US soldiers took killer ‘flu around the world

THE grandfather of US President Donald Trump in 1918 was an early victim of deadly Spanish flu.

Heavily masked and covered members of the Units of the Influenza Administration Committee in Sydney during great Spanish flu epidemic of 1919.

ON a routine stroll along Jamaica Ave in Queens, New York, in May 1918, Friedrich Trump told his son he felt ill.

Returning home Trump went to bed, where he died the next day at age 49, likely a victim of the lethal influenza that killed millions more than World War I.

Trump, who migrated to America from Germany in 1885 to make his fortune running bars and brothels in Washington and Yukon gold towns, left a small fortune for his widow Elizabeth and eldest son Fred, then 12, to invest in New York housing estates.

The flu outbreak that struck down US President Donald Trump’s grandfather is commonly traced to US Army Camp Funston at Fort Riley, Kansas, where mess cook Private Albert Gitchell reported severe flu-like symptoms to medics on the morning of Monday, March 11, 1918. Other accounts say Gitchell fell ill a week earlier, on March 4. Although Gitchell was swiftly quarantined, the evening before he had served food to soldiers. Shortly after Gitchell presented for treatment, Corporal Lee Drake was admitted with similar symptoms.

By midday more than 100 of the 50,000 soldiers at Camp Funston had arrived for treatment, complaining of sore throats, headaches, feeling tired and a feverish sweat. A harrowing cough progressed to high fevers as victims faces turned blue, killing some within a day. The first outbreak at Fort Riley affected more than 1000 soldiers and killed 46, although it was alleged that wartime censorship prevented publicity of the outbreak.

Nurses and doctors wear protective masks while vaccinating patients from Spanish influenza (flu) in London during the 1919 epidemic.

Train travellers and police in London wear masks to avoid the flu (influenza) epidemic. About 40 million people worldwide died as the virus spread with returning servicemen, from 1918-19.

A young woman who worked at the camp laundry said, “We’d be working with someone one day, and they’d go home because they didn’t feel good, and by the next day they were gone.”

A century later the origin of the virulent and deadly influenza that killed up to 50 million people, most in 16 weeks from July 1918, remains unknown. In South Africa from August 1 to November 30, 1918, influenza deaths “among Europeans were 11,700 and among others 127,000. The estimated number of cases was 450,000 Europeans and 2,100,000 others. Thirty-two per cent of the European population was affected, and 40 per cent of others.”

It is suspected the virus arrived at Fort Riley with soldiers who enlisted from southwestern Kansas, where in January and February 1918
Dr Loring Miner described unusually severe influenza striking down young, fit patients in Haskell County. Soldiers from Camp Funston were assigned to camps across the US; on March 18, two camps in Georgia had their first cases of influenza. By the end of April, 24 of 36 main Army camps suffered an influenza epidemic, and 30 large cities had a spike in mortality from influenza and pneumonia.

Sydneysiders wear masks at Sydney Town Hall during the 1919 Spanish flu outbreak. Picture: City of Sydney Archives

Australian nurses (including hospital dog) wear masks to prevent spread of disease during 1918-19 influenza epidemic.

Influenza was reported at the port of Brest, France, as tens of thousands of US soldiers arrived in April. Being especially and unusually fatal for healthy young adults, influenza was soon rife in damp trenches, where German soldiers called it Blitzkatarrh and the British named it Flanders Grippe. In May Spanish newspapers reported “a mysterious epidemic has spread over the country in an alarming manner. Forty per cent of the population have been stricken,” including King Alfonso XIII and several ministers.

The virulent influenza was then called Spanish flu. Allied and German armies suffered huge casualties, while in America, Philadelphia ran out of gravediggers and coffins, and mass burial trenches were excavated with steam shovels. Deadly influenza arrived at Bombay, likely with returning troops, in early September 1918. Over the next four months it killed at least 13 million people in India, one of the worst affected nations.

Reports of the deadly virus in Europe and Africa began in Australia in July 1918, and in August an outbreak of a serious, highly contagious flu was reported at Victoria’s Laverton and Broadmeadows AIF training camps, although it was not confirmed as Spanish flu. Returning soldiers were quarantined at North Head in Sydney when a national influenza planning conference was held in Melbourne on November 26 and 27, 1918.

Annie Egan, a nurse who died in 1918 at the Sydney Quarantine Station, near Manly, after caring for a patient with Spanish flu. Medical authorities refused to let a priest see her before she died, causing a furore.

Nurse Annie Egan, who in November volunteered to work with quarantined soldiers suffering the flu, died on December 3. Sydney closed schools and theatres and mandated use of masks. Confident the epidemic was under control in early January 1919, weeks later five new cases were reported, “bringing the total of proved cases to 25. There were 157 new cases in Melbourne, bringing the total to 599 cases. So far there have been 42 deaths.” In Melbourne the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory, established in 1916, developed its first experimental vaccine, producing three million doses of a mixed bacterial vaccine to combat complications such as pneumonia. By the end of 1919, Spanish flu had killed 15,000 Australians, well below the country’s 62,000 World War I death toll. With a death rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population, Australia had one of the lowest recorded death rates of any country during the pandemic, although up to 40 per cent of the population was infected, with mortality rates of 50 per cent in some Aboriginal communities.

Originally published as US soldiers took killer ‘flu around the world