Posted on 04/29/2009 2:51:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Editor's note: With fears of a swine flu pandemic rising daily, CNN Pentagon producer Larry Shaughnessy remembered a batch of letters from his grandfather, a World War I soldier who battled the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919.
"I'm coming, I'm coming
For my head is bending low
I hear those gentle voices calling
Old Black Joe"
As World War I rages in Europe, fresh U.S. Army soldiers pass the time on a train ride to to Camp Forrest, Georgia. "The boys are just starting to sing," Martin Aloysius Culhane wrote on September 6, 1918, to his friend back home. "They've gotten back to 'Old Black Joe' so far."
Stephen Foster's classic song from the Civil War is about the death of slaves who had become his friends. But Culhane, known as "Al," and the soldiers who sang along could not know how much death would hunt the recruits on that train, most of whom never made it to Europe to fight in the Great War.
They would find themselves in the deadliest influenza pandemic in history.
Culhane's letters to his older brother Frank and his long-time "chum" Clif Pinter are a young soldier's firsthand account of life as a draftee private and how he coped with a disease that would haunt Army camps around the United States and eventually infect people around the world. Some estimates say as many as 50 million people were killed by what's called the Spanish influenza in 1918 and 1919, far more than the number killed in combat during the war.
Three weeks after the train trip to Georgia, Culhane, a 21-year-old clothing salesman from Chicago, Illinois, writes again. Already the flu occupies his thoughts.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Oh, my. What a story. And he lived to tell about it.
I have letters like these to my father (who was in the Army in France, 1918-1919) from his family in Brooklyn telling of the ravages of the Spanish Influenza.
A letter from his sister describes the streets in Carroll Gardens as “empty of people”. She says “the crepe is on every other house”. She names the families who have lost beloved members (many of them young people) and describes going to their funerals.
I’ll have to dig them out. I wonder if anyone would want to publish them?
Weren't they supposed to send letters to boost morale?
Those letters would boost morale ... “Be glad you’re not here”.
So how many have died so far with this swine flu? And they’re calling it a pandemic already?
“Weren’t they supposed to send letters to boost morale?”
Hah! These letters were written by my four aunts (ages 24, 22, 20, and 16) to their only brother. They talked about everything and anything. Sure, they told him lots of jokes. But they also reported when his favorite girlfriends were running around with other guys, etc.
The letters are very amusing, and paint a picture of a large, happy Irish-American family on the homefront during World War I.
I really should make a book of them...I have over 300 pages worth...even if I have to self-publish.
That sounds like a great book!
Stephen Foster’s classic song from the Civil War...
Nope. Written in 1860.
You can’t play this song anymore. Politically incorrect. Still, one of my faves.
Foster was one of the gretest of American song writers.
I’ll be watching the Kentucky Derby Saturday, just to hear My Old Kentucky Home (even though, sadly, they changed some politically in-correct lyrics)
Thanks for posting this. I had never heard Alma Gluck sing, and have to say the recording is remarkable for 1917-1918 state of the art.
The 1918 Pandemic was mild in the spring, dormant in the summer and came on like gangbusters in the fall. It ain’t over till the Fat Lady dies.
I read a biography of a guy who lived through it. He was a soldier in France. Then later I read a history of the flu. It mainly affected the young - something like those in the 17 to 27 yo range ....
bump for later
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