From the Archives
WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC OF 1918
The influenza of 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide, yet we know so little about this time.
Young people were among the hardest hit. Here is how Wabash dealt with this tragedy.
Wabash was among the many colleges to have a Student Army Training Corps [SATC] program during the Great War. Across America, the number of men in college decreased due to Army enlistments. The fear was there would be a shortage of men who could serve as leaders during the war and after as well. The SATC was created to prevent that in America.
From The Wabash College Record:
Early in September, the Board of Trustees of Wabash College signed a contract with the War Department, in which it was agreed that the College would furnish lodging and board as well as academic instruction to 400 soldier-students. Ground was cleared at once on the campus between South Hall and the new gymnasium for the erection of two barracks with capacity for 200 men each. By registration day, October 1, one of these barracks was practically ready for occupation and the other was well under way.
The College was also charged with feeding these men. This was before there was a dining hall on campus. A cafeteria was established in the auxiliary gymnasium on the second floor of the Armory. Forest Hall was also pressed into service as the headquarters and guard house. The men were sworn in and immediately began drilling.
Just one week later, on Monday, Oct. 7, 1918, influenza hit Wabash. Six men appeared at sick call with high fevers, and by that night, 11 more were added. All of the sick students were taken to the Phi Delta Theta fraternity on the corner of College and Walnut Streets. The fraternity was in the process of being converted into a camp hospital when suddenly there were patients. The description of the next day is alarming.
From Wabash College: The First hundred Years:
The two companies had scarcely lined up when two men pitched forward suddenly to the floor. They were being carried out when another man in the ranks fainted. The man next to him bent to pick him up, and he too fainted. But college classes started that day so inauspiciously that an announcement was made in the afternoon of the suspension of all classroom work for an indefinite time. That night there were 35 men in the hospital. On October 12 there were 95 men crowding every room and nearly every hallway of the transformed Phi Delt house, seven of them with serious cases of pneumonia. The hospital had been organized to take care of six patients, with one nurse in charge.
In all, 120 cases were received by the hospital during the run of the epidemic—not a single man lost his life. The College and town were very proud of this record. It was attained only by an outpouring of energy nothing short of heroic. Mary Jolley of Crawfordsville, head nurse, remained steadily at her post, in spite of the fact that she herself was attacked by influenza. Volunteers stepped forward to help her. Three of these volunteers were trained nurses: May Huston, Edith Hunt, and Ethel Newell.
There was one tragedy softening the rejoicing that was felt when the epidemic was seen to have run its course. The third of the trained nurses to volunteer, Newell, had offered her services, in spite of the fact that she was recovering from a very recent attack of pneumonia. She died after it returned.
By Oct. 24, 1918, the outbreak had run its course and all classes and activities resumed. The camp was short-lived, as an Armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918, and the SATC was closed. Much of what we know of this time comes to us from the writings of one of the members of the SATC. This dedicated young man, Norman Littell [W1921], sat down in his junior year and wrote a history of the Student Army Training Corps, which survives yet today.
BETH SWIFT
Archivist