While not enough on its own to cause German agreement to an Armistice it was certainly a contributory factor. This was even exploited by Allied propaganda who air dropped leaflets that translated as ‘ Say your prayers nicely, because in 2 months time you will be ours then you will have good meat and bacon and the flu will leave you alone’. The fact that Spanish Flu now known as H1N1 disproportionately hit men of fighting age for a variety of reasons inevitably impacted upon both sides ability to wage war but the malnutrition of German forces made them particularly susceptible. Regardless of its origins its impact on the war has been rarely discussed but Spinney convincingly draws upon sources that show the depleted strength of the German Army by the time of the March 1918 offensive and how it contributed to its failure.
This strain then possibly drifted across the Atlantic as America joined the war eventually surfacing in Camp Funston in Kansas. Mustard gas victims with compromised lungs certainly became extremely susceptible to the new strain possibly as early as 1916 but never identified as such at the time. An alternative theory is that gas victims in the base hospitals mutated avian flu within their lungs from the waterfowl living in the wetlands around Etaples. Spinney argues believably that either the virus originated in China, where waterfowl borne viruses have mutated in the years since as Bird Flu, and travelled with the CLC across the US to Europe, potentially drifting into Kansas on the way. Alongside were troops of the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) recruited from rural China for labour support activities on the front. Notorious for a mutiny amongst British and Australian troops in 1917 Etaples and its infamous ’Bullring’ training grounds held thousands of troops going up to the frontline as well as a dozen hospitals with 23,000 beds for casualties returning from the Ypres salient.
Discussing how it emerged in Kansas Spinney highlights the differing views but two key theories seem to coalesce around the British base depot at Etaples to the rear of the British Sector of the Western Front.
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