Scant entries during his sickness My Uncle Josh, 347th Machine Gun Battalion, 91st Division, out of Camp Lewis, religiously wrote in his tiny camp diary. He brought it from Salt Lake City, a freebie from a cleaners. He wrote about rain, a lot. I am not surprised as Pacific Northwest rain had to be impressive to a high-desert native. He wrote about training, learning French, drills, shooting awards, football games, Secretary McAdoo's visit, and his clerical work at the hospital. Intriguing were the non-entries of March 1918. He was in the hospital as a patient for sixteen plus days. After returning to his barracks for more rest, fellow soldiers brought him food and checked up on him. He only felt like reading and writing letters. In a letter home he asked his mother to verify that he had already had mumps as a child. Mumps? Influenza? He never wrote about the diagnosis. However, it does appear that Camp Lewis did have an early exposure to some strain of flu.
"On April 15, however, it was reported that at the army’s Camp Lewis south of Tacoma (now part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord), pneumonia has slightly increased during the week, most of the cases follow influenza, which was at its maximum two weeks ago.” (“Civilian Workers Fast Being Eliminated ...”). The 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic in Washington.
Another online article discusses the flu at Camp Lewis called "Now Part of JBLM, Was at the Center of the Beginning of the Lethal Disease in Washington State", HistoryLink.org, Nov 8, 2017. According to it, the flu of March 1918 was just a normal flu, with soldiers recovering quickly. But Josh was sick for weeks. It is still a mystery if he had the Spanish flu, mumps, scarlet fever, more than one health problem, or something else. We only know that he was very weak after the prolonged hospital stay.
The U.S. Army website relates the effects of the Spanish flu worldwide and throughout the American Expeditionary Force. Here is the link for those wishing to read more about the influenza worldwide plague of 1918. Speaking of plagues and pandemics, "The Plague," considering the smaller world population, was still a much greater pandemic than the Spanish Flu...but tell that to someone who lost a family member or who suffered through it and survived. Americans lost over 45,000 soldiers to the Spanish flu. My university campus turned over large classroom halls to house sick soldiers.
And here we are today, battling another influenza with deaths already mounting at the beginning of the flu season.
"On April 15, however, it was reported that at the army’s Camp Lewis south of Tacoma (now part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord), pneumonia has slightly increased during the week, most of the cases follow influenza, which was at its maximum two weeks ago.” (“Civilian Workers Fast Being Eliminated ...”). The 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic in Washington.
Another online article discusses the flu at Camp Lewis called "Now Part of JBLM, Was at the Center of the Beginning of the Lethal Disease in Washington State", HistoryLink.org, Nov 8, 2017. According to it, the flu of March 1918 was just a normal flu, with soldiers recovering quickly. But Josh was sick for weeks. It is still a mystery if he had the Spanish flu, mumps, scarlet fever, more than one health problem, or something else. We only know that he was very weak after the prolonged hospital stay.
The U.S. Army website relates the effects of the Spanish flu worldwide and throughout the American Expeditionary Force. Here is the link for those wishing to read more about the influenza worldwide plague of 1918. Speaking of plagues and pandemics, "The Plague," considering the smaller world population, was still a much greater pandemic than the Spanish Flu...but tell that to someone who lost a family member or who suffered through it and survived. Americans lost over 45,000 soldiers to the Spanish flu. My university campus turned over large classroom halls to house sick soldiers.
And here we are today, battling another influenza with deaths already mounting at the beginning of the flu season.
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