In early 1918, the Great War saw tense conditions in the United States. All focus was on war efforts and keeping up public morale.

Soldiers were barracked in quarters so tight that the US Surgeon General warned that contagious pneumonia might run rampant. He was right about the contagion, wrong about the specific disease.

Influenza began appearing in Haskell County, Kansas’ Camp Funston. Within three weeks, 1100 men from the camp were hospitalized. Soon, adjacent military camps (as well as some in Georgia and even American bases in France) reported a ramping up of Influenza cases.

The virus came and went in waves. The first wave was in early 1918. The second wave began in the summer, with reports of ships pulling in to ports with sick sailors. They would spread the virus to everyone at the docks. The virus turned global, including in Spain, where it was dubbed the Spanish Flu.

In the US, Camp Devens in Boston became the epicenter of the virus. The military camp was built for 36,000 men, but wartime efforts led to severe overcrowding to 45,000 men. In September, more and more men there came down with Influenza, but no quarantine measures were taken.

Hundreds quickly became severely ill and even the doctors and nurses treating them began dying. Many just hours after the first symptom. Sick soldiers from the camp were deployed all over the world.

Soon after an explosion of the illness in Boston, Philadelphia saw similar events. Yet still no quarantine was put into place. At the time, President Woodrow Wilson wanted the focus to be on praising American sacrifices for war. So the administration downplayed the beginning of the epidemic.

A parade in Philadelphia, scheduled for September 28, 1918 went on as planned, despite the outbreak. Thousands of people attended. Two days later the Philadelphia Department of Public Health finally announced that there was an Influenza epidemic which must be addressed.

By this point the spread was so fast that there were not enough coffins for the dead. Gravediggers became ill, and hospitals and morgues became overwhelmed. Eventually bodies were placed wherever people could put them - in homes, porches, fire escapes or simply left on beds.

In 10 days the epidemic went from a few hundred cases and a couple of deaths a day, to hundreds of thousands ill and hundreds of deaths each day. All made worse by the government’s reluctance to acknowledge the crisis.