1918 Flu That Took My Grandfather's Life
Posted: Wednesday, January 31, 2007
by Kris Wilson
Eco Fantasy Tour
In the late 60's when I was around 11 years old I came across some letters written between my late grandmother and grandfather dated in 1918. They were so fragile and yellowed with time. While reading through the letters to a young and impressionable mind it seemed they were love letters from so long ago between two people in the prime of their life. I never saw the letters again until 30 years later. My sister's and I were going through our mothers paper work of 50 years. She had to move suddenly to Florida for cancer treatment. I came across a manila envelope that contained those letters. I knew immediately what they were. I thought they'd been lost forever. The three of us started reading the different letters at the same time. My sisters came to the conclusion it was more of a one-sided love affair. It was a brief relationship between my grandfather who was going off to world war one and my grandmother who was in a "family way". Ruth Skinner Donaldson was not too pleased with her situation and was in need of the money from the government that was not coming in a timely fashion. How some things haven't changed! While Harry LeRoy Donaldson was missing and looking forward to their future together. I hung on to those letters. After several moves, though, I lost track of them. One day I was looking for a very important phone number. I don't ever remember feeling so uneasy and determined to find something. After looking in my drawer at least ten times, finally late at night I jumped out of bed and took the whole damn drawer out. Low and behold behind the drawer was the number on a piece of paper. And right next to it, a manila envelope! Again I immediately knew what it was. So for the third time in my life there they were again. I started reading them and noticed something that didn't come to light before. I took notice of the heading of each letter. They said BYK CO 338, Fort Riley KS Military Base. All dated in 1918 to his wife Ruth and mother and father, Samuel and Dalia Donaldson
The following excerpts are from the letters written on Sept 16 and 23, 1918. All I know for sure is that my grandfather, Sergeant Harry LeRoy Donaldson, was gassed for three days, put on a train headed northeast and died two weeks later in France of a mysterious strain of influenza that was more deadly than man has ever known.
SO CALLED "SPANISH FLU"
The deadly flu of 1918 came in two waves. The first starting at Fort Riley Military Base in March 1918 when 500 soldiers in the first week came down with the flu. Forty- eight of them fatal. During this time it also showed up in other military bases. It left as suddenly as it came with no answers. The second wave started up in the fall again at military bases and at San Quentin prison. By the time it ran it's course in just three months over 50 MILLION people world wide would die! And yet very few people have even heard of it. This flu wiped out entire family's in just one day and was not just limited to soldiers anymore. It struck big and small towns alike. The people of New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland would not be seen outdoors with out a mask on.
In my research I have not found one scientist who can say exactly how this violent of a strain got into humans. And it's very unusual for it to originate in Kansas. Seeing how most come from Asia. I've found no evidence that it originated in Spain. So why "spanish flu"? One of the explanations is that it came from the burning of horse manure at Fort Riley? When I see old film clips of battles in WW1 you see soldiers wearing gas masks for fear that the German's were using mustard gas or even possibly germ warfare. Would it be so out of the question that our military was experimenting with the same thing. In 1918 great strides were being made in medicine and a great deal of confidence was shared by most. Did they think that they could control a deadly virus?
After finding the "letters" for the third time in over 30 years, I feel quite compelled to tell my grandfather's story. For he was never called grandpa, not even dad. So I tell what I know for him and the other 50 million people that perished in 1918. If there's something to be learned from that dark history what better time than now.
"Dearest, we are here at last after three days and nights ride on the train. This eastern county is sure full of beautiful scenery around here. We ran for many miles along the Hudson River and I never in my life saw such a pretty stream. The shore is dotted with small towns and boats of every description were sailing upon the river. I want to say that the Red Cross is the finest organization ever organized. At every station where we stopped they gave us candy, gum, sandwitches, flowers, cigarettes and coffee. They also had postcards and a good many other things to numerous to mention. The country after we left Kansas looked very poor and the people were not as prosperous looking, it seemed to me. After entering New York state we began to see much more pretty country. Little towns nestled here and there among the hills and flowers were everywhere. Sometime you and I are going to take that trip from Cincinnati Ohio to New York."
(In his last letter written on Sept 23, 1918 to his wife Ruth)
Sergeant Harry LeRoy Donaldson was stationed at Fort Riley, KS military base from June to Sept of 1918. He had recently married Ruth Skinner of Parsons Kansas. They met when she served coffee and donuts to the passing soldiers. After a brief time together, she became in a family way. Their only child, my father, Harry LeRoy Donaldson, Jr., was born November 20, 1918. Just one month and 14 days after his father now Sergeant Donaldson passed on.
As stated from "Influenza 1918": "In 1918 America was caught up in the last horrific year of World War 1. Yet that had nothing to do with the extreme measures being taken. Deadly influenza, the so-called "Spanish Flu", was sweeping the country, spreading terror everywhere. Once started, the disease moved in lethal waves that appeared to follow the lines the railroads. The speed with which it killed was appalling, the loss of life unimaginable. By the time it had run it's course the epidemic took more that 600,000 lives in America alone and up to 50 million worldwide. It would be as it today, with our present population, 1,400,000 Americans were to die in a sudden outbreak for which there was no explanation and no known cure."
Also from "Influenza 1918""
"Those learning for the first time of the devastating consequences of the worldwide 1918 influenza pandemic typically respond with two questions: How could they have never heard of a world-wide scourge that killed upwards of 30 million people? And, could it happen again? Addressing the first question, journalist H.L. Mencken, offered this theory in 1956: "the epidemic is seldom mentioned, and most Americans have apparently forgotten it. This is not surprising. The human mind always tries to expunge the intolerable from memory, just as it tries to conceal it while current." Others point to an international pre-occupation with WW1 and it's outcome as obliterating all competing concerns. Finally, some speculate that the 1918 flu hit with such deadly force and over such a relatively short period of time that clear-eyed historical perspective was not possible. Confronted the question of whether such an event could happen again, modern virologist responds with a sobering "yes". To comprehend how this is possible, it is necessary to understand how influenza viruses are passed from species to species, and what makes on treatable and another deadly. Generally, birds, pigs and humans are the principle players in a viral chain reaction that determines how serious an influenza outbreak is going to be. As viruses are exchanged between various members of various species, subtle changes to the viruses' genetic material can occur. Usually such mutations are minor, resulting in a process called antigen drift. Even minor changes in the virus's make-up, however, mean that new vaccines must be combined to combat it. When significant mutations occur antigen shift results. An example of antigen shift is seen when a flu virus from a bird and a flu virus from a human combine inside a pig and result in a new, virulent strain. Historically, it seems that most new influenza viruses emerge in Asia, in the Far East, which is another thing that's unusual about the 1918 virus because everything we know historically suggested that it actually originated in the United States. One thing that this 1918 virus suggests is that all the gene segments we've looked at so far look like they fall into the mammalian class of viruses, that swine/humans class. So our analysis suggests that the virus did not come directly from birds to human but went through some kind of mammalian intermediary and pigs are a possibility. Although it's really rather curious as to actually whether pigs infected humans with the 1918 virus or humans infected pigs. It was clear that there were outbreaks in both humans and pigs almost simultaneously. It will be really interesting to try to unravel that, as to HOW THE VIRUS ACTUALLY GOT INTO HUMANS."
"Some say it began in the spring of 1918, when soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas, burned tons of manure. A gale kicked up. A choking dust storm swept out over the land - a stinging, stinking yellow haze. the sun went dead black in Kansas. Two days later - on March 11, 1918, an army private reported to the camp hospital before breakfast. He had a fever, sore throat, headache...nothing serious. One minute later, another soldier showed up. By noon, the hospital had over a hundred cases, in a week 500. That spring, forty-eight soldiers - all in the prime of their life died at Fort Riley. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia. The sickness then seemed to disappear - leaving as quickly as it had come. That was called "the first wave".
That summer and fall, over one and half million Americans crossed the Atlantic for war. But some of those doughboys came from Kansas. And they'd brought something with them: a tiny silent companion. In September almost immediately, the Kansas sickness resurfaced. American soldiers got sick. English soldiers. French, German... As it spread, the microbe mutated - day by day becoming more and more deadly. By the time the silent traveler came back to America, it had become a relentless killer. Soldiers carried the disease swiftly from one military abase to the next. They did it, just by breathing.
For a time, life in America went on, untouched. Suffragettes demanded the vote for women. Airmail service began zooming between New York and Chicago - flying time: 10 hours, 5 minutes. On September 11, Babe Ruth led the Boston Red Sox to victory in the World Series. It was thought that something was happening to the troops. There didn't seem to be any reason to think that it would ever have anything to do with those on the outside. But it became an epidemic and was let loose in the rest of world. From Boston, the disease moved down the eastern seaboard to New York, to Philadelphia and beyond. For a physician it must have been very, very confusing, being confronted with patients that come to you and, within 12 hours, before you even have a chance to do anything, they're dead. This was happening too fast. Even children began to see it coming. A little ditty was heard in playgrounds. "I had a little bird. It's name was Enza. I opened up the window. And in flew enza" President Woodrow Wilson now faced an agonizing decision. Sending the soldiers would be signing thousands of death warrants. Wilson gazed out his office window. After a long moment, he nodded. The troop shipments would have to continue. And then the President turned to his aide. "I wonder if have heard this limerick? "I had a little bird and his name was enza...."
If the epidemic continued it's mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth. But miraculously as mysteriously as it had come, the terror began to slip away. By early November, the flu had virtually disappeared. The epidemic killed, at a very very conservative estimate, 550,000 Americans, that's more Americans that died in combat in all the wars of this century. The epidemic killed at least 30 million in the world and infected the majority of the humas species. The fall of 1918 was a time of horror, a time to forget. It is in the individual memory of a great many but it's not in out collective memory. So why isn't it a part of our memory? Or of our history?
The point of origin of the so-called Spanish flu point to that day in Kansas, March 9, 1918. Any evidence of an influenza epidemic in the spring of 1918 was furnished by those institutions that kept a close eye on those under their watch: the military and prisons. Over 500 prisoners at San Quentin in California came down with the same conditions that had struck soldiers at Comp Riley, as well as camps Hancock, Lewis, Sherman, Fremont, and several others. By July, the influenza of 1918 had left it's mark globally. Tens of thousands had fallen ill and died. This first wave was a mere prelude, however, to the perilous path the flu would cut when it reappeared in full force that fall."
"Dear Ruth, this is the first chance I have had to write you for a long time. We are getting all our final touches this week. We are going to be taught the gas mask drill tomorrow and the next day. And on the third day we will go thru real gas in an airtight building filled with gas. That will conclude our training" and in a letter written on the same day to his mother, "Dear Mother, We are going to have an mask drill tomorrow and the day after and on the third day we go thru a building filled with the real choke stuff."
The letters were dated September 16, 1918, Fort Riley, KS.
On September 17,18 & 19th, the soldiers including my grandfather were being gassed. On the 20th they went by train to New York. In his letter dated September 23 he writes: "It turned cold just after we left and continued to be until yesterday the twenty second which was our last day on the train. I hope you got my letter, which was mailed on the train. I would have written sooner but was so darned busy trying to keep those fellows from killing themselves by a thousand different ways that I did not have time to write you. They hollered and yelled at everything and everybody they saw." My grandmother never got that letter mailed from the train. Why were these fellows trying to kill themselves by a thousand different ways?
The letter dated September 23 from New Jersey was his last letter. The soldiers from Fort Riley and elsewhere traveled by ship to France where they all died in the first week of October 1918 of the flu.
My grandfather never got to settle on the Hudson River like he wanted to. My father was born the next month. His mother, Ruth, died two years later so my father was raised by her parents. My father was raised Harry Skinner, his grandparents name. They never told him about his father for he was half Cherokee Indian. Sergeant Harry LeRoy Donaldson's mother was full-blooded Cherokee. She never stopped searching for her grandson, my father. When my father enlisted in WW2 he was told his birth name was Donaldson, since that was what was listed on his birth certificate. When he shipped out of San Diego he used his real name. His Cherokee grandmother was living in California and checked the list of soldiers name's being shipped out everyday to see if her grandson's name would appear. And finally it did! After the war she contacted my father through a letter. My father made a promise to his grandparents to never contact her. For they knew she was trying to locate him. So he didn't write back. My mother, though, didn't make that promise and wrote back. In October 1948 when my older brother was born she made her first and only visit and saw not only her grandson but her great grandson too. She soon died after that visit in CA. My father would have made his father proud. He was a Chinese interpreter in China during WW11. At the end of his duty he stayed behind and decided to do some sightseeing in China.
In his own words: "It was a dreadfully cold in 1945 on the Mongolian border just above Paotow, China. There is no-cogent need for the purpose of this recollection to dig into the reasons why I, alone, was for weeks camped in the brutally cold bleak area some hundreds of miles within "Japanese-held" territory. I will say, in passing, that wars can only be possible if nations' youth are willing to adapt to the conditions imposed by such conflicts. I was cold when I had gone to sleep. I was hungry when I had gone to sleep. And, now awakened, I had a machine pistol jammed up my nose. This was not going to be just another day. The only blonde, blue-eyed, "foreign devils" these Chinese men had ever seen were Russian. Bad news. It is not easy to strike up a conversation with your head jammed back by a gun barrel stuck up your nose. I know it was my left nostril because it hurt for weeks. I tried to focus on their dialect. Nothing! I was, in a strange falsetto voice, trying to convince them in mandarin that I was their buddy. Nothing! But, boy, was I trying! They all sing alike. They all sing ALIKE. In better voice that was reasonable under the conditions I launched into "Chi Lai - Chi Lai - Chi Lai" (forward march) - the Chinese national anthem. The cacophony of angry voices broke off. The gun, almost tenderly it seemed , was carefully pulled out of my nose. The one man, astraddle my waist was grinning and shouting to the others "mega ren, mega ren.: I'll bet you didn't know that "mega ren" (American) is actually in the lyrics of the chinese national anthem. Dear God I love that song. within an hour, principally through pantomimi, I learned of Hiroshima a d Nagasaki. I learned that the war was over! Two weeks earlier! With my newfound friends as an escort I commandeered a launch and went down-river to an american army base."
My father went on to play saxophone and clarinet in the big band era traveling with the boys until he settled down with my mother. He was the band teacher and my mother was the vocal teacher at Lovington, IL high school the year I was born. Never once growing up did I ever hear my father talk about his mother or father. I'd like to think that his father was there with him on that cold bleak day in China.
I would have liked to have known my grandfather. I'm sure my father often wondered to. Through his letters I get a glimpse of who he was and what he dreamed of on his one and only trip across the northeast. I will always question the origins of the mysterious virus that no one talks about. That is until lately with the threat of the Avian bird flu. Also how my grandfather got it. Why they still can't figure out how it got into humans. I would like to know these things for him along with the other 50 million people who died in the prime of their life from the 1918 flu.
Besides that, though, maybe the letters kept popping up in my life as a gift. If you believe in such things, a young gifted indigo girl held the letters from both Harry and Ruth. She has the insight of feeling their energy by just touching the letters. She immediately sensed that Harry was very much in love with Ruth and in the last letter written on Sept. 23 after his train trip, he was being optimistic on their future together even though he knew he was dying. As with Ruth's letters she felt depression even suicidal feelings. She said these things without even reading the content. I was told by my mother that Ruth went on and married a drummer in a circus and even joined herself in some aspect. After she died in her early 20's my father was given up for adaption until her parents came to raise him. I have a picture of Ruth with a man named Joe who may have been her second husband which must have been taken right before she died. In it she looks happy. I hope so. I'm sure after Harry died she must have felt so much sorrow and probably guilt.
It's amazing how life turned out for my father and his children and his grandchildren and now even his great grandchildren. If Harry would of lived. If my father's grandparents had not of found and raised my father. If my father didn't sing in Chinese!
What a story.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)love this! Isn't it wonderful how we love people that we have never met? Your grandfather deserves all of your love. Poor man was short-changed. Your grand parents were heros by raising him.
May 8, 2009......It's SCARY how relevant this article is to today's outbreak of swine flu!!! It's almost like reading a first-hand account of the 1918 epidemic! Let's just hope it is NOT prophetic! Thank for sharing a piece of your family's history.
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