[The following takes place during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Here, American Colonel Charles Hagadorn had taken command of Camp Grant, just outside Rockford, Illinois, not long before the Influenza virus swept through it. Despite constant warnings from medical staff, Colonel Hagadorn refused many preventative measures, even going so far as to approve the deliberate overcrowding of Army barracks. All of this would prove disastrous when the virus hit in full force.]
Many of the dead were more boys than men, eighteen years old, nineteen years old, twenty years old, twenty-one years old, boys filled with their lithe youth and sly smiles. Hagadorn, the bachelor, had made the army his home, his soldiers his family, the young men about him his life.
On October 8 Michie reported the latest death toll to Colonel Hagadorn in his headquarters office. The colonel heard the report, nodded, and, after an awkward moment, Michie rose to leave. Hagadorn told him to close the door.
Death was all about him, in the papers on his desk, in the reports he heard, literally in the air he breathed. It was an envelope sealing him in.
He picked up his phone and ordered his sergeant to leave the building and take with him all personnel in the headquarters and stand for inspection outside.
It was a bizarre order. The sergeant informed Captain Jisson and Lieutenant Rashel. They were puzzled but complied.
For half and hour they waited. The pistol shot, even from inside the building, came as a loud report.
Hagadorn was not listed as a casualty of the epidemic. Nor did his sacrifice stop it.
Source:
Barry, John M. “Explosion.” The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Penguin Books, 2009. 219. Print.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...