![]() ![]() ![]() The City of Philadelphia ran out of gravediggers and coffins, and mass burial trenches had to be excavated with steam shovels. ![]() Meanwhile, civilian families were being struck down in their homes. Even as entire battalions were decimated, with both the Allies and the Germans suffering massive casualties, the details of many servicemen’s deaths were hidden to protect public morale. Amid the war, some governments suppressed news of the outbreak. Nowhere on earth escaped: the United States recorded 550,000 deaths (five times its total military fatalities in the war) while European deaths totaled over two million. German soldiers termed it Blitzkatarrh, British soldiers referred to it as Flanders Grippe, but world-wide, the pandemic gained the notorious title of “Spanish Flu”. In three successive waves, from 1918 to 1919, influenza killed more than 50 million people. In January 1918, as World War I raged on, a new and terrifying virus began to spread across the globe. Before AIDS or Ebola, there was the Spanish Flu - Catharine Arnold's gripping narrative, Pandemic 1918, marks the 100th anniversary of an epidemic that altered world history. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |