The experience of surviving Spanish flu had a profound effect on Katherine. For the rest of her life, she would view her ordeal as an epiphany, a reminder she needed that she should pursue her destiny and had been spared for some special purpose:
It just simply divided my life, cut across it like that. So that everything before that was just getting ready, and after that I was in some strange way altered … It was, I think, the fact that I really had participated in death, that I knew what death was, and had almost experienced it. I had what the Christians call the ‘beatific vision,’ and the Greeks called the ‘happy day,’ the happy vision just before death. Now if you have had that, and survived it, come back from it, you are no longer like other people, and there’s no deceiving yourself that you are. But you see, I did: I made the mistake of thinking that I was quite like anyone else, of trying to live like other people. It took me a long time to realize that that simply wasn’t true, that I had my own needs and that I had to live like me.32
Katherine’s recognition that she had no choice but to be her own woman and live life on her own terms led to great success. A Pulitizer Prize winner, Katherine later recorded her own experiences of Spanish flu in the short story ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FATAL VOYAGE
ON 29 SEPTEMBER 1918, the USS Leviathan transport ship was preparing to leave Hoboken, New Jersey, to sail to Brest, France. The vessel, along with other ships, was due to ferry around 100,000 troops across the Atlantic to France during October. On her ninth voyage to France, the Leviathan would carry troops from ten different army organizations, including nurses and combat replacements.
The USS Leviathan, operating as an American troopship in 1918, began life in Hamburg in 1914, where she was launched as the Vaterland, the pride of the German passenger fleet. When the USA entered the war in 1917, the Vaterland was resting at anchor in New York. As her German captain was unwilling to scupper her, the Vaterland became ‘the most gigantic Prisoner of War the world has ever known’.1 She was seized by US Customs officials in the early morning of 6 April 1917, and turned over to the Shipping Board to be manned and operated. After nearly three years in dry dock at Hoboken, she was finally turned over to the Navy Department on 25 July 1917, regularly commissioned as a Naval vessel and assigned to transport duty under the command of Vice-Admiral Albert Cleaves, US Navy, Commander of the Cruiser and Transport Force, United States Atlantic Fleet, and renamed the USS Leviathan.
When she was seized, the old Vaterland had been packed with luxury goods, glassware, silverware and vintage wines, which were immediately impounded by Customs. In the process, an eighty-piece gold coffee service, designed for the Kaiser, mysteriously disappeared without trace.2 By September 1918, pampered socialites in jewels and furs had been replaced by a crew of the United States Navy, consisting of fifty officers and over one thousand men. Although the ship had been stripped and painted with striped ‘Dazzle’ camouflage to deceive the spying eyes of the U-boats, she retained the remnants of a happier life before she had come down in the world: a swimming pool with Roman decorations, and first-class salons glittering with mirrors and furnished with carpets and chairs covered in rose-coloured brocade.3 But needs must when the devil drives. The dining hall had been converted into a mess hall for the troops, the swimming pool had become a baggage room, and the baggage room itself had turned into a brig (ship’s prison) and a ‘powder magazine’ (gunpowder store). The once-majestic ballroom and theatre had been converted into a hospital, while the gymnasium on ‘A’ deck became an isolation ward for contagious cases and the former ship’s doctor’s office was to serve as a sick call station and dispensary for troops and crew.4
For the transports to France, ten thousand doughboys would be crammed onto the Leviathan’s fourteen, self-contained decks. Nobody could forget that there was a war on when they saw the three giant smokestacks, one of them a ventilator, rearing proudly. Their slight backward slant and the wicked-looking guns that thrust themselves from unexpected places below gave a fleeting impression of a crouching lion with flattened ears and bared teeth.5 Like many a beauty fallen upon hard times, there was a hint of tragedy about the Leviathan, evident in her piercing siren. ‘At nightfall and in the dusk of early morning the iron throat of the big prisoner sends forth such a wail as wrings the soul. It dies away and rises again from its own echo like the mourning cry of a world bereaved.’6 On her first day out, the ship’s log noted that ‘A carrier pigeon, w-7463, fluttered through the air and dropped dead on C deck.’7 An omen, perhaps, of what was to come.
The USS Leviathan was now the biggest ship in the world – the officer of the watch covered twelve miles in his nightly rounds8 – and also one of the fastest, tearing through the water at 22 knots and usually travelling without an escort as it was believed she was too fast for the U-boats unless directly in their path.9 The doughboys jokingly referred to her as the Levi Nathan, but she already had a tragic past. Several passengers and crew had died of influenza on the Leviathan’s previous voyage back from Brest, France, in September and had been buried at sea. Among those taken ill on that journey was the young Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had barely escaped with his life. Now, the Leviathan lay at anchor at Hoboken, New York, preparing for her ninth voyage to France. The following troops were on board:
Troops, 9,366; 57th Pioneer Infantry; September Auto Replacements Drafts from Camps McArthur, Humphreys, Hancock and Jackson; Medical Replacement, No. 73; 401st Pontoon Train; 467th Pontoon Train; 468th Pontoon Train; Water Tank Train No. 302; 323rd Field Signal Battalion; Base Hospitals No. 60 and 62; Female; Debarking and Billet Party 31st Div.; Major General Leroy S. Lyon, C. G. 31st Div.10
The only complete unit was the 57th Pioneer Infantry from Vermont. On the night of 27 September 1918, the men of the 57th began an hour’s march from Camp Merritt, New Jersey, to the Alpine Landing, where ferries waited to take them down the Hudson to the Leviathan. But that night the march took far longer. Soon after the journey began, the column halted. Men suffering from the symptoms of Spanish flu were falling out of the ranks, unable to keep up.11 While the most sensible course of action would have been to abandon the march and get back to quarters, this was not an option. The army and the schedules of the Leviathan were inflexible: they waited for no man, healthy or sick. After a break to allow the struggling men to catch up, the march resumed. But some men lay where they had fallen; others struggled to their feet and even jettisoned items of kit so that they could keep up. The soldiers were followed by trucks and ambulances, which picked up men as they fell and took them back to the camp hospital. It is not known how many men were lost on this march.12
The majority of the 57th made it to Alpine Landing and then endured a cold wet two-hour ferry trip down river. This was followed by final inspections on the pier at Hoboken – during which more soldiers collapsed – and coffee and rolls from the Red Cross, their first food in hours.13 The men climbed the gangplank and then boarded the Leviathan, where they had their first sleep for twenty-four hours, a period of hardship guaranteed to challenge any soldier’s immune system and break down his resistance to flu and pneumonia.14
The Leviathan left port on the afternoon of 29 September and before the ship even sailed, another 120 men fell sick. ‘Many men and several nurses were obliged to leave the ship just before we cast off our lines,’ stated the ship’s log. ‘While the embarkation troops were lined up on the big pier some of the men dropped helpless on the dock. We were informed that a number of men had fallen by the wayside, limp and listless, on their march from the camp to the scene of Transportation.’15
Despite this setback, the Leviathan eventually set sail with over 2,000 crew men and around 10,000 army personnel, including 200 nurses. ‘Under clear skies we steamed slowly through the big harbor filled with shipping and proceeded straight to sea, stopping only to drop our pilot, Capt. McLaughlin, of the Sandy Hook Pilot Association and who always piloted the Leviathan in and out of New York Harb
or.’16 The ship’s log indicated the crew’s forebodings: ‘everyone felt that we would have a distressing time going over’.17
Although the United States was in the grip of the Spanish flu epidemic, the army still insisted that there was no reason for alarm. On 4 October, while the Leviathan was at sea, Brigadier General Francis A. Winter of the American Expeditionary Force told the press that everything was under control and there was no reason to fear an epidemic. ‘About 50 deaths only have occurred at sea since we first began to transport troops,’ he claimed, eager to maintain morale by assuaging fears.18
The Leviathan was overcrowded, although not as overcrowded as on previous voyages, when she had carried 11,000 soldiers. The ship originally had a capacity of 6,800 passengers, but this capacity had been increased by over half. The US government referred to this process as ‘intensive loading’ rather than the 50 per cent overload it really was.19 Conditions were cramped, with the men confined to quarters, huge steel rooms each holding 400 bunks. There was nothing for them to do apart from lie on their bunks or play cards, and the portholes,20 painted deep black, were clamped tight shut at night to avoid the enemy submarines spotting light shining from them.21
Rules and prohibitions were precise and strictly enforced. A lighted cigarette upon a dark deck high in the air might be seen a half a mile at sea, enabling an enemy submarine to radio a lookout warning to another ‘sub’ lying in wait ahead. Those pests of the deep generally worked in pairs. To show how strict the blackout regulations were, one man was court martialled and sent to prison, an officer was court martialled and reduced, and an army chaplain, who was assisting the chaplain of the ship in administering to the dying, was threatened with court martial because he had opened a porthole slightly in response to a dying soldier’s request for air.22 As a consequence of the blackout regulations, life on the Leviathan was spent, for the most part, in conditions of near darkness.
As if to add further degrees of hellishness, the ineffectual ventilation system made little impact on the reek of sweat, and the noise levels in the all-steel structure approached pandemonium, with thousands of footsteps and shouts and cries echoing back and forth throughout the steel walls, stairs and passageways.23
And then the nightmare was unleashed. Despite the fact that 120 sick men had been removed from the Leviathan before sailing, Spanish flu symptoms manifested themselves within less than twenty-four hours of leaving New York harbour. To deter the spread of the disease, the troops were quarantined, sent to mess in separate groups at mealtimes to avoid the risk of infection, and confined to quarters. At first, they meekly accepted this ruling in the belief that the quarantine was keeping them safe.24
Soon every bunk in the sick bay was occupied and other men were lying sick in regular quarters. They were all marked with the deadly symptoms of the Spanish Lady: coughing, shivering, delirium and haemorrhaging. The nurses began to fall sick too. Colonel Gibson, Commander of the 57th Pioneer Infantry Regiment, recalled that:
The ship was packed. Conditions were such that the influenza could breed and multiply with extraordinary swiftness. The number of sick increased rapidly. Washington was apprised of the situation, but the call for men for the Allied armies was so great that we must go on at any cost. Doctors and nurses were stricken. Every available doctor and nurse was utilized to the limit of endurance.25
By the end of the first day, 700 troops were sick and the Leviathan was undergoing a full-blown epidemic. The horrific truth became apparent: the Spanish Lady had boarded the vessel with the doughboys and nurses bound for France. There was an urgent need to separate the sick men from the healthy to stop the disease spreading. Arrangements were made to put the overflow patients from the sick bay into 200 bunks in F Room, Section 3, port side. Within minutes, F Room was filled with sick men from the decks. Next, the healthy men of E Room, Section 2, starboard side, surrendered their bunks to the sick and were sent down to H-8. This room had been previously condemned as unfit for human habitation as it was poorly ventilated. By 3 October, the port side of E Room, Section 2, which held 463 bunks, had been commandeered for the sick and the occupants were sent off to find space in the ship wherever they could. In a grim game of musical chairs, three sick soldiers evicted four healthy men. The top bunk of the four-bunk stack could not be used by the sick, as the nurses were unable to climb up and the sick could not climb down.26 During this horrific voyage the army nurses were described by the ship’s historian as ‘ministering angels during that dreadful scourge. They were brave American girls who had left home and comfort in order to undergo peril and sacrifice abroad.’27
The number of sick increased, with a high proportion of patients developing pneumonia. There was no room on the Leviathan for 2,000 sick and recovering men, and no way to care for such a high number of patients. Those doctors and nurses who had not succumbed themselves devised a system of separating the sick from the very sick. All patients were discharged from the sick bays and sent back to their units the minute their temperatures dropped to 99°.
It was impossible to determine just how many men were sick. Many remained in their bunks, unable to move and seek help. Rough seas made sea sickness an additional complication. Young men who had never experienced sea sickness before presented themselves to the sick bay and were admitted by inexperienced medics. Meanwhile, a stream of men with genuine flu symptoms were turned away for lack of space, and, so delirious that they were unable to find their way back to their own quarters, they simply laid themselves down on the deck. Others walked into the sick bay unchallenged and occupied any empty bunks they could find.
Conditions deteriorated by the hour. Chief Army Surgeon Colonel Decker was the only man on board with the military experience to solve this logistical problem, but the colonel fell ill himself on 1 October. Two other doctors also fell ill and remained in their cabins for the rest of the voyage, while 30 of the 200 army nurses also succumbed to flu. This left just eleven doctors in charge of an increasingly nightmarish situation.28
Over on another troopship, the Briton, which was travelling four days ahead of the Leviathan, Private Robert James Wallace experienced similar conditions. After several days at sea, Private Wallace woke up feeling ‘utterly miserable’ and reported to the medical officer, who took his temperature and ordered him to gather his blanket and equipment and make up a bed on deck.29 When Private Wallace objected that it was cold and windy on deck, the medical officer retorted: ‘Suit yourself. You have a temperature of 103°. You are sick. If you want to go below and infect all of them down there, go ahead!’30
Private Wallace walked out in the gale to join the others on deck, spread his blanket and wrapped himself up in his greatcoat, put on his hat and went to sleep. Although conditions were scarcely ideal, the open deck was at least fully ventilated. Private Wallace drifted in and out of consciousness, dreaming of a great rope of coloured silk, which he must not climb down, because to do so would be desertion. Waves swept across the deck, soaking the blankets of the sick. One night, Private Wallace’s mess kit rattled away forever across the pitching deck. The following morning, he discovered that his cap and puttees had been swept away, too.31
Every morning, orderlies appeared on deck to check on the patients and carry away those who had died during the night. The sight of the dead men being taken away was a matter for ‘sober conjecture’ among the living. One morning, Private Wallace was picked up and carried below decks to a luxurious first-class salon, where private passengers had been entertained in the long-lost days before the war. The ghosts of pleasures past lingered on in the brocade-covered sofas and soft warm carpets. Private Wallace still had to sleep on the floor, but at least the carpets were comfortable and he was fed several times a day. One night, a nurse appeared, and asked with an English accent whether he was having a hard time. She brought Private Wallace a warm drink, and even washed his feet for him, peeling off the socks that were glued to his feet after twelve days. Private Wallace remembered this nurse with gratitude half
a century later. ‘That gentle washing of my feet with her soft soapy hands engraved a memory in my mind I shall record in Heaven when I get there.’32
Conditions in the salon were more salubrious than out on deck but this did not guarantee recovery. One night, a fellow patient cried out for water, but Private Wallace was too ill to get it for him. He called to a medic, and fell asleep. The man cried out again, and again Private Wallace called for water on his behalf: and again, he fell asleep. This happened many times until the other man whispered: ‘Don’t bother any more, I won’t need it.’ In the morning, the medics arrived at last, and found the man ‘where he had rolled in some final, dim, instinctual effort to gain protection, under the settee. They carried him out for the burial detail.’33
Meanwhile, back on the Leviathan, conditions were deteriorating further. The troop compartments were crammed with sick and dying men, the air rank and foetid due to the ineffectual ventilation system. Without daily cleansing, these quarters swiftly became pigsties. To make matters worse, morale was low. The men, who came from ten separate units, were draftees, with no habit of obedience to a single commander or army discipline. The Leviathan was alone at sea, without an escort, with Spanish flu knocking men flat by the score every hour and with the almost palpable spectre of the Spanish Lady stalking through the ship. As the vessel sailed on across the Atlantic the prospect of being torpedoed by a U-boat must have been positively welcome. Below decks, scenes resembled the aftermath of a battle. Colonel Gibson later described:
Scenes which cannot be visualised by anyone who has not actually seen them. Pools of blood from severe nasal haemorrhages of many patients were scattered throughout the compartments, and the attendants were powerless to escape tracking through the mess, because of the narrow passages between the bunks. The decks became wet and slippery, groans and cries of the terrified added to the confusion of the applicants clamouring for treatment, and altogether a true inferno reigned supreme.34
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