The Spanish Flu.The 1918 Flu Pandemic.

The Yank's are Coming!. That was the rallying call that was reverberating all across the stalemated trenches of the Western Front in the Spring of 1917. America's congress had declared war on Germany and the Axis Powers in April of 1917. War wary French and English soldiers could now start to feel that the end was finally in sight to the bloodiest conflict in the history of man. America's limitless pool of manpower would turn the tide of the war in their favor after their four years of sacrifice.

But first the United States had to train and equip an Army. It would be a herculean effort. In training depots across America,that Army began to take shape.

On March 4 1918 an Army cook at Fort Riley Kansas named Albert Gitchell reported for sick call with signs of the flu.In less than and hour,20 more men had reported with the same symptoms as Gitchell.Within a few days 522 soldiers at Fort Riley had gone on sick call. The Army Doctors had never seen anything like this new virus. It started with flu like symptoms, and in most cases evolved into pneumonia. 48 of the sick soldiers at Fort Riley would die of the disease.These cases would be the beginning of the worse Pandemic the modern world had ever seen.

World War One did not cause the flu pandemic of 1918-20. But by putting large numbers of men together in the training centers,and then the mass movement of these same troops to the battlefields of Europe,in this manner it certainly aided the disease in its spread.

This early form of the virus wasn't as lethal as it would become. It's believed that the virus traveled with the American Troops bound for Europe,and found a fertile breeding ground among the weakened and mal nourished French and British soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front.The virus took on a more deadly form as it evolved.The disease ravaged the Armies on both sides of the trenches.

Due to a press black out being enforced in all of the Waring countries,the news of the sickness was being suppressed in the newspapers of the nations at war. But because Spain was neutral,the Spanish did not have censorship of the press. So when the disease began to infect huge numbers of people on the Iberian Peninsula,the attention of the world's media would be focused on Spain. The disease became known worldwide as The Spanish Influenza.

This was a different type of flu virus. In the past most Influenza viruses had affected the very young and the very old most servery. But this virus was cutting down young adults in the prime of their lives. And there was not a thing medical personal could do to prevent the spread of the infection.

Half a million people would die in the United States alone. It's supposedly hit Philadelphia and Boston particularity hard. I've read about bodies being stacked in the streets like cord wood The mortuaries ran out of caskets in many cities across America.Local governments in many places ceased to function. They were literally overwhelmed with the dead and dying.

The 1918-20 Flu pandemic is still to this date the worse pandemic ever in modern history.It struck people in remote Pacific Islands. It made an appearance among the Inuit people of the Arctic region. Anywhere there were people it seems,the disease attacked. It's estimated that worldwide more than 600 million people were stricken with the flu virus,and of those more than 50 million would die of the disease or from medical complication related to the disease. That means that with the World's population at just above a billion people in 1918,that at least 3 % of the World's total population would die from the Influenza outbreak.And that's a conservative estimate.The true death toll is no doubt higher. But because so many people were affected,in many areas,keeping a count of the dead wasn't done properly.

The Flu left as quick as it had arrived. By January of 1920,it was over,and the world was left in a state of shock.. Everyone had been affected by the Flu. Either you knew someone who had died,or even one of your family members of yourself, had the flu.

It's believed by many historians today that the Flu pandemic of 1918 is what forced Germany to seek an end to the First World War.The English had blockades German ports at the beginning of hostilities in 1914,and the people of Germany were mal nourished and susceptible to disease.

There's a really good documentary on the subject at pbs.org. It's a episode of American Experience.