Then, in the fourth dreadful year of the war, as the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) assumed fighting strength and prepared their first great offensive against the Germans, the flu struck. By the War Department's most conservative count, influenza sickened 26% of the Army—more than one million men—and killed almost 30,000 before they even got to France.*2* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B2>,*3* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B3> On both sides of the Atlantic, the Army lost a staggering 8,743,102 days to influenza among enlisted men in 1918.*4* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B4> (p. 1448) The Navy recorded 5,027 deaths and more than 106,000 hospital admissions for influenza and pneumonia out of 600,000 men, but given the large number of mild cases that were never recorded, Braisted put the sickness rate closer to 40%.*5* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B5>,*6* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B6> (p. 2458)
The Army and Navy medical services may have tamed typhoid and typhus, but more American soldiers, sailors, and Marines would succumb to influenza and pneumonia than would die on the industrialized battlefields of the Great War. The story of the influenza epidemic in the military is often lost in the historical narrative of the Great War, included merely as a coda to that four-year horror, coinciding with the final battles and the Armistice. But an examination of medical reports and War Department and Department of the Navy documents from the war reveals that the war and the epidemic were intertwined.*7* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B7> World War I and influenza collaborated: the war fostered disease by creating conditions in the trenches of France that some epidemiologists believe enabled the influenza virus to evolve into a killer of global proportions. In turn, disease shaped the war effort by rendering much of the Army and Navy non-effective and diverting resources, personnel, and scarce human attention and energy from the military campaign. The exigencies of war also thwarted many of the efforts such as crowd mitigation and quarantines to control the epidemic. The influenza epidemic in the U.S. military therefore provides a cautionary tale about the power of war to change the health environment and the power of disease to influence the conduct of war. GOING TO WAR The United States at first hung back from the killing in Europe, as many Americans believed it was not their fight. But under increasing pressure from Britain and France, and angered by German U-boat attacks that threatened American commerce and security, and the revelations in the Zimmermann Telegram that Germany was urging Mexico to attack the United States, President Wilson abandoned neutrality and in April 1917 asked Congress for a declaration of war. The U.S. economy was already booming as farmers and manufacturers shipped foodstuffs and military supplies to the belligerent nations. Now the United States would also generate its own military force that would help overwhelm the enemy and bring about the armistice of November 11, 1918. Congress quickly established a draft, and more than 4,600 Selective Service draft boards screened 10 million men to find the strongest and most fit soldiers and sailors. The military grew from just 378,000 strong in April 1917 to more than 4.7 million by war's end, with an Army of 4.1 million and a Navy of 600,000. Seventy-two percent of enlisted forces were inducted, and the military population reflected the country's ethnically diverse and racially segregated society. An estimated 20% of Army draftees were foreign-born and the troops spoke at least 46 languages, some 5,700 were Mexican aliens, and 12,500 were American Indians.*8* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B8> (p. 367-409) More than 400,000 African Americans served in the Army, some in two black combat divisions but most in labor battalions. The Navy employed only 5,300 black sailors, confining them to positions as cooks and stewards.*9* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B9> War mobilization drew millions of civilians into military institutions and extended the military into all corners of the country. To train and supply these men, the Army and Navy expanded existing facilities and directed training activities at various civilian organizations. Military camps, arsenals, air fields, and supply depots sprouted up in every state. The Army began training recruits in the fall of 1917 at 32 large camps, each home to 25,000 to 55,000 troops. Soldiers also went to specialized camps for training in specific fields such as artillery training at Camp Knox, Kentucky, railway operations at Camp Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, military engineering at Camp Forrest, Georgia, and medical unit training at Camp Crane, Pennsylvania. The War Department also operated some 40 air fields for aviator training and 10 embarkation and debarkation camps.*8* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B8> (p. 677-–78) The Navy expanded its training capacity from 6,000 recruits to more than 100,000 at stations on both coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Michigan, and also had specialized training centers such as the Navy gas engine school and the aviation ignition school at Columbia University in New York. In addition to the training camps, in the summer of 1918 the War Department established the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), intended to augment the work of the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) and prevent war mobilization from emptying institutions of higher education. Under the program, more than 500 colleges and universities trained officer candidates and provided technical instruction in fields such as auto mechanics and radio operation. By the Armistice, about 158,000 young men had enrolled in SATC programs.*8* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B8> (p. 556) This expansion of military institutions created a virtual network of young adults across which influenza could and would travel (*Figure 1* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/figure/F1/>). .... As they conducted their analyses, military medical officers soon understood that the wave of influenza that had run through many U.S. training camps during the spring of 1918 constituted a first wave of the pandemic. Fourteen of the largest training camps had reported influenza outbreaks in March, April, or May, and some of the infected troops carried the virus with them aboard ships to France.*12* <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/#B12> In the late spring and summer, influenza visited all of the armies of Europe, including the AEF, but because influenza was common in the military, and few patients became critically ill, medical officers were not alarmed. But by the late summer some saw the emergence of a new, lethal influenza. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/ -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
