The U.S. Navy vs. the 1918 Spanish flu By Dwight Jon Zimmerman
THE PANDEMIC BEGINS On March 4, 1918, Pvt. Albert Gitchell, a cook at Camp Funston in the Fort Riley, Kansas military reservation, was admitted to sick bay, the diagnosis: flu. His was the first recorded military case of what would come to be called the Spanish flu, one that, when it had run its course, would infect hundreds of millions of people worldwide and kill more than 50 million.
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Though contagious, because the cases were mild – and with the French and British armies in desperate need of fresh troops from their new ally the United States in order to finally bring to an end the Great War (World War I) – Fort Riley’s commander ordered the flow of men entering and leaving for Army bases throughout the country to continue uninterrupted. Only flu victims requiring hospitalization were exempt.
Wherever they went, from Army camps to points of departure, to naval bases and elsewhere, infected soldiers passed on the disease, leaving in their wake an evergrowing number of victims to this new strain of flu. Once in Europe, infected soldiers soon spread the virus across France. From there, it was carried into England, over the trenches into Germany, and throughout Europe. Ironically, because so many of the nation’s top medical professionals had either enlisted or were drafted when America declared war against Germany, soldiers, Marines, and sailors were able to receive the best medical care. But with flu vaccines yet to be invented, the only effective weapon doctors had against the spread of infectious diseases was the quarantine. Unfortunately, with the nation on war footing and having to fasttrack training and deployment of troops, medical professionals in the military, from Army Surgeon General Maj. Gen.
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THE OTHER ENEMY IN WORLD WAR I
Military patients in an emergency hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, in the midst of the Spanish flu pandemic. Camp Funston recorded the first military case of the Spanish flu on March 4, 1918.
