That boy who was at the bottom.

[**The following takes place during the first serious outbreaks of what would become the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.**] >One nurse at Great Lakes would later be haunted by nightmares. The wards had forty-two beds; boys lying on the floor on stretchers waited for the boy on the bed to die. Every morning the ambulances arrived and stretcher bearers carried sick sailors in and bodies out. She remembered that at the peak of the epidemic the nurses wrapped more than one living patient in winding sheets and put toe tags on the boys’ left big toe. It saved time, and the nurses were utterly exhausted. The toe tags were shipping tags, listing the sailor’s name, rank, and hometown. She remembered bodies “stacked in the morgue from floor to ceiling like cord wood.” In her nightmares she wondered “what it would feel like to be that boy who was at the bottom of the cord wood in the morgue.” __________________________ **Source:** Barry, John M. “Explosion.” *The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History*. Penguin Books, 2009. 202. Print. ___________________________ **Further Reading:** [1918 Influenza Pandemic / Spanish Flu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu) ___________________________ **If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/HistoryLockeBox)!**