Soldiers in the Army hospital in the US state of Kansas in 1918: The patients suffered from a high fever, headache and cough
Photo:NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HEALTH AND ME / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
The German soldiers who became infected with the epidemic in July 1918 dragged themselves through the mud of the trenches. They coughed, gasped, had a fever. Few received medical help, and the sick camps on the Western Front were overcrowded. "It was said that there were no longer any slightly sick or slightly wounded, only seriously wounded and dead," wrote one soldier in his diary.
At this point the devastating flu had already circled the world. A few months earlier, the novel virus was first noticed in the United States. In early 1918 a doctor in Kansas had diagnosed an aggressive pathogen in his patients. They suffered from a noticeably high fever, headache and excruciating cough. In March 1918, more than 500 men fell ill in a few days at Fort Riley, a US Army base.
After the mobilization, the US Army sent tens of thousands of soldiers to Europe every week, and the virus landed on the west coast of France. The epidemic quickly conquered the front lines. Infected home vacationers, the injured and prisoners of war then carried the disease to all corners of the continent. It later made it to North Africa, India, China and Australia. In the end it killed around 50 million people, causing more deaths than the First World War.
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