Granddad Curt Sims in the middle

My paternal grandmother, Vivian Sims, told me a story a long time ago about a trip she took to Indianapolis. It was in 1918 and the world was at war. My grandfather, Curt Sims, had returned from France and was diagnosed with cerebrospinal meningitis. He was placed in the Veteran's Hospital in Indianapolis and the prognosis was very bleak. Upon notification that her husband could be dying, Vivian Sims began her journey to Indianapolis.

Nowadays a trip to Indy is nothing more than a short jaunt by automobile, but back then transportation from Martin County to Indy was quite limited. This young lady, who taught school at Dover Hill and rode to work on a horse, decided to hop freight trains to be with her husband. She told me that it wasn't really tough and she never got lost. Whenever I think of her, it always amazes me just how smart and tough she really was.

Recently I've been doing some research on the effect of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic on the outcome of the First World War. This epidemic, which killed almost 100 million people throughout the world, hit both the Allies and the Central Powers with considerable force. It was a time of dying for young men and also for young women serving as nurses. The viral strain that created this epidemic caused what is called a cytokine storm within the very human bodies that it infected. This storm is a violent reaction by the body's immune system to fight the virus. Unfortunately, with this type of virus, the greater the immune system of the individual, the more violent the reaction and the lesser chance of survival. This was the reason that young healthy adults were affected to a much greater degree than children and older folks with weaker immune systems. It is a strange disease that is most dangerous to the healthiest people.

The actual starting point of the epidemic remains unknown, but there is significant evidence to indicate that it may have started in the United States. At the time, young men were standing in lines to sign up for the war, they were shipping out to training camps throughout the various States and finally in March and April of 1918, they were being transported to Europe to infect the rest of the world. Because the world was at war the spreading of this virus was ensured a safe transport to all corners of the world. This virus spread rapidly in the spring and at first was not as deadly as it was to become later in the fall of 1918. Influenza viruses mutate quickly, sometimes so quickly that they become relatively harmless in a short time. This 1918 virus lingered throughout the summer of 1918 and changed dramatically. Then in late August and early September, it became a vicious serial killer, the likes of which the world had never seen. This influenza would strike its victim suddenly, and some victims passed from seemingly good health to death in a matter of hours, while others might linger for a few days or a couple of weeks.

"Within a few cycles of infection, it was apparent that the disease had become more virulent, with a 10-fold increase in the death rate amongst cases. Secondly, the influenza epidemic in Europe saw the emergence from Brest, one of the main ports of France serving the needs of the war, of a markedly more virulent form of influenza which rapidly spread to all of Europe." Dr. C.W. Potter, A History of Influenza.

The killer virus caused the deaths of almost 200,000 people in the U.S. in October of 1918 alone. On November 11th of 1918, people celebrated Armistice Day with grand parades and parties which from a public health viewpoint this was a complete disaster. It was like the epidemic got a kick start from this partying and the resulting sickness that winter was beyond anyone's imagination, as millions were infected and hundreds of thousands died.

I came across a book awhile back that just really blew me away when I began reading it. It was published in 1921 and is called the "Gold Star Honor Roll". This book is a record of the men and women from Indiana who gave their lives in the service of their country during the First World War. The book begins with those young men and women from Adams County and continues on alphabetically by county for the entire State. I have a distant relative in the book, George Clinton Beasley, who was the son of my grandfather's sister and was very near the same age as my grandfather. George was born in Linton in 1895 and was killed in action while fighting in the Argonne Forest.

What I found in this book shocked me, because the majority of the men and women who are memorialized in this book did not die from military action, as did George Beasley; they died because of complications from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. Many of these young people did not even make it overseas. This epidemic had spread so rapidly in the early fall of 1918 that thousands of soldiers were dying at training camps throughout the United States. As you begin going through this book, you initially see that of the 19 men from Adams County who gave their lives in service to their country, 13 died as a result of the influenza epidemic. The ratios of the reported deaths in the other counties are very similar.

All around the world the virus spread its path of destruction. In American Samoa, the Governor of the Territory, Commander John M. Poyer, heard news reports of the deaths associated with the epidemic on other Polynesian Islands and immediately quarantined his territory and set up shore watches to prevent any unauthorized landings. As a result there were no deaths attributed to the epidemic on these islands. Conversely, on Western Samoa, under British rule, the islands suffered a loss of 22 percent of the entire population in a matter of 3-4 weeks. In India, over 17 million people died during the 1918 epidemic and in the United States nearly 600,000 people died in a span of less than a year.

Within the United States, military facilities were under an especially vicious attack from the flu virus. On October 1st, the number of ill at Augusta Georgia's Camp Hancock jumped from 2 to 716 in just a few hours. The next day, Camp Gordon near Atlanta reported that 138 soldiers had contracted the virus. On October 5th Camp Hancock was quarantined with 3,000 cases of flu, but the quarantine came too late, as 47 cases had already reached Augusta; by that evening, more than 50 soldiers were dead, while many more had contracted pneumonia. Enlisted men who came from Indiana and Kentucky to Camp Taylor, Kentucky totaled nearly 40,000 soldiers. During the week of October 19th, in 1918, there were 3,772 cases of influenza at Camp Taylor and more than 200 soldiers died. An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza.

These types of numbers are mind numbing to say the least, but they could be higher if this were to happen today. With our global society and our rapid transit methods to all parts of the world, we could see the spread of an influenza virus like never before.

I was hoping that the swine flu would pass completely before we sent our kids back to school this fall, but that didn't happen. Let's hope this virus does not mutate into anything like the viral strain of the fall of 1918. Vivian Sims could much more easily get to Indy nowadays and the virus could much more easily spread around the world within a matter of days or maybe hours.

If you have questions about seasonal influenza, the swine flu, or vaccinations, I'd advise visiting:

http://www.flu.gov/index.html

During my 1918 influenza research efforts, I found some interesting information concerning the misdiagnosis of the symptoms of many young men as having cerebrospinal meningitis, when in fact they were under attack from this influenza virus. I will never know if this was the case with my grandfather, but thank goodness he survived whatever it was, thusly providing this excellent opportunity for me to be here writing about him.