The Diaries of Howard Leopold Morry, 1939-1965, Vol. 19 Aug 3 1957

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Newfoundland; Newfoundland studies
• Online Access: http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/howardmorry/id/1639

The twenty five volumes in this series differ in composition between two diary formats. The first format is that of an unbroken narrative of events in the life of the author, Howard Leopold Morry, or of the history of the community in which he was born and raised, Ferryland, Newfoundland. The second format is that of a conventional daily diary reporting on events of the day, including the weather and sea conditions, the ups and downs in the fishery, births, marriages and deaths of family, friends and neighbours, and newsworthy events at the local, national and international level. None of the 25 volumes are actually all of one format or the other. They all contain a larger or smaller component of each form of diary. This diary is almost, but not completely, identical to the diary transcribed in Volume 17 of this series and bears a close resemblance as well to the first four volumes in the series which together formed a serialised account of Howard’s personal memoirs. All of these three similar diaries or, in the case of the first four diaries, series of diaries, focussed mainly on Howard’s retelling of his experiences in WWI. Volume 17 was previously transcribed by the late Jamie Morry, my cousin, and Volume 19 was previously transcribed by Glen Morry, my brother, with some assistance from me in the preparation of explanatory notes. Glen and I had not known at the time when we made this transcription that Jamie had completed a transcription of an almost identical diary years before. One might wonder why Howard would have gone to the trouble of repeating in closely similar versions three complete records of his experiences in the war. As noted above, Howard had concerns that some of his diaries might not survive him and he believed that his experiences in the war were a valuable record of what actually took place from the perspective of an ordinary foot soldier. This was a profoundly different experience than most accounts in history books, which were either written by, or from the vantage point of, the officers. ...