''Spanish influenza'' - which is as good name as any other for a fatal sort of fever which shows some of the symptoms of pulmonary plague - got us at Sierra Leone.
Eighty died on board, half a dozen are missing owing to some idiot saying that the sea was cool, 250 are still in hospital, and myself and about 60 more are merely out and about. That's all! After-effects include lung trouble and damaged hearts. Thanks be! I'm fairly free from either, though slightly touched by both.
Sierra Leone is a stinking, steaming native town, green and poisonous as the filth paddocks of a sewage farm. We lay there for five days - lazy days of heat and damp - and watched another steamer dump her dead each night at twilight. Our health was good - men never looked fitter than we.
Concerts in the evening kept things going, and we were always interested in the gathering of the convoy - quaintly-camouflaged ships of every nation. First day out some of us felt rather rotten and showed high temperatures. The next day the hospital was full, and the third day 800 were down.
Always the same symptoms - weariness, general feeling of not being up to the mark, a temperature, and . . . the man dropped where he was. I went out with 105, and lay for three days in a breathless hell-hole, where the dead jostled the living. Dysentery made matters worse, especially as sanitary needs could not be considered, and the ship had run out of disinfectants.
The doctors worked like heroes, although sick men themselves. The nurses saved many a life, and one has since died as a reward for her efforts.
Most of the officers and many men kept going while they could keep their feet, washing and aiding the sick. Then, of all the soldiers and ship's crew, only 70 odd were left on their feet.
Kept prisoner
A young man boarding with a private family at a neighbouring town (says the Pahiatua Herald) was affected by the prevailing epidemic, and in order to protect themselves from possible infection the persons locked the unfortunate man in his room, where, presumably, he was to take his chance.
His position became known, the doctor and nurse obtained access to him by a window, which the owners had omitted to nail up and protect with barbed wire.
This means of access was continued until the young man was well enough to be moved, when he was moved, via the window, to less nervous neighbours.
- ODT, 24.12.1918.
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