Anybody here live through the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic?

[raccoon]

If you do, please share your experience with us.

[Benhurst]

1. No, but I was alive during the plague and the great fire of London.

:silly:

[RebelOne]

2. I doubt that there is anyone here who is 88 years old.

[mcscajun]

4. And even if there is...the odds of that person seeing this one post

in the flood that is daily volume on GD is slim in the extreme.

[John Q. Citizen]

5. Why, that's not that old.

[theHandpuppet]

9. Why do you say that?

Just wondering.

[sam sarrha]

17. there are Family stories..

[LaurenG]

3. Uhh...

I'll bet there will be no takers here as the person would have to be close to 100 to "remember". :bounce: I could go to google and look it up and pretend I remember if that would help.;)

[raccoon]

7. You're right--I kind of figure that, but thought I'd ask anyway. nt

[Cobalt Violet]

10. We do have a 82 or 83 year old so it not that impossible.

He doesn't post that often.

[Benhurst]

14. You might have better luck asking if anyone remembers

his or her parents talking about it.

My mother's father was a doctor in Western Tennessee during it. She was 12 at the time and remembered his never being home and how worried her mother was.

My father, who was in Southern Illionis, told of their having trouble burying people because of frozen ground.

I'm sorry now I didn't press them for more details.

[raccoon]

18. Yeah, I thought about that. Maybe I'll start another thread.

Thanks for sharing your family's memories.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Pandemic not epidemic

And no I didn't live through that one but I have lived through 2 other pandemics we have had since that one. They weren't too bad with the advances in medicine since 1918.

Don

[Cobalt Violet]

8. Do we have any 88+ year olds?

The oldest one her that I saw post was 83.

[gauguin57]

11. That pandemic killed my two uncles (as little boys)

My grandmother never talked about it ... but I'm sure she never truly got over it.

[HereSince1628]

12. The good news is many of us enjoy genes that passed through

that challenge. I sleep better knowing I have survivor's genes.

[helderheid]

39. same here

[Tuesday_Morning]

13. No, but I'm alive because of it.

My grandfather's wife and newborn child died in the epidemic. Years later he remarried...and the rest is history.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. I knew my great-uncle very well, and he survived the 1918....

...Pandemic. He was in the military getting set to be shipped overseas to France when he became ill with influenza. His illness evolved into a severe respitory illness.

The only thing he would talk about in regards to the Pandemic was that he barely survived when so many around him died. When I tried to press him for more details, he would just get about and walk away.

[sam sarrha]

16. Friends Great Grandmother told us about it when we were teenagers, she said

that they heard it was on the coast, but didn't know what it was.. then it was closer , and closer and was real bad, then it hit town and every body was sick and down at the same time, the streets were empty.. people were just too sick get out of bed.

she said that the only people around were the people going house to house breaking windows and entering houses to tend to the sick, all they could do was put some food and water within reach of the sick, try to get them to drink some water..and go on to the next. most died because of dehydration

[raccoon]

21. Thanks, Sam, that sounds like THE STAND. nt

[FredMertz]

19. Did the flu epidemic end World War 1? n/t

[raccoon]

25. I really don't know. nt

[sam sarrha]

26. what i gather is that the soldiers just quit cooperating

[raccoon]

28. Can you give a source? That's something that interests me.

I'll never understand why they would go over the top (literally) to be mowed down by machine guns.

[RaleighNCDUer]

33. My impression was that the leaders on both sides saw what

happened in Russia and decided to end it before their own troops, like the Russian troops, mutinied and overthrew their respective governments.

[raccoon]

37. That makes EXCELLENT sense. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. It was when a German offensive was turned back, and the German public

started to show signs of rebellion.

The critical German counteroffensive, known as the second battle of the Marne, was stopped just short of Paris (July–Aug., 1918). At this point Foch ordered a general counterattack that soon pushed the Germans back to their initial line (the so-called Hindenburg Line). The Allied push continued, with the British advancing in the north and the Americans attacking through the Argonne region of France. While the Germans were thus losing their forces on the Western Front, Bulgaria, invaded by the Allies under General Franchet d’Esperey, capitulated on Sept. 30, and Turkey concluded an armistice on Oct. 30. Austria-Hungary, in the process of disintegration, surrendered on Nov. 4 after the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto. 19
German resources were exhausted and German morale had collapsed. President Wilson’s Fourteen Points were accepted by the new German chancellor, Maximilian, prince of Baden, as the basis of peace negotiations, but it was only after revolution had broken out in Germany that the armistice was at last signed (Nov. 11) at Compiègne. Germany was to evacuate its troops immediately from all territory W of the Rhine, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was declared void. The war ended without a single truly decisive battle having been fought, and Germany lost the war while its troops were still occupying territory from France to Crimea. This paradox became important in subsequent German history, when nationalists and militarists sought to blame the defeat on traitors on the home front rather than on the utter exhaustion of the German war machine and war economy.

Columbia Encyclopedia

[DearAbby]

36. I had heard that is had died down

some, people thought the worst of it was over when the war ended, the parades and such, caused another serious outbreak, with people in close contact with each other. There were bans against public meetings, and the like.

Mom was born a few years following it, in 1925. She sure told me stories about the depression and the dust bowl. But nothing about the Spanish flu.

[newyawker99]

42. Hi FredMertz!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[boobooday]

20. No, but I remember Swine Flu

Now we seem to have a really bad case of "Elephant Flu."

[raccoon]

23. That is the worst kind, no question about it.

It lingers for years, and after 4 years, you think you're finally getting rid of it...and it comes back again, as bad as before.

[boobooday]

29. And it is absolutely debilitating

Robs you of all strength and vigor.

[Sparkman]

22. IF you're just a DECENDANT...you may be less vulnerable, genetically.

[raccoon]

24. I've wondered about that, if your ancestor(s) had Spanish flu

and survived, if you'd be less vulnerable to new strains.

[pansypoo53219]

27. 2 of my grandparents

were toddlers at the time.
asked after that american experience.
OH, must ask my great-aunt-94yrs, this afternoon. she was older.

[HamdenRice]

30. I once interviewed several elderly people who lived through 1918 flu

I was doing research in rural South Africa in 1988-89, talking to the oldest African people I could find about land issues. I routinely asked about the 1918 flu.

The called the flu "drie dae," Afrikans (Dutch) for "three days." (Yes, many elderly rural black South Africans speak the language of their farm bosses.) It was called drie dae because when a person caught the flu, in three days they would either survive or die.

It devasted the villages, taking away some whole families. Also wandering in old graveyards, there were large clusters of headstones with all the people dying in the same week of 1918.

[Javaman]

31. All my grandparents and my one aunt did...

I was to little to ask my grandparents, but I asked my aunt when she was alive. (she would have been 106 this year). She also volunteered to roll bandages for the soldiers in WWI. The Spanish flu was partly responcible for she becoming a nurse in the Army.
She recalled two friends that died from it when she was 14. While at the volunteer station rolling bandages, she and everyone else had to wear gauze masks, so the they wouldn't catch or spread the germs.
As bad as it was, everyone in my family survived.
BTW, this was in NYC.

[Blue Diadem]

32. My Mom was born that year, her Mom told her

that the caskets lined the streets. There were quarantine signs on doors. She was born in New Castle Pa. in early 1918. That's all I remember about the spanish flu stories my Mom passed to me.

My Mom was one of those who got the Hong Kong flu. She was hospitalized a few days and sent back home. I was in Jr. High..I remember she was terribly sick for quite a while..but not one of us, my brother, sister, myself or my dad got it.

[Blaze Diem]

34. Oh ya I remember it well..

ah, ya now what was the question again? (dozes off)

Seriously, what I recall reading about that time was the tragedy of death everywhere.."coffins lining the streets", aptly describes the overwhelming sorrow.

[4freethinking]

35. This is sketchy(been a while)

I can remember reading an article in the LA times a long ways back about some unmarked graves in Whittier CA that had been discovered. They attributed their deaths to this pandemic. I think the number was 23 or something.

[Lefty48197]

38. Here's a story our Grandpa told us:

He was in the Navy during WWI traveling to France on the "Leviathon" (spelling?). He said they left Philadelphia with 1600 men on board, and buried 600 at sea on the way across the Atlantic.

[LiviaOlivia]

40. My grandfather's 1st wife died

in that. They were newlyweds.

My father-in-law, now deceased, grew up in Denver and would tell me about having to wear a mask when he went out of his mother's house. He and his family didn't get sick but he mentioned distinctly remembering all the black wreaths on front doors.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. No, but my father (who was a child at the time) and my

mother's parents did. (My father's parents died before I really knew them.)

My father was only six years old and didn't remember much, but my grandparents were living in a small town in North Dakota, where my grandfather was teaching school.

Two young teachers just out of college died. An entire family of five was found dead on their farm after people noticed that they hadn't come into town for a couple of weeks.

My grandmother didn't say anything about herself or my grandfather getting sick, though. Unfortunatley, she died six years ago at the age of 100, so I can't ask her for more details. :-(

[bobbieinok]

44. in rural graveyards in IA you can see many died in 1918