Tag: Spanish Flu

Research Notes – The Great War (21) The Influenza Epidemic of 1918

~ Meg ~ 10 Comments

Reworked and edited from an earlier post:

In researching for my story Here Lies a Soldier, I needed to educate myself on The Spanish Flu Epidemic: the plague that killed some 50 million people worldwide in 1918, more than 10 times the number killed by The Great War. I found an excellent book about the flu:  Living With Enza -The Forgotten Story Of Britain and the Great Flu Pandemic Of 1918. The author, Mark Honigsbaum, has compiled and sifted through a huge amount of data to write this book. Here are some of the things I found interesting and frankly, horrifying.

Some facts about influenza:

Influenza viruses spread aerially, usually in small droplets expelled when someone coughs or sneezes, and tend to be more stable in cool dry conditions. Researchers have also discovered that at around 5 degrees C (41 degrees Fahrenheit) the virus transmits for about 2 days longer than at 20 degrees. A popular (and morbid) children’s rhyme of the time may actually be spot on. It goes like this:

I had a little bird
Its name was Enza
I opened the window
And in-flu-enza

The Spanish Flu in particular:

The Spanish Flu was so virulent because of its genetic makeup. There are 3 types of influenza viruses: A, B, and C. The B type produces classic winter flu while the C type rarely causes disease in humans. The A type, however, is the one responsible for the great pandemics of history. Because viruses are not cells, they do not have DNA to organize their replication. Rather, they use 8 delicate strands of RNA which codes for proteins and enzymes on the surface of the virus. Trouble arises during replication because the RNA cannot copy perfectly. Errors called ‘antigenic drift’ occur when the avian or swine strain of the virus is exchanging genes with the human host.  The result is a new subtype of the virus. Then once inside the new host, the 8 strands of RNA randomly shuffle, generating an entirely new virus for which the human immune system has no antibodies. With no defense, the virus can spread like a wild-fire.

The rate of mortality fell disproportionally on young adults, usually the least vulnerable of a population. The 1918 flu struck suddenly and without warning. One moment a person was up and about, the next day they would be lying incapacitated, coughing up greenish-yellow sputum. The final stage came when their lungs filled with fluid, prompting the heart to leach oxygen from the head and feet, resulting in a dark purple staining across the lips and cheeks of the victim.

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Courtesy Philly Voice

Possible contributing factors:

The effects of gas attacks during the war.  Gasses like phosgene and chlorine were not only capable of disabling and killing on contact, they also acted as soil contaminants denying valuable ground to the enemy. In all, it is estimated that some 150,000 tons of poison gasses – the equivalent of a modern day supertanker – were dumped on the killing fields of Flanders and Northern France during the last 2 years of the war, saturating the soil to the point where it became impossible for attacking troops to hold territory without large numbers of men having to retreat to field hospitals with suppurating blisters, damaged lungs, and eyes.

The most mutagenic of all gasses – mustard gas – 12,000 tons of which was dumped on the Western Front in 1917, accounted for 400,000 casualties. According to John Oxford, Professor of virology at Queen Mary’s Medical School of London and military historian Douglas Gill: these agents may have prompted ‘stepwise mutational changes’ in the influenza virus. And in combination with the bitterly cold conditions that prevailed at the Western Front in the winter of 1917, and the stresses and strains of war, it is possible such contaminants would have lowered men’s resistance to the flu.

Though this particular strain of flu was traced to a United States Army barracks in Kansas (for more on that see Patient Zero: The Spanish Flu) it quickly spread all over North America and Europe. Some of it’s famous victims included: American President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, German Kaiser Wilhelm II, Spain’s King Alfonso XIII, the future Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie, artist Edvard Munch, and celebrities Walt Disney, Lilian Gish, and Mary Pickford.

Header Image: courtesy health dot.am

Research Notes – The Great War (17) Robert Graves, War Poet

~ Meg ~ 28 Comments

In the course of researching for my historical novel (in progress) I began reading about the War Poets: men whose experiences in the Great War gave rise to some of the most moving and heart wrenching poetry ever written. Unlike historical accounts with facts and statistics, the poetry brought to life (and death) the true suffering the men experienced during this dreadful conflict.

Robert Graves was a close friend of Siegfried Sassoon and like Sassoon used his experiences in the war as material for his poetry. He was badly wounded at The Battle of the Somme in 1917 and in addition, suffered the accompanying nightmare of shell shock. Nevertheless, unlike his friend Sassoon, he was never hospitalized for the condition. The story of his journey home, however, includes an odd series of coincidences both good and bad, that make for quite the interesting tale.

After the war, Robert Graves awaited demobilization while on leave in Ireland. For many men, the epidemic flu was hindering the process of returning them to their families. In February 1919, Graves finally received a telegram from the War Office confirming that his papers had come through. In order for the paperwork to be completed, however, Graves needed to return to the demobilization camp near his parents’ home in South London. Unfortunately for him, the release of troops from Ireland was about to be suspended due to the ‘Troubles’.

To make matters worse, he began to experience the intial symptoms of the deadly flu. Fearing for his health, should he be quarantined in an Irish hospital, Graves decided to make a run for it. He convinced an orderly sergeant to make out his travel papers and hopped on the next train from Limerick, even though he didn’t have the proper demobilization code marks. According to his memoir, Goodbye to All That, he said, “…I would at least have my flu out in an English and not an Irish hospital.”

On the night of February 13, 1919, he boarded the ferry to Fishguard with a high fever. He reports still having his mental faculties in good form, however. So upon discovering that a strike on the London Electric Railway was imminent, Graves immediately boarded a train from Wales to Paddington, in hopes of outrunning the inevitable disruptions. He made it safely and was able to catch the connecting trains and arrive at his home in Hove before travel was suspended.  Another happy accident was that he found himself sharing a taxi with a soldier who just happened to be the Cork District Demobilization Officer and was willing to provide him with the final code marks he needed to complete his paperwork.

The bad news: upon arriving at his home, he was so ill that he immediately took to his bed. And though Graves himself recovered, within two days of his return home, everyone in his household was dead except for his father-in-law and a servant.

Here is one of his poems:

The Last Post (June 1916)

The bugler sent a call of high romance–
‘Lights out! Lights out!’ To the deserted square:
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,
‘God, if this is for me in time in France…
O spare the phantom bugle as I lie
Dead in gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with other broken ones,
Lying so stiff and still under sky,
Jolly young Fusiliers, too good to die.’
The music ceased, and the red sunset flare
Was blood about his head as he stood there.

Image courtesy Australian War Memorial 

Research Notes – The Great War (10) Plague Ship Leviathan

~ Meg ~ 54 Comments

I’m researching The Great War for my current work in progress: a historical novel set partially during that time. To write the period accurately, I’ve been reading and studying the war and the surrounding events. Some of the older material I’m reposting in order to better organize it. I wrote this post in 2016 during my Spanish Flu research. The epidemic will play a central role in the historical timeline. I hope you find it interesting and don’t mind me recycling! ~ Meg

The early 1900’s and 1910’s saw the launch of many famous super liners –ships designed to carry thousands of passengers across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to the Americas in  luxury and comfort. These were famous liners like White Star Lines’ Titanic and her sister ships Olympic and Britannic, Cunard’s Lusitania and Mauritania, and even larger –Hamburg-America’s Imperator, Vaterland and Bismarck. The Bismarck* would hold the title of largest ship in the world until 1935.

The three German ships had the ill fortune of being launched just prior to the outbreak of World War I and thus spent little time in the service of Hamburg-America before being laid up in port thanks to British domination of the seas.

It was late July 1914, when the SS Vaterland made her crossing to New York City, USA. When the guns of August began to fire, the return trip was determined to be unsafe, she was laid up at her Hoboken, New Jersey terminal and remained there for nearly three years.

In 1917, when the United States entered the Great War, the Vaterland was seized and rechristened as the SS Leviathan by President Woodrow Wilson. She would now be put into service transporting fresh American troops to the port of Brest in France to bolster the exhausted French and British forces.

By late September 1918, the second wave of the epidemic flu was beginning to spread through the troops destined for the front. The giant transport ships, with their confined decks and crowded bunks provided the ideal conditions for incubation of the virus. Circumstances aboard the massive troop ship Leviathan proved to be the worst of all.

On September 29, 1918, SS Leviathan left New York harbor for Brest, carrying 9,000 troops and 2,000 crew on board. By the following morning, the sick bay was overwhelmed with men suffering from the symptoms of flu. It took just three days for 700 more men to sicken and for one of them to die. Bunks were turned into makeshift sick beds. Healthy men were confined to less well ventilated quarters and the disease roared through the ship like a wildfire.

On the fourth day, October 1st, 2000 men had fallen victim to the dreadful disease. The official Navy report states that ‘pools of blood from severe nasal hemorrhages were scattered throughout the compartments, and the attendants were powerless to escape tracking through the mess, because of the narrow passages between the bunks.’

The ship docked in Brest on October 8, 1918 with 2000 men sick with flu and pneumonia, 80 had died and been buried at sea and those left healthy were desperate to get off the plague ship. Nevertheless, 280 of the ill men were too weak to get off the ship and 14 more died before the end of the day. Some 1000 of the remaining patients had to be carried via stretcher to the base camp from the wharf in a convoy that stretched four miles. The American influenza casualties eventually reached into the hundreds.

One interesting side note regarding Leviathan: her crew included Chief Quartermaster, Humphrey Bogart, future American film star. As the senior enlisted man in the Navigation Division, Bogart would have been on the helm whenever the ship sailed in or out of harbor.

Image via flickr

*This ship is not to be confused with the battleship Bismarck, commissioned by the Nazis in World War Two. This Bismarck was a passenger ship, was never actually launched before the outbreak of the war and later was handed over to the Allies as war reparations and rechristened as the HMS Majestic of the White Star Line.