Very, Very, Very Dreadful

by Albert Marrin

  The following evening—just hours after General Pershing’s cable arrived at the War Department—General March met with President Woodrow Wilson. The commander in chief came straight to the point. “General March,” he said, “I have heard representations made to me, by men whose ability and patriotism are unquestioned, that I should stop the shipment of men to France until the epidemic of influenza is under control.”19

  The twenty-eighth president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson was in office from 1913 to 1921. (1919) Credit 75

  In reply, the general explained his views by citing the brutal arithmetic of war. To save many lives, leaders must be prepared to sacrifice some lives. Obviously, March told the president, the surest way to defeat Germany was to send more American troops to France. It followed that “the shipment of troops should not be stopped for any cause.” Doing otherwise would slow and probably halt the Meuse-Argonne offensive, wasting all the lives already lost in that effort.20

  Holding back would also send the wrong psychological message. How might German military leaders react, March wondered, if they believed the Americans were so frightened of influenza that they refused to commit more men at this critical time? Yes, men, perhaps thousands, would die crossing the “Big Pond,” the Atlantic Ocean. But they would be dying for a noble cause—liberty, a cause greater than any individual. “Every such soldier who has died [of influenza] just as surely played his part as his comrade who died in France,” March concluded.21

  American presidents are not paid to make easy decisions. Now President Wilson had, in effect, to authorize the deaths of any number of soldiers; there was no way to avoid it. Grimly, he made a historic decision. Wilson agreed with March. The flow of replacements would continue without letup. March stood stiffly at attention, snapped a salute, and turned to leave. Then, from out of the blue, Wilson recited a jump-rope rhyme making the rounds in the nation’s schoolyards:

  I had a little bird

  And its name was Enza.

  I opened the door

  And in flew Enza.22

  As soldiers boarded troopships, which they called “death ships,” medical officers gave each a quickie examination, ordering anyone with flu symptoms into quarantine. But the devil virus was a stealthy thing; you could have it in your body for a day or two yet have no obvious symptoms.

  Once aboard, men were confined in cramped spaces belowdecks. “Assigned quarters on lower deck,” Private Eugene Kennedy wrote, “the blackest, foulest, most congested hole that I ever set foot into.” The sound of thumping engines and clanging metal rang in their ears, preventing restful sleep. Some felt as if the steel walls were closing in on them. They slept in bunks—actually heavy-duty wire baskets—stacked four high. In stormy weather, sailors closed the portholes and had to breathe and re-breathe the same stale air. In areas where German submarines prowled, the ship’s captain ordered lights-out, leaving them in total darkness. (Security was a serious matter: in February 1918, a submarine had sunk the troopship Tuscania with 2,000 American soldiers aboard, drowning 267.) The vessel’s ceaseless rocking and pitching made them seasick. Since most were landlubbers, people not used to being on ships, they “heaved their guts.” Men vomited on the deck, on themselves, and on those in the bunks beneath them.23

  The African American troops of New York’s famous 369th Infantry arriving at Hoboken, New Jersey, at the end of the war, as did many returning troops. Credit 76

  When flu symptoms appeared, victims sneezed, coughed, and vomited, spreading the virus to their comrades. “I was so feverish,” Private Franklin Martin wrote in his diary, “I was afraid I would ignite [my] clothing. I had a cough that tore my insides out when I could not suppress it.” When the ship’s sick bay had no more space, men burning with fever had to sleep outside, on the upper deck. Those who died received a burial at sea, following a short prayer by the chaplain. To this day, some flu victims remain nameless because the army neglected to give them dog tags.24

  The worst death ship of all was the Leviathan, a former luxury liner and the world’s largest passenger ship. The Leviathan left Hoboken, New Jersey, on September 29, a week before President Wilson decided to allow troopships to sail despite the pandemic. Even before the anchor was raised, hundreds aboard fell ill with influenza. Although they were left behind, the Leviathan still had a “fifty percent overload”: 9,033 troops, 2,000 crewmen, 200 army nurses. By the second day, 700 troops were down with flu—and more than 2,000 by the voyage’s end.25

  Those aboard compared the Leviathan to a slaughterhouse. According to a physician’s report:

  [The scenes] cannot be visualized by anyone who has not actually seen them. Pools of blood from severe nasal hemorrhages 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 [those] clamoring for treatment, and altogether a true inferno reigned supreme.26

  The USS Leviathan in a dazzle camouflage pattern. The Leviathan was formerly the Vaterland, a German ship owned by the Hamburg America Line and seized by the U.S. government in 1917. (1918) Credit 77

  By the time the Leviathan docked at Brest on October 8, at least eighty soldiers and sailors had died. As the army nurses walked down the gangplank, they wept. They had seen too much horror and were bone-deep exhausted. “Surely,” a naval officer observed, “they had earned a place in heaven.” Still, the dying continued. Nearly a thousand sick men came ashore, of whom about a hundred would die (the exact number is uncertain). After a few days of rest, the seemingly healthy crowded aboard trains bound for the trenches. Some of these, of course, had the virus in them and spread it to the front-line troops. Luckily, most newcomers would see little if any action because the war was drawing to an end.27

  VICTORY, PEACEMAKING, AND INFLUENZA

  General Pershing was right: by keeping up the pressure, the Allies broke through the German trench lines at several strategic places; at one point, they cut a key supply line. The enemy gave ground steadily, leaving behind thousands of prisoners, men too hungry, too tired, or too flu-ridden to keep going. Since nothing could hold back the tide of defeat, Berlin asked for an armistice, a truce while diplomats worked out a peace treaty. The Allies agreed, but only if Germany would accept their terms. To get a cease-fire, Germany must withdraw its forces from Allied territory, disband its army, and surrender all major weapons: heavy machine guns, artillery, aircraft, warships. In effect, Germany had to put itself at the Allies’ mercy. When German representatives at the peace talks protested the harsh terms, they were told the offensive and the starvation blockade would continue until they “saw reason.”

  Soldiers celebrating the armistice that ended World War I. (1918) Credit 78

  On November 11, at 5:10 a.m., German officials signed the armistice in a French railroad car parked in a forest just behind the front lines. The document said the armistice would take effect at 11-11-11—the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of the year 1918. At that instant, the guns would fall silent, ending what was then the bloodiest conflict in history. Almost immediately, cease-fire orders were sent to the opposing forces by telephone, telegraph, and radio. We can only call what followed an outburst of mass insanity.

  Many soldiers, on both sides, wanted the “honor” of firing the last shot of the war. As wristwatches ticked off the final minutes, it seemed that every gun on the Western Front cut loose at once. The cannons “were so hot that the paint is rising from them in blisters,” a soldier recalled. Another wrote: “The shelling was heavy and…it grew steadily worse. It seemed to me that every battery in the world was trying to burn up its guns.” Men called this the “mad moment.” And in that moment, more than 10,000 men, including 3,000 Americans, were killed or wounded for nothing.28

  On the front lines in France, men of the U.S. Sixty-Fourth Regiment, Seventh Infantry Divi
sion, celebrate the news of the armistice. (1918) Credit 79

  When the guns finally fell silent, the effect was deafening. Captain Harry Truman’s battery had let loose with the rest. Afterward, Truman wrote, “it was so quiet it made me feel as if I’d suddenly been deprived of my ability to hear.” Then, he added, “holy hell” broke loose. From the Swiss border to the English Channel, men shouted and cheered and tossed their helmets into the air. “Finie la guerre!”—“The war is over!”—French troops cried as they ran into No Man’s Land. Germans stood up in their trenches, roaring the same words in their language: “Der Krieg ist aus!” British veterans belted out a favorite song:

  When this lousy war is over,

  No more soldiering for me.

  When I get my civvy clothes on,

  Oh how happy I shall be.29

  American troops, according to a newspaper account, let out a “roar of voices” as if someone had scored the crucial touchdown at a college football game. But the Germans seemed happiest of all. They joined in, until “the rolling plain was alive with cheering men, friends and enemy alike.” Members of an American fighter-plane squadron spoke for all the survivors: “I’ve lived through the war!” and “We won’t be shot at any more!”30

  A Los Angeles Times bulletin announcing the end of combat. (1918) Credit 80

  People on the home fronts greeted the armistice with mixed feelings. In London, a boisterous crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square. Strangers sang, hugged, kissed, and snake-danced all night. Wounded soldiers dressed in hospital blue rode atop open double-decker buses, singing and beating time on the sides with their artificial legs. In Paris, fireworks lit the sky. The bells of Notre-Dame Cathedral rang out, and crowds surged down the long Avenue des Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. In New York, jubilant crowds paraded through Manhattan, led by brass bands and, in one place, by circus elephants.31

  The festivities also had a somber side, one usually omitted from schoolbooks and popular histories. There was sadness—plenty of it. In Paris, a newspaper reporter saw “too many women shrouded in black for whom victory had come too late.” Winston Churchill had a similar experience in London. On his way home from a meeting, he came upon an elderly woman sobbing quietly. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked. “Thank you, no,” she replied. “I am crying, but I am happy, for now I know that all my three sons who have been killed in the war have not died in vain.” Across the Big Pond, in New York, a wrinkled black man sat on the steps of City Hall, weeping. He explained that he had been born a slave in Virginia and now had two sons killed in France for the sake of the country that had set him free.32

  Nevertheless, the devil virus had not taken a holiday. During armistice celebrations, a Parisian observed, “germs were freely exchanged.” She was right. Vast crowds, and the hugging and kissing of strangers, made it easier for the virus to spread. Influenza cases surged in the week after Armistice Day. “We really are faced with a huge epidemic,” a doctor at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne reported, “before which we feel quite powerless.” Flu deaths in Britain reached 19,000, an all-time record for so short a period.33

  Returning troops added fuel to the fire. Disbanded units, fresh from the trenches, marched through Berlin, compounding the German capital’s heavy flu burden. In Allied countries, family parties to celebrate a victor’s safe return allowed the infection rate to soar. When the Leviathan docked at Hoboken with 8,000 troops late in December, they brought more influenza with them. By then, delegates had started to gather in Paris for the peace conference. It began in January 1919 at the Palace of Versailles, located eleven miles southwest of the French capital.34

  Woodrow Wilson, the first president to leave the United States while in office, was the hero of the hour. His country had helped save the day when things looked bleakest for the Allies. Cheering crowds, brass bands, and seas of American flags greeted him in Britain and France. People hailed Wilson as the “prophet of the world,” a “saint,” and “God-sent” to bring peace to humanity. A man of many achievements, before winning the White House in 1912 he had been a respected historian, president of Princeton University, and governor of New Jersey. Wilson was also a hard-driving reformer who thought the federal government had the duty to fix society’s ills, guaranteeing a decent standard of living for all citizens.35

  The president also had a less attractive side. Woodrow Wilson was smug, domineering, and self-righteous. Certain that he wanted only the best for everyone, he thought opponents not merely wrong but wicked. Former president Theodore Roosevelt thought him “insincere and cold-blooded.” After meeting Wilson, Britain’s King George V told his private secretary, “I could not bear him. An entirely cold, academical professor—an odious man.”36

  The president hoped to make the World War “the war to end war.” To achieve this aim, he wanted to create the League of Nations, an organization of peace-loving nations that would check aggressors—by war, if necessary. He called the proposed league “the enterprise of Divine mercy, peace and good will.”37

  In the foreground, from left to right, Clemenceau, Wilson, and Lloyd George leaving the Palace of Versailles after signing the peace treaty. (June 28, 1919) Credit 81

  Allied leaders, however, did not think the Almighty had anything to do with their war aims. British prime minister David Lloyd George and French prime minister Georges “the Tiger” Clemenceau thought of the sacrifices their peoples had made to defeat Germany. They wanted to prevent Germany from ever waging war again. Moreover, they meant to punish Germany by seizing German colonies and making the nation pay for the damage its armies had done. “The Germans,” said Lloyd George, “are going to be squeezed, as a lemon is squeezed—until the pips squeak.” Though the American president was in favor of punishment, he thought Germany should be treated fairly. The nation should not be made so resentful as to become an outlaw nation and a future threat to world peace.38

  As the peace conference got under way, an invisible assassin stalked its meetings. A member of Wilson’s delegation described the conference as a “fug of flu.” By that, he meant it took place against a background of influenza. The disease still raged in Paris. In December 1918, it killed 1,500 Parisians. During the week of February 22, 1919, it killed a record 2,676 people in the city.39

  “It is the most depressing atmosphere I have ever seen in Europe,” an American diplomat wrote from Paris. “Everyone seems to have something the matter with them.” Nearly every member of the British delegation sniffled, coughed, and ran a fever. Flu killed Sir Mark Sykes, who had led the effort to break up the Ottoman Empire, placing its Arab lands under British and French control. Those lands—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine—are still in turmoil.40

  Lloyd George had recovered from the flu, and so had Clemenceau; the Frenchman’s son, however, had died of it. The French prime minister thought the American leader weak and naive. When Wilson’s aides asked Clemenceau to talk privately with the president, he refused. “Talk with Wilson!” Clemenceau growled. “How can I talk with a fellow who thinks himself the first man in two thousand years to know anything about peace on earth?”41

  Wilson held firm, arguing for his views about the peace treaty and the League of Nations. On April 3, 1919, however, he began to cough violently. He developed severe diarrhea, and his temperature shot up to 103º F.

  The devil virus knocked the president flat on his back at a critical stage in the negotiations. Wilson recovered within the week, but the disease left its mark. He was not the same man—and never would be. “Something queer was happening in his mind,” his valet Irwin “Ike” Hoover wrote years later. Aides noted that the president “lacked his old quickness of grasp.” Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson’s chief adviser on foreign affairs, agreed. Also recently recovered from the flu, House thought his boss had become “thoroughly discouraged,” losing his will to fight for his beliefs.42

  The colonel was right. When Wilson rejoined the talks, Lloyd George and Clemenceau held the League of
Nations hostage to the harsh peace terms they wished to impose on Germany. Wilson caved in, and Germany was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. By signing, Germany accepted sole blame for starting the war and promised to pay $32 billion, an astronomical sum, as reparations. Britain, France, and Japan seized Germany’s overseas possessions.

  Sadly for Woodrow Wilson, the Americans turned against the League of Nations. The public feared that membership in it might get the United States involved in another world war that began in Europe. So the country did not join, crippling the organization from the outset. (The league idea was reborn after the Second World War with the creation of the United Nations and, this time, the firm support of the United States.) Most Germans denounced the peace treaty as unjust, humiliating, and lacking any legal or moral standing. Among them was a veteran temporarily blinded by poison gas. When that veteran, Adolf Hitler, recovered, he vowed to avenge the Treaty of Versailles, “the peace of shame,” even if it took a second world war to do so. But that is a subject for another book.43

  The Council of Four at the Paris Peace Conference: (from left) Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. (1919) Credit 82