SYNOPSIS The American military experience in World War I and the influenza pandemic were closely intertwined. Illustration by Gordon Grant/National WWI Museum and Memorial. As he watched the epidemic unfold, Acting Army Surgeon General Charles Richard warned the Medical Corps that no disease which the army surgeon is likely to see in this war will tax more severely his judgment and initiative.36 His office distributed numerous bulletins on influenza and pneumonia to Army personnel and fired off daily memos to Army Chief of Staff Peyton March and others making recommendations on the epidemic.37,18 Concerned about influenza spreading on crowded troopships, Richard advised March against sending troops from infected camps to France until the epidemic was over in their region.18 March approved this recommendation, which at first affected only a few training camps. The shelling stopped on Nov. 11, 1918, sending millions of American soldiers back to the United States to pick up where they had left off before joining or being drafted into the war effort. McLaughlin AJ. The National Guard had 181,620 members. Finally, what would the units themselves look like? He is down with pneumonia, so will have a prolonged visit while home. Many were among the most knowledgeable and skilled physicians in the country and had just recently entered military service. Nope. 1811 Columbine Ave., Boulder, CO 80302, Phone: 303-546-6654, Fax: 303-449-6243. In six months, they built 1,519 buildings, spending a total of $8,897,375. "But after the war broke out, Britain began building its army.". These high morbidity rates interfered with induction and training schedules in the United States and rendered hundreds of thousands of military personnel non-effective. One of the posters designed after World War I to show Americas service members how they should behave once they came home. The controversy reached the White House when President Wilson asked March why he refused to stop troop transport during the epidemic. Continental European powers had a universal military service program in place, and when war broke out, reservists -- already trained -- went to their mobilization points and joined their units. Effects As many as 8.5 million soldiers and some 13 million civilians died during World War I. By May 1918, however, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were crossing the Atlantic each month to build a combat force of two million by November. The Selective Service Act of 1917 authorized the conscription of military manpower for the war effort so that the United States did not have to rely solely on volunteers. There was a future ahead for me, something that I had not imagined for some years. Others may have gone home when they got sick, either with leave or AWOL. After looking more into how some of his fellow veterans were faring, Hayden found that there were thousands upon thousands of these men in straitened circumstances, in poverty. Teaching resources About the project America in the First World War Jennifer Keene explores the events that led up to the United States of America joining the First World War and describes the effect that participation in the war had on American social and political life. An estimated 20% of Army draftees were foreign-born and the troops spoke at least 46 languages, some 5,700 were Mexican aliens, and 12,500 were American Indians.8 (p. 367-409) More than 400,000 African Americans served in the Army, some in two black combat divisions but most in labor battalions. None of them died, but the outbreak was serious enough that the next brigade cleaned out the barracks, even washing the walls, before they moved in. Doing that was no simple task. Eleven of the 81 medical officers fell ill, and three civilian and three Army nurses died. Great Britain maintained a robust naval reserve but did not have a commensurate universal service reserve for its army. There was little consideration for the men who survived the war and what their long-term needs would be. World War I was the first time in American history that the United States sent soldiers abroad to defend foreign soil. Jonathan Casey, the exhibits curator, said these small posters were used as tools of social engineering. Fourteen of the largest training camps had reported influenza outbreaks in March, April, or May, and some of the infected troops carried the virus with them aboard ships to France.12 In the late spring and summer, influenza visited all of the armies of Europe, including the AEF, but because influenza was common in the military, and few patients became critically ill, medical officers were not alarmed. On October 18, the AEF chief surgeon reported that influenza and pneumonia continue to prevail in all parts of the A.E.F.35 Influenza cases outnumbered combat casualties. What effect did American soldiers have on the war in WW1 The impact of the United States joining the war was significant. Thus, as the epidemic struck their camps, hospitals, ships, ports, or divisions, many medical officers documented what they saw, as if trying to define that which they could not control. The First World War saw more death than all of the Western worlds wars from 1790 to 1914 combined, and the American troops who arrived in France in 1917 were not insulated from the bloodshed. By mid-October, however, the practice of taking men from camps that had already weathered the epidemic did finally reduce the influenza rates on troopships and in the AEF. 8600 Rockville Pike Source: Ayres LP. But this history took a sharp turn a hundred years ago . During the year after his own homecoming, Hayden suffered miserably from the residual effects of shell blasts that had blown him off his feet and left him with a throbbing headache that stuck around for months, memory lapses, and nightmares from which hed wake up sweating. There is a classic bit of testimony before Congress about a barracks built so badly that snow came in the cracks and coated sleeping soldiers. Camp Jackson had a total military strength of 42,498, according to the Fort Jackson website. Many survivors experienced acute trauma. HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help The shabby treatment of veterans by the government came more to the forefront of public opinion after the stock market collapsed in 1929. Many of the bases still familiar today were established in 1917. War mobilization drew millions of civilians into military institutions and extended the military into all corners of the country. Other symptoms, such as feeling anxious and constantly on edge, were described as "soldier's heart" during the American Civil War. Washington: Government Printing Office; 1920. p. 1519. There was more to reintegration than simply having the right attitude. Before This did not include the cost of roads, electricity or plumbing. He locked himself in his office and held on to his desk as the ache in his head gave way to a hum, a low chanting hum, like the one that comes when one is just going under an anesthetic. Soon he was hot all over and shaking in fear. An official website of the United States government. In April 1917, the French poilus in seven corps were ordered to attack Chemin des Dames, a massive limestone formation that the Germans had transformed into a perfect defensive position. In the end, Camp Grant suffered 10,713 influenza victims, including 1,060 deaths in a population of 40,000.4 (p. 749), Across the country, medical officers noted the rapidity with which the epidemic hit each camp, in some cases reaching its highest number of cases within 10 days (Figure 2).5 (p. 2429) The steep gradient of the flu attacks can be seen in the headlines of The Camp Dodger, the weekly newspaper of Camp Dodge, Iowa, which strobe the trajectory of the epidemic. The additional firepower, resources, and soldiers of the U.S. helped to tip the balance of the war in favor of the Allies. The Americans played a significant role in the war's last year, especially when German forces launched their final offensive. Epidemic influenza has become a very serious menace, he told March, and threatens not only to retard the military program, but to exact a heavy toll in human life, before the disease has run its course throughout the country.18,38 March's office instructed camp commanders to reduce crowding and increase medical personnel, but halted only some of the draft calls, so that in late September new recruits were still entering training camps. In the next Regiment, they tore the doors off 2 barracks trying to get outIt was almost an hour before the Provost Guards could make everybody get back in their barracks.43. Advertisement savannah10112 While the psychiatric effects of combat on service members wouldnt be formally recognized until after the Vietnam War, when PTSD was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, the end of World War II set a different standard for the treatment of former service members. Wilson believed that without an independent American fighting force, he would not be able to shape the post-war peace -- that the overwhelming sacrifices made by all would mean nothing without a change to the status quo. government site. Military camps, arsenals, air fields, and supply depots sprouted up in every state. The Selective Service Act passed on May 18, 1917, and all men age 21 to 30 were required to register with local draft boards. The German army had 11 million under arms, the Ottoman Empire had 2.9 million, Russia had 12 million, and Austria-Hungary had 7.8 million. Since the American Revolutionary War, each branch of the United States Armed Forces implemented differing policies surrounding racial segregation. French units suffered 40,000 casualties the first day of the offensive and 271,000 over the course of the offensive. DuBois, from Buffalo Soldiers at Huachuca: Racial Awareness After the War. The war with Germany: a statistical summary. Rather it was an Associated Power, which meant the United States would work with the Allies but would be free to pursue its. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted During the second phase, July 27 to August 23, 200 men of the 58th Artillery Brigade became ill, about 6.5%. When war broke out in 1914, the United States had a policy of neutrality. Still, it was a tremendous accomplishment to build the camps and cantonments, even as soldiers were reporting for training. The Red Cross assisted by recruiting trained nurses for the Army Nurse Corps and organizing ambulance companies and 50 hospitals of 1,000 beds each out of American universities and medical institutions. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal It reached double digits on October 1 with 14 deaths, then 30 the next day, 46 the next, and 76 on October 4. Fever of war: the influenza epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I. The innumerable effects of the Civil War on civilians of the United States were devastating in many ways and on both sides. Burch M. I don't know only what we hear': the soldiers view of the 1918 influenza epidemic. These new weapons generated new, horrible injuries that took life and limb in a flash or festered into gangrenous wounds that could further maim and kill. The American Expeditionary Forces (A. E. F.) was a formation of the United States Armed Forces on the Western Front during World War I.The A. E. F. was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of then-Major General John J. Pershing.It fought alongside French Army, British Army, Canadian Army, British Indian Army, New Zealand Army and Australian Army units against the Imperial . Evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald has argued that trench warfare and its crowded conditions enabled an especially aggressive and deadly influenza virus to gain footing in humans.15 As soldiers in the trenches became sick, the military evacuated them from the front lines and replaced them with healthy men. W.E.B. Braisted WC. While the U.S. military had helped to subdue the Germans, the medical profession had failed to conquer an even more deadly, unseen enemy. In 1917, Britain had an army of roughly 4 million soldiers, not counting the contributions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and the other parts of its empire. When we get liberty once more the mayor of Waukegan is going to have his darn little town run off the map and get tar and fethered [sic] himself. But if it was difficult to contain the influenza virus, it was harder to contain sailors and soldiers. Office of the Surgeon General, Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, vol 9: Communicable and other diseases. The influenza pandemic in the American camps, September 1918. Despite this precaution, during Chesney's third phase, August 23 to November 8, more than one-third of the 6th Artillery Brigade, 1,636 soldiers, contracted influenza and 151 died. David Chrisinger is the director of the Harris Writing Program at the University of Chicago. While virology would not emerge until the 1930s, physicians could identify many of the bacteria causing the deadly pneumonias that were killing their patients, but without antibiotics they could do little to fight the infections. Over the next four years, both sides would launch attacks against the enemy's trench lines . The war fostered influenza in the crowded conditions of military camps in the United States and in the trenches of the Western Front in Europe. Although Camp Grant's sickness and death rates were no worse than other camps and better than some, fellow officers later told reporters that Hagadorn had been showing the strain of the epidemic.26,27 Troubled as more than 500 soldiers died of pneumonia under his command, on October 7, he committed suicide with a pistol shot to his head. There were a meager 12,000 guns by the time the war broke out in 1914. The Army didnt want the flood of veterans returning home to become a disruptive presence or a financial burden on society. Relatives, reported the local newspaper, are planning a double funeral in Brockton.24 To control influenza and pneumonia, the hospital provided patients with 100 square feet of floor space, separated beds by sheets, and furnished face masks to everyone in the camp. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, | Army Organic Industrial Base Modernization Implementation Plan, The U.S. Army releases a two volume book about Operation Enduring Freedom, U.S. Army celebrates women's contributions and service, U.S. Army proposes innovative solution for historic housing, General Officer military exchange with France approved, Signal regiment honors Hollywood director. Within a few months, thousands of U.S. men were being drafted into the military and sent to intensive training. Trench warfare in World War I was employed primarily on the Western Front, an area of northern France and Belgium that saw combat between German troops and Allied forces from France, Great Britain . The United States did not formally join the alliance against Germany. Braisted pinpointed the arrival of the epidemic in the United States to Tuesday, August 27, 1918, at Commonwealth Pier in Boston when three cases of influenza were committed to the sick list. The next day produced eight cases, and on August 29, 58 cases were reported, 15 so ill they were transferred to the U.S. After surveying the strategic situation, Pershing sent a telegram to the War Department: "Plans contemplate sending over at least one million men by next May.". Box 5493, Entry 2109, RG 120, Entry 2109. During the first two and a half years of combat, the United States was a neutral party and the economic boom came primarily from exports. Some Americans believed that because a naval provocation led to the war, the proportional response would be a naval campaign against Germany. Influenza sailed with American troops across the Atlantic and when it exploded in late August and September in Europe and the United States, medical officers found themselves on the front lines of an epidemic worse than any of them had ever seen or imagined. Is trench warfare still used today? The United States had to match that level of manpower. By the Armistice, about 158,000 young men had enrolled in SATC programs.8 (p. 556) This expansion of military institutions created a virtual network of young adults across which influenza could and would travel (Figure 1). The Camp Dodger (Camp Dodge, Iowa), Peak of flu scourge has passed. Before any travel ban could be imposed, a contingent of replacement troops departed Devens for Camp Upton, Long Island, the Army's debarkation point for France, and took influenza with them. Only the Provost Marshall's cancellation of the October draft finally eased pressure on the camps.39. As they conducted their analyses, military medical officers soon understood that the wave of influenza that had run through many U.S. training camps during the spring of 1918 constituted a first wave of the pandemic. Life at Camp Funston: reflections of army sergeant Charles L. Johnston. The severe effects of combat-related injuries, like the ones Hayden described in his essay, drew more public attention during the 1920s, when the figure of the shellshocked veteran became part of larger debates over the governments responsibility to care for its military forces. They did their best to save those stricken by influenza, but could do little more than provide palliative care of warmth, rest, and a gentle diet, and hope that their patients did not develop pneumonia. Camp Jackson was a good example. 301. Congdon LA. The Armys Message to Returning World War I Troops? By July 1918, French forces often were assigned to support AEF operations. His strategy "was to wait for the tanks and the Americans.". The First World War saw more deaths than all of Western worlds wars from 1790 to 1914, not all wars in that period. They turned ashen gray and usually faint. He commented that at the rate it is spreading, everyone will have had it and be well in a week, but he was overly optimistic.43 Within weeks hundreds of his fellow trainees would die, as would many of those who were caring for them.5 (p. 2452) Although only one Navy nurse had died during the war to date, 25 succumbed to the pandemic, seven of them at Great Lakes camp: Theresa Burmeister, Myrtle Grant, Edith Hokanson, Emma Kotte, Alice Lea, Garnet Olive Peck, and Amber Story.5 (p. 2071), Stover escaped the flu but chafed at the quarantine. Accessibility 76, enacted May 18, 1917) authorized the United States federal government to raise a national army for service in World War I through conscription. Pershing was one of the few Army leaders to command large formations, having been in charge of the U.S. intervention in Mexico in 1916. Beginning in May 1918, with the first United States victory at Cantigny, AEF commanders increasingly assumed sole control of American forces in combat. the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. A study of the Army ration and its relation to the height and weight of soldiers in Army cantonments. A cobbled together U.S. Army provisional division -- which morphed into the 1st Division, "the Big Red One" -- began arriving later in the month to a rapturous welcome. By the 1920s, the American public started to question the governments commitment to providing proper treatment. As individuals became seriously ill, camp officials sent out danger or death telegrams to families and loved ones, but soon they received so many return calls, telegrams, and visitors, they had to set up a separate hospital tent as an information bureau. But now U.S. Army and Navy personnel knew how to test and sanitize water supplies, vaccinate troops against typhoid and smallpox, and treat or prevent other infections. As the Army grew, the Army Medical Department raced to meet its needs. DuBois, an African American intellectual, whose call for racial equality marked him as a radical thinker in his era, strongly supported the war effort, but the patriotism . Col. Charles B. Hagadorn, a West Point graduate and career officer who had served in Russia and the Panama Canal Zone, was acting camp commander when influenza struck. Address correspondence to: Carol R. Byerly, PhD, On April 6, 1917, when the United States declared war against Germany, the nation had a standing army of 127,500 officers and soldiers. Of course, millions. By April 1917, a million soldiers in the French army had been killed. While Russian forces were still in the field against German and Austro-Hungarian forces, they were stumbling toward dissolution with units already choosing sides for what would become a civil war. trench warfare, warfare in which opposing armed forces attack, counterattack, and defend from relatively permanent systems of trenches dug into the ground. Behave Yourselves, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/magazine/world-war-i-veterans-treatment.html. According to one tally, 227,000 soldiers were hospitalized for battle wounds in 1918, but half again as many AEF soldiers340,000were hospitalized for influenza.4 (p. 142941) The epidemic struck during the climax of the American military effort, compromising the AEF's performance in its largest campaign of the war, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The War Department also operated some 40 air fields for aviator training and 10 embarkation and debarkation camps.8 (p. 677-78) The Navy expanded its training capacity from 6,000 recruits to more than 100,000 at stations on both coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Michigan, and also had specialized training centers such as the Navy gas engine school and the aviation ignition school at Columbia University in New York. Some camps were better than others. Some developed pneumonia so quickly that physicians diagnosed it simply by observing the patient rather than listening to the lungs. The Army Medical Department ultimately numbered 30,500 medical officers, 21,500 nursesincluding 350 African American physicians but no black nurses until December 1918and 264,000 enlisted men.8 (p. 257) The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery had some 3,000 medical officers, 1,700 nurses, and 11,000 enlisted men.5 (p. 2066, 2073) As one civilian public health official pointed out, with almost 30% of American physicians in military service, there were sections of the country that were absolutely stripped of physicians. During the pandemic in civil society, therefore, the great majority of available, medical and nursing personnel, were already in the Army or Navy, so that the available personnel from which to draw was limited.11. Rather it was an Associated Power, which meant the United States would work with the Allies but would be free to pursue its own strategic objectives. Most of that went to major Allied powers like Great Britain, France, and Russia, which scrambled to secure American . Both the country and the Army were absolutely unprepared for what was going to happen. President Woodrow Wilson, who had just been re-elected under the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," felt he had no other option. They ran tests and did autopsies, recorded their laboratory and clinical findings, compared morbidity and mortality rates across time and with other units, and tried to stay healthy themselves. What are three reasons why the U.S. entered WWI? The conquistadores brought with them diseases that devastated the New World; typhus plagued Napoleon's armies; and typhoid fever humiliated the American Army during the Spanish-American War. Bill that benefited veterans of the Second World War. Office of the Surgeon General, Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, vol. An Army pathologist clipped a piece of Downs' lungs and sent it to the Army Medical Museum as a specimen of the damage influenza was doing to young soldiers.22 As they walked through Camp Upton's pneumonia wards of 900 patients, medical officers experienced horror at the frightfulness of the sight of the hopelessly sick and dying and at the magnitude of the catastrophe that had stricken wholesale the young soldiers prepared to face another enemy but helpless before this insidious one. That sight, they said, will haunt for life the minds of those who saw it.21, In efforts to contain the outbreak, Camp Upton's commander John Mallory put its 30,000 inhabitants under quarantine, barring travel in and out except on the most urgent business.23 But in wars and epidemics there is much urgent business and people got through. For the first time in its history, the United States joined a coalition to fight a war not on its own soil or of its own making, setting a precedent that would be invoked repeatedly over the next century. This effort was duplicated at Camp Funston, Kansas; Camp Shelby, Mississippi; Camp Devens, Massachusetts and 26 other places around the United States. Training schools in America sent their best men to the front, and Pershing also established facilities in France to train new arrivals for combat.
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