November 1918

We have all heard about Spanish flu, but it has now come to our area. There are 25 students at Mellor School with flu, so they have closed the school for the time being. I am watching the girls carefully for any signs.

I wrote that last week and now, my beloved Rebecca is one of its victims. She came home from school last Friday with a terrible headache, and obviously a fever. I suspected that it was flu and put her right to bed, and have sat and slept by her bedside putting cool compresses to her head, and encouraging her to take sips of water.

I have prayed every prayer I know, and non stop rosaries to the Virgin of Fatima and every other saint I can think of. I even included St. Wojciech, assuming his influence goes beyond the croaking of frogs. My strong beautiful girl was so ill, she could hardly breathe, her fever was so high she was delirious.

I am pleased that Beth understood that I wasn’t rejecting her, but I had to spend all my time with Rebecca. I wouldn’t let Beth come into the room, but she put her toys in the hallway outside, so she could see and talk to me, without being too close. Beth even made me meals and brought up drinks. Well to be fair, she put jam on bread rolls and brought up a glass of milk, and some cookies, but both she and I thought that it was a very special meal.

I couldn’t let her go into Rebecca’s room, but I expect that she has already been exposed to the germs, and so far, she has shown no signs of coming down with it as well. This was another kind of war –and please God, this war must be over soon too.

Rebecca’s fever broke on the 3rd night, and she is making a slow recovery now. The doctor said she was lucky that she was in such good physical condition, and that she is young and healthy. He said she had only a very mild case. I asked him to examine Beth too, but he said she looked fine, and he didn’t want to risk contaminating her, as he himself might well be a carrier. The war seems a long time ago as our worries are now much more an immediate threat to those of us at home. Thank God for sparing Rebecca’s life. I must make sure to keep Beth safe now.

Here is what the Manchester Guardian has to say about this horrible disease.

Influenza epidemic at its height in Manchester
Saturday November 30, 1918
Guardian Unlimited

The influenza in Manchester has reached an acute stage. For the last month, the number of sufferers and the rate of mortality have steadily increased, and this week illness has been more widespread than ever.

“Dear Barbara, Rebecca and my little Beth,

I was so sorry to hear about your Spanish flu, Rebecca, and am pleased that you have made a quick and full recovery. Please keep my Beth safe if you can.

The war is over but we are still here, and the spirit of goodwill of the season doesn’t seem to extend quite this far, but even so there are some bright spots.

This is our fifth Christmas of the war, the war which is now over except for us, and a great effort is being made to prepare special tokens and messages of goodwill. Each camp has been adopted by societies or groups of individuals, and for each man there is provided a parcel containing some little gift and extra food.

The three main organisations interested in the prisoners’ welfare unite each year to arrange for some common action to mark Christmas, but each year less is done partly because of the tightening of regulations, which forbid the introduction of food and other gifts. The Emergency Committee gives a personal message to each of us in the form of a calendar, with appropriate inscriptions of hope and good-will. But we also have a wealthy sympathiser who offers each year a sum of sixpence to a shilling per head to all prisoners and also to all members of their guard, in order to help them in their arrangements of Christmas cheer.

Love, Peter”

I read that Wilfred Owen, the war poet died last month too. Here is what the paper said, “He escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but he saw a good deal of front-line action: he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock. At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.

"He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans.

"On 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors. The news of his death reached his parents home as the Armistice bells were ringing on 11 November.”