Peggy Morton, a VAD at No. 55 General Hospital, Wimereux, recalled with horror the macabre symptoms of Spanish flu. ‘I remember one man. I just happened to peep over the screen and an orderly was starting to wash him. The man’s face was dark blue.’ Peggy told the orderly to stop, and reported the case to Sister. The man died in the early evening, and by the following morning his body had already started to decompose. ‘They called it influenza but it seemed to us to be some frightful plague.’57
This horror was shared by US Army Nurse Mary Dobson, who sailed out to Europe on a troopship. Mary and around twenty other nurses fell sick during the voyage, but there was nobody to look after them as hundreds of troops were sick as well. ‘You had terrific pain all over your body, especially in your back and your head, and you just felt as if your head was going to fall off. The odor was terrible in that ship’s infirmary – I never smelt anything like it before or since. It was awful, because there was poison in this virus.’58 Eighty troops died on the voyage to Europe, but they were not buried at sea. Instead, they were to be taken to Brest and buried in military graves. Because the weather was so hot, all the food had to be removed from the ship’s refrigerator and the bodies stored within.
The pervasive dread that Spanish flu was not influenza at all, but something more sinister, had begun to circulate in France. Credibility for this theory rested on the fact that ‘the phenomena of asphyxia and cyanosis which followed the pulmonary complications of flu could give the dying a blackish facial color which recalled some manifestations of cholera’.59 The French linguist Albert Dauzat provided one example from the Issoire region of the Auvergne, central France, when a local butcher, named only as ‘B’, received the news that his son had died of pneumonia on the Alsace front.
‘The chaplain who announced the death to the parents, with the usual tactful phrases, specified that the young soldier had succumbed to pulmonary flu.’ Despite the fact that there was little doubt about the matter, the rumour spread that B’s son had died of cholera.
Several persons, who like me had seen the letters, reported: ‘You don’t die of flu. It must be cholera. The staff officers write what they want to sick soldiers and chaplains.’ Further, the father himself was not convinced: ‘I believe truly,’ he confided in me, ‘that this Spanish flu was nothing else but cholera. A nursing orderly from the front, who was here recently on leave, told me that the bodies that were taken away were covered with black spots. That’s clear, isn’t it?’60
According to Rasmussen, the ‘cholera legend’ was an example of ‘mass thinking’, a belief that, against all scientific fact, influenza was actually a form of cholera. Another example of the sheer horror of the spread of Spanish flu and its explosive nature, can be seen in the evidence of a doctor in the village of Cuttoli, Corsica.
A resident of Cuttoli, M. D., traveled to Ajaccio one Saturday with his daughter-in-law, for dental treatment. Three days after his return, on the Monday, a child died. M. D. died shortly afterwards. For family reasons, M. D.’s body was not buried as quickly as usual.
A close relative was awaited, he came, the coffin was opened, people rushed to the corpse for a final embrace, nine members of the family caught the infectious flu and succumbed. A particular detail, on the very day of M. D.’s funeral a confirmation service took place in the church where the dead man’s body had rested for around an hour and a half. The faithful went in front of Mgr the Bishop and then returned together into the church to take part in two religious ceremonies. A few days later, 250 people were attacked by broncho-pneumonia and took to their beds, then 450 out of a population of 1,100 inhabitants, finally 600 cases were recorded with 54 deaths.61
In the field hospitals, death may have become commonplace, but it never lost its sting. Probationer Margaret Ellis, of No. 26 General Hospital, Camiers, came to hate the sight of a Union Jack, ‘because they always used one to cover them as they carried them out on a stretcher’.62
One of the most tragic accounts came from Sister Mary McCall, of No. 4 General Hospital, who remembered: ‘A very young bride, who’d been brought out to see her wounded husband. She had probably caught the infection before she left, because not long after she arrived in the ward she collapsed.’ The young woman died a day or two later, ‘and it was terribly tragic for the poor husband. Then later he caught it and died too.’63
Even the Armistice came as little comfort to many of the nurses of France. Margaret Ellis recalled bitterly that ‘on the day the Armistice was declared, there wasn’t one man in the ward who knew. They were all delirious, not conscious enough to know, too ill. There wasn’t one man who understood. Not one man.’64
J. S. Wane, who had left Cambridge University to serve as a civilian clerk with the army, left a first-hand account of suffering from Spanish flu in France. Already noting the presence of ‘internal trouble’ on 4 November, Wane had recovered sufficiently to enjoy the Armistice celebrations on 11 November, but they were followed by ‘a period of long illness’. ‘I woke with a stiffness in the chest, and a bad head developed later. All afternoon I worked very mechanically … I crawled downstairs to pay the servants and went to bed.’ Later, a passing RAMC orderly took his temperature, which was 102°, and
I was removed by stretcher and ambulances on a moonlit night to No. 19 C.C.S., as an influenza case, and crept into a sheeted bed in a marquee. Memory is not very clear about succeeding days. The influenza began to abate, on a light diet, and the old C.O. said to me after two days there ‘my disease had nearly run its course’. Temperature on 13th, 101.2 and 102.6, on 14th, 100.2 and 100. Major Clark, who was then my M.O., a curly-haired man, seemed fairly casual.65
On 14 November, Wane’s twenty-fifth birthday, he received some letters from home and his mother sent him a watch.
On the 15th (evening) I was 103.2 and remained henceforth over 103. On the 17th, Dr Gurling being now in charge of my case, they began to take my temperature every four hours. On the 18th, Dr G’s notes first report pneumonia (left lung): that evening I touched 105.2, and the senior sister asked for Mother’s address. My memory is vague. An orderly – a Durham miner – used to sponge me, and I remember him pitying my burning hands. Then there was a late afternoon when I asked for the Sister, and was told she could not come for over an hour. I forget what I needed, but I felt very ill, and then alone I can recall my reason straying, for I had some confused ideas about Chinese Labor Corps. 19–21st: temp. varying from 100 to 104, and occasional sleeping drafts. I could feel my lung was wrong, and tried to restrict my breathing. 22nd: right lung also affected, yet I did not seem worse. The sisters gave me aspirin, & Mist Amm & Carb, [ammonium carb, a traditional treatment for cardiac issues] and deadly nightshade. About now, I was carried into another marquee. One officer, Smith, was there. He shouted two nights and I was drugged to sleep. The third night he died about 9 p.m. I never knew, till Sister Kewley (nights) told me, when I was back in the original marquee. On the 23rd, after eleven days of high fever, my temperature fell to 99.2 and did not rise again more than a point or two over normal. Sister Kewley was from ‘near Manchester’ and ‘homely and very kind.’ Gurling came and stethoscoped me daily:-one time he said to the sister – ‘And here we have the most uncomplaining man on earth.’66
Eventually, when he was well enough to travel, Wane was carried by stretcher to No. 10 Ambulance Train. There was food but no washing facilities. Wane was taken to Rouen, and thence ambulance and a ‘long dark drive’ to No. 8 General Hospital. He stayed there two nights and was then to be sent down to Trouville ‘because evacuation to England was easy from there’. Wane noted with relief that he was to be treated by a ‘pro-alcohol doctor’.67 Next, he went to No. 74 General Hospital and was transferred to No. 1 Officers ward, ‘a Nissan hut which was 12 days my home’.68
Private Richard Foot also managed to leave an account of his experiences.69 Within days of the Armistice, Private Foot’s 62nd Division was ordered to march into Germany with the Army of Occupation. This was a very c
onsiderable honour, extended to only two Territorial Army Divisions, the other being 51st Highland Division, with whom sixty-two had shared the successful battles at Havrincourt in 1917 and the Marne in 1918. But, in the weeks before the end of the war, this honour was to prove as costly in casualties as any battle.
During a march from Maubeige to the Rhine bridgehead at Cologne, some 200 miles, reaching the Eifel west of Cologne on Christmas Eve, D/310 lost more men to flu and its consequences than had been killed in the previous 22 months of front line action. With the weather cold, often snowy, often wet it proved difficult to get a pneumonia case to hospital. There were temporary hospitals set up along the way with doctors ‘working wonders’ but they were walking away from their well organized hospitals and the Railways were not in a sufficient state of repair to allow hospital trains to get through to the forward marching army.70
The lucky ones among us who survived the flu were those who were dropped out in a sympathetic warm French, Belgian, or German household, and sheltered till the fever had passed. I was one of the lucky ones.71
Private Foot was taken ill at the village of Thy-le-Château. He recalled walking and leading his horse all day and feeling very ill in the afternoon. To make matters worse, he ‘had to stand to the salute for half an hour while brigade filed past to the sound of the National Anthem in waltz time,’ swaying on his feet with sickness and exhaustion.72 In his billet above the village bakery, Private Foot had a bottle of five grain tablets of quinine sulphate and a thermometer. Running a temperature of 105° he took thirty grains and passed out. Private Foot’s battery went on ahead without him and he stayed there, warm in bed, taking his quinine, for three days until the fever had gone. Then he was lucky enough to get a ride forward in a motor truck and caught up with the Battery fifty miles further along the road.73
Sergeant Fitter Othen, from Botley, Hampshire, was among those who were not so lucky. Sergeant Othen was ‘a gentle, competent man who had been with the Battery since its formation, and, as his technical capacity required, had been constantly with the guns in action’.74 Private Foot saw Sergeant Othen into a horse ambulance when he got the flu, ‘and he pressed my hand in gratitude as we parted. He died before they got him to a hospital.’75
Private Foot’s testimony from this dark period of his life ended on a lighter note, with a comical account of a stolen pig, secretly butchered by the farrier, which the Battery officers roasted and served up to their men on Christmas Day. German prisoners of war witnessed the scene with incredulity, as they had never seen their officers treat their men with such informality.
* * *
FURTHER AFIELD, IN Salonica, Nurse Dorothy Sutton became a patient and battled against Spanish flu. In a letter home to her mother in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Dorothy wrote:
I have been in bed for three days since I last wrote with ‘Flue.’ It has played havoc among the troops out here this summer, very few have escaped, & the death toll from Pneumonia alone has been higher than it has ever been since this expedition was started. I am quite alright again now thogh [sic] & have been on duty again for three days. I was in bed when [the Armistice] was signed, but I heard the salute fired … So I knew that once again the fighting had ceased.76
The end of the war had come at last, to the relief of millions; but the Spanish Lady had no intention of giving up the fight.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ARMISTICE DAY
ON THE MORNING of 11 November 1918, Caroline Playne travelled to Chancery Lane in the City of London, from her home in Hampstead. At first, this journey seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary.
Starting from Hampstead to go by omnibus to Chancery Lane that morning, I noticed how everything appeared to be proceeding as ‘for the duration’ of the war, till we were near Mornington Tube Station. Suddenly maroons went off, a startling explosion just above us. An air-raid, another air-raid! A woman ran out of a house and gazed anxiously at the sky. But before one could recollect that it might mean the Armistice, people were pouring out of buildings, streaming into the streets. The war was ended. Tools must have been downed in no time. Crowds grew bigger every minute.1
The majority of celebrations did not cause alarm, although a celebratory flare fired from the roof of the Air Ministry provoked a cry of ‘Air raid! Take cover!’ from one senior official.2 Church bells rang out accompanied by bursts of patriotic singing, tug-boats hooted along the river and, just after eleven, a crowd swelled outside the Mansion House, ‘until it filled the heart of London’.3 The Daily Express reported that ‘heartful cheering was followed by a mighty burst of song, of sacred song, the swelling glorious chords of the Doxology – “Praise God from whom all blessing flow”.’4 The newspaper also reminded readers that 11 November was ‘Martinmas, the feast-day of the great soldier-saint of France’.5
Parliamentary sketch writer Michael MacDonagh was startled by ‘The booming of maroons, fired from police and fire-brigade stations, the loud reports of those near at hand being faintly re-echoed by others afar off … I rushed out and enquired what was the matter. “The Armistice!” they exclaimed. “The War is over!”’6 But MacDonagh, while excited by ‘the joyous nature of the event’ also admitted to feeling ambivalent: ‘I felt no joyous exultation. There was relief that the War was over, because it could not now end, as it might have done, in the crowning tragedy of the defeat of the Allies.’7
MacDonagh’s sentiments were shared by many on Armistice Day. The Great War with Germany was over but the Spanish Lady had not relinquished her hold over London; over two thousand families had lost loved ones to influenza in the past fortnight. Others had been plunged into grief by telegrams from the Admiralty or the War Office telling them that a beloved husband, son or brother would never return home. As far as they were concerned, the Great War had been a tragedy, leaving them so distraught that they wished for nothing more than to spend Armistice Day alone. The Dean of Rochester stoically led a service of Armistice thanksgiving in his cathedral, within hours of learning that his son had died at sea.8
After four years of war, the Armistice left some individuals distinctly underwhelmed. Virginia Woolf, writing the closing chapters of her novel Night and Day, glanced out of the window to see a housepainter at work across the road. As the celebratory maroons went up, Woolf ‘saw the housepainter give one look at the sky and go on with his job’.9 Woolf, following suit, went back to her novel. The poet Robert Graves, having learned of the deaths of friends, including Wilfred Owen, went out walking near his camp in Wales, ‘cursing and sobbing, and thinking of the dead’.10
While many continued to experience terrible suffering and loss, there was also a huge collective will to mark the end of the war with wild celebrations. Armistice Day proved to be just the excuse Londoners needed for a massive party. The festivities outdid the proceedings of ‘Mafeking Night’ (when Londoners had celebrated the relief of the siege of Mafeking during the Second Boer War on 1 January 1900) for magnificence. ‘Today’s orgy of rejoicing far transcended the other in complete surrender of self-control,’ wrote MacDonagh. ‘It was enacted in dozens of streets in the City and West End, and there was not a suburb that did not emulate in its little way the uproar of Central London.’11 The overall effect was reminiscent of the England of long ago. ‘It was quite old English. It was Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath on a vastly stupendous scale.’12 Even the reserved Caroline Playne allowed herself to become swept up in the excitement:
There was great liveliness, calls, cries, whistles and hooters sounding … Chancery Lane was very lively … At the corner of Chancery Lane, a stout policeman on point duty was surrounded by girls all clamouring to dance with him. The London bobby rose to the occasion – without a word he took on one after another for a turn round on the narrow pavement as they stood, whilst his countenance remained impassive. Custom and convention melted away as if a new world had indeed dawned. Officers and privates mixed in equal comradeship. Privates drilled officers, munitionettes commanded platoons made
up of both. The spirit of militarism was turned into comedy.13
According to Michael MacDonagh, London ‘lost all control of itself’.14
I hastened from Westminster, feeling assured that the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace would this day, more than ever, be the centres of interesting happenings. The tramcar was packed, all the passengers obviously deeply moved, whether they were chattering and laughing or self-absorbed and silent. The children were let loose from all the schools. As we were passing an elementary school in Kennington Road near ‘The Horns’, the boys and girls came rushing out, yelling and jumping like mad. There were also many signs that business was being suspended. Shops were being closed and shuttered as on Sundays. Who, indeed, could settle down to work on such a day? Boy scouts on bicycles dashed past us sounding the ‘All Clear’, as they had so often done after an air-raid.15
MacDonagh even spotted an evening newspaper billboard at Westminster Bridge Underground Station, the first he had seen in years, due to the paper shortage. ‘It was a heartening sign of London’s return to normal life. And what news it proclaimed! “Fighting has ceased on all Fronts!” Hurrah!’16
At the Houses of Parliament in Westminster itself, the great bell Big Ben was preparing to strike after four years of silence.
I looked up at the clock. It was less than five minutes to the midday hour. Men from Dent & Co., of Cockspur Street, the custodians of the clock, had just completed the work of putting into action again the apparatus for striking the hours, though not the more complicated mechanism for the chiming of the quarters. Then when the hands of the dials pointed to XII, Big Ben struck the hour, booming it in his deep and solemn tones, so old and so familiar. It was a most dramatic moment. The crowd that had assembled in Parliament Square stood silent and still until the last stroke of the clock, when they burst into shouts of exultation.17
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