Tag: Spanish flu

7 Nov 1918: POW Graudenz

Thursday. Nov 7th     Another poor fellow died today.  Camp largely recovering.  Over 450 have been in bed. Feeling much better myself.  Dashed hard luck for these chaps to die now, after a rotten captivity, now, just when there does seem a decent chance of getting out within a few weeks.  The three escapees are recaptured, and in jug.

3 Nov 1918: POW Graudenz

Sunday. Nov 3.     Feel none too well.  Thought I wouldn’t get up – decided to eventually.  Lying on my bed all day with British warm on.  Felt a bit faint before supper, but it passed off.  Ate a good supper.  Felt chronically rotten; went out with Duce into the cold corridor to get some air, and I knowed no more!!  Later woke from perfectly glorious dreams of Arcady to find myself back in this hole and on my bed in the tender clutches of an English M.O. who ordered me to bed.

29 Oct 1918: POW Graudenz

Tuesday. Oct 29th.     Place seems absolutely dead.  More people still in bed. Feel pretty dead myself.  Decline to go to bed.  Three only of our room laid up.  Went to bed at seven.  Sweated like a horse.  These comic pyjamas have proved invaluable.

28 Oct 1918: POW Graudenz

Monday Oct 28th.     Over 250 down with grippe, and, of the rest practically no one out on the square taking exercise.  Spent the morning kicking a Rugger ball about.  Felt pretty rotten but I think it did me good.

evening, Strange, who failed to escape with Clinton; Baer, the American in our room, and Lomax, managed to get a plank across from the back of the theatre and resting it from the sentry shelter to the outer wire crossed it in civilian clothes.  After a moment we heard a shot from outside, but no one was hit.  At the subsequent roll-call, six were found to be missing and were reported as ‹escaped›.  Three Australians had hidden in a cupboard.  The German officer was cheerfully astounded to see them next day.  They told him that they found the weather too cold and so came back; which act of generosity did not prevent them getting three days cells each.

27 Oct 1918: POW Graudenz

Sunday. Oct 27th.     Great news!  Turkey and Austria are supposed to have chucked in their hands.

The camp has lately been attacked by grippe, or Spanish grippe, a milder form of ‘flu’, which turns in serious cases to double pneumonia.  I hear from home that both Dad & Mater have had it.  I know  it is rife in Scotland and in France.  Looks as if it is all over Southern Europe.