The Great Influenza (52 page)

But as Camus knew, evil and crises do not make all men rise above themselves. Crises only make them discover themselves. And some discover a less inspiring humanity.

As the crest of the wave that broke over Philadelphia began its sweep across the rest of the country, it was accompanied by the same terror that had silenced the streets there. Most men and women sacrificed and risked their lives only for those they loved most deeply: a child, a wife, a husband. Others, loving chiefly themselves, fled in terror even from them.

Still others fomented terror, believing that blaming the enemy (Germany) could help the war effort, or perhaps actually believing that Germany was responsible. Doane himself charged that 'German agents' from submarines' brought influenza to the United States. 'The Germans have started epidemics in Europe, and there is no reason why they should be particularly gentle to America.'

Others around the country echoed him. Starkville, Mississippi, a town of three thousand in the Mississippi hill country, was built around a sawmill, cotton farms (not the rich, lush plantations of the Delta but harsh land) and Mississippi A&M College (now Mississippi State University). It served as headquarters for Dr. M. G. Parsons, the U.S. Public Health Service officer for northeastern Mississippi, who proudly informed Blue that he had succeeded in getting local newspapers to run stories he made up that 'aid in forming a proper frame of mind' in the public. That frame of mind was fear. Parsons wanted to create fear, believing it 'prepared the public mind to receive and act on our suggestions.'

Parsons got the local press to say, 'The Hun resorts to unwanted murder of innocent noncombatants' . He has been tempted to spread sickness and death thru germs, and has done so in authenticated cases' . Communicable diseases are more strictly a weapon for use well back of the lines, over on French or British, or American land.' Blue neither reprimanded Parsons for fomenting fear nor suggested that he take another tack. Another story read, 'The Germs Are Coming. An epidemic of influenza is spreading or being spread, (we wonder which).''

Those and similar charges created enough public sentiment to force Public Health Service laboratories to waste valuable time and energy investigating such possible agents of germ warfare as Bayer aspirin. Parsons's territory bordered on Alabama and there a traveling salesman from Philadelphia named H. M. Thomas was arrested on suspicion of being a German agent and spreading influenza. Thomas was released, but on October 17, the day after influenza had killed 759 people in Philadelphia, his body was found in a hotel room with his wrists cut - and his throat slit. Police ruled it suicide.

* 

Everywhere, as in Philadelphia, two problems developed: caring for the sick, and maintaining some kind of order.

In Cumberland, Maryland, a gritty railroad and industrial city in the heart of a coal-mining region (where one actually
could
throw a stone across the Potomac River into West Virginia) to prevent the spread of the disease schools and churches had already been closed, all public gathering places had been closed, and stores had been ordered to close early. Nonetheless, the epidemic exploded on October 5. At noon that day the local Red Cross chairman met with the treasurer of the Red Cross's War Fund and the head of the local Council of National Defense. Their conclusion: 'The matter seemed far beyond control' . Reports were spreading fast that 'this one' or 'that one' had died without doctor or nurse and it was a panic indeed.'

They decided to convert two large buildings on Washington Street to emergency hospitals. From there a handful of women took over, meeting barely an hour after the men had. Each woman had a task: to gather linens, or bathroom supplies, or cooking utensils, or flour. They worked fast. The next morning the hospitals filled with patients.

In Cumberland, 41 percent of the entire population got sick. But the emergency hospitals had only three nurses. The organizers begged for more: 'We notified the Bd of Health we must have more nurses if we were to go on' .[Nurses] promised. However this help never materialized and up to date' 93 admissions, 18 deaths. The question of orderlies is difficult. They are just not to be found.'

Back in Starkville, Parsons met with the president of the college, the army commander of the students (all the students had been inducted into the army) and physicians. 'We had an open discussion of the dangers and best actions to take and they assured me everything possible would be done,' he wired Blue. He asked for and received fifteen thousand pamphlets, posters, and circulars, more than the combined population of Starkville, Columbus, and West Point. But he, and they, accomplished little. Of eighteen hundred students, well over half would get influenza. On October 9 Parsons 'found unbelievable conditions with everybody in power stunned.' At that moment eight hundred students were sick and 2 percent of all students had already died, with many deaths to come. Parsons found 'influenza is all thru the region, in town, hamlet, and single home. People are pretty well scared, with reason' .' In West Point, a town of five thousand, fifteen hundred were ill simultaneously. Parsons confessed, 'Panic incipient.'

In El Paso a U.S. Public Health Service officer reported to Blue, 'I have the honor to inform you that from Oct 9th to date there have been 275 deaths from influenza in El Paso among civilians. This does not include civilians who are employed by the government and who died at the base hospital of Fort Bliss, nor does it include soldiers' [W]hole city in a panic.'

In Colorado, towns in the San Juan Mountains did not panic. They turned grimly serious. They had time to prepare. Lake City guards kept the town entirely free of the disease, allowing no one to enter. Silverton, a town of two thousand, authorized closing businesses even before a single case surfaced. But the virus snuck in, with a vengeance. In a single week in Silverton, 125 died. The town of Ouray set up a 'shot gun quarantine,' hiring guards to keep miners from Silverton and Telluride out. But the virus reached Ouray as well.

It had not reached Gunnison. Neither tiny nor isolated, Gunnison was a railroad town, a supply center for the west-central part of the state, the home of Western State Teachers College. In early October (far in advance of any cases of influenza) Gunnison and most neighboring towns issued a closing order and a ban on public gatherings. Then Gunnison decided to isolate itself entirely. Gunnison lawmen blocked all through roads. Train conductors warned all passengers that if they stepped foot on the platform in Gunnison to stretch their legs, they would be arrested and quarantined for five days. Two Nebraskans trying simply to drive through to a town in the next county ran the blockade and were thrown into jail. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Sargents suffered six deaths in a single day - out of a total population of 130.

Early in the epidemic, back on September 27 (it seemed like years before) the Wisconsin newspaper the
Jefferson County Union
had reported the truth about the disease, and the general in charge of the Army Morale Branch decreed the report 'depressant to morale' and forwarded it to enforcement officials for 'any action which may be deemed appropriate,' including criminal prosecution. Now, weeks later, after weeks of dying and with the war over, the
Gunnison News-Chronicle,
unlike virtually every other newspaper in the country, played no games and warned, 'This disease is no joke, to be made light of, but a terrible calamity.'

Gunnison escaped without a death.

* 

In the United States, the war was something
over there
. The epidemic was
here
.

'Even if there was war,' recalled Susanna Turner of Philadelphia, 'the war was removed from us, you know' on the other side' . This malignancy, it was right at our very doors.'

People feared and hated this malignancy, this alien thing in their midst. They were willing to cut it out at any cost. In Goldsboro, North Carolina, Dan Tonkel recalled, 'We were actually almost afraid to breathe, the theaters were closed down so you didn't get into any crowds' . You felt like you were walking on eggshells, you were afraid even to go out. You couldn't play with your playmates, your classmates, your neighbors, you had to stay home and just be careful. The fear was so great people were actually afraid to leave their homes. People were actually afraid to talk to one another. It was almost like don't breathe in my face, don't look at me and breathe in my face' . You never knew from day to day who was going to be next on the death list' . That was the horrible part, people just died so quickly.'

His father had a store. Four of eight salesgirls died. 'Farmers stopped farming and the merchants stopped selling merchandise and the country really more or less just shut down holding their breath. Everyone was holding their breath.' His uncle Benny was nineteen years old and had been living with him until he was drafted and went to Fort Bragg, which sent him home when he reported. The camp was refusing all new draftees. Tonkel recalls his parents not wanting to allow Benny back in the house. 'Benny we don't know what to do with you,' they said. 'Well, what can I tell you. I'm here,' his uncle replied. They let him in. 'We were frightened, yes absolutely, we were frightened.'

In Washington, D.C., William Sardo said, 'It kept people apart' . It took away all your community life, you had no community life, you had no school life, you had no church life, you had nothing' . It completely destroyed all family and community life. People were afraid to kiss one another, people were afraid to eat with one another, they were afraid to have anything that made contact because that's how you got the flu' . It destroyed those contacts and destroyed the intimacy that existed amongst people' . You were constantly afraid, you were afraid because you saw so much death around you, you were surrounded by death' . When each day dawned you didn't know whether you would be there when the sun set that day. It wiped out entire families from the time that the day began in the morning to bedtime at night - entire families were gone completely, there wasn't any single soul left and that didn't happen just intermittently, it happened all the way across the neighborhoods, it was a terrifying experience. It justifiably should be called a plague because that's what it was' . You were quarantined, is what you were, from fear, it was so quick, so sudden' . There was an aura of a constant fear that you lived through from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night.'

In New Haven, Connecticut, John Delano recalled the same isolating fear: 'Normally when someone was sick in those days the parents, the mothers, the fathers, would bring food over to other families but this was very weird' . Nobody was coming in, nobody would bring food in, nobody came to visit.'

Prescott, Arizona, made it illegal to shake hands. In Perry County, Kentucky, in the mountains where men either dug into the earth for coal or scratched upon the earth's surface trying to farm despite topsoil only a few inches deep, a county of hard people, where family ties bound tightly, where men and women were loyal and would murder for pride or honor, the Red Cross chapter chairman begged for help, reporting 'hundreds of cases up in mountains that they were unable to reach.' They were unreachable not just because the county had almost no roads; streambeds in dry weather substituted for them and when the streambeds filled, transport became impossible. It was more: 'People starving to death not from lack of food but because the well were panic stricken and would not go near the sick; that in the stricken families the dead were lying uncared for.' Doctors were offered $100 to come out and stay there one hour. None came. Even one Red Cross worker, Morgan Brawner, arrived in the county Saturday and left Sunday, himself terror stricken. He had reason to fear: in some areas the civilian mortality rate reached 30 percent.

In Norwood, Massachusetts, a historian years later interviewed survivors. One man, a newsboy in 1918, remembered that his manager would 'tell me to put the money on the table and he'd spray the money before he'd pick it up.' Said another survivor; 'There wasn't much visiting' . We stayed by ourselves.' And another: '[H]e'd bring, you know, whatever my father needed and leave it on the doorstep. No one would go into each other's houses.' And another: 'Everything came to a standstill' . We weren't allowed out the door. We had to keep away from people.' And another: 'A cop, a big burly guy' came up to the house and nailed a big white sign and on the sign it said
INFLUENZA
in red letters. And they nailed it to the door.' A sign made a family even more isolated. And another survivor: 'I'd go up the street, walk up the street with my hand over my eyes because there were so many houses with crepe draped over the doors.' And still another: 'It was horrifying. Not only were you frightened you might come down with it but there was the eerie feeling of people passing away all around you.'

In Luce County, Michigan, one woman was nursing her husband and three boys when she 'came down with it herself,' reported a Red Cross worker. 'Not one of the neighbors would come in and help. I stayed there all night, and in the morning telephoned the woman's sister. She came and tapped on the window, but refused to talk to me until she had gotten a safe distance away' . I could do nothing for the woman' except send for the priest.'

Monument and Ignacio, Colorado, went further than banning all public gatherings. They banned customers from stores; the stores remained open, but customers shouted orders through doors, then waited outside for packages.

Colorado Springs placarded homes with signs that read 'Sickness.'

* 

In no industry did workers hear more about patriotism, about how their work mattered to the war effort as much as that of soldiers fighting at the front, than in shipbuilding. Nor were workers in any industry more carefully attended to. In all plants common drinking cups were immediately destroyed, replaced by tens of thousands of paper cups. Hospital and treatment facilities were arranged in advance, influenza vaccine supplied, and it was perhaps the only industry in which nurses and doctors remained available. As a result, claimed a Public Health Service officer, 'There is no reason to believe that many men were absent from work through panic or fear of the disease, because our educational program took care to avoid frightening the men. The men were taught that they were safer at work than any where else.'