to follow my progress on this and other projects? Subscribe below. 😊 If you’d like to help transcribe pages, shoot me an email: Vicki@SecretBoxes.blog.

GOOD NEWS! The WWI Soldier’s Note Book Project is online. Read the note book HERE.

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