Saratogian Lives in German Dugout
Wednesday, Oct. 23, 1918. “If the influenza epidemic in this city continues to abate as it has in the past week, the public schools of the city may be opened again on Monday,” The Saratogian reports today, “This all depends, however, upon the development of the disease in the next few days.”
Many localities are reporting a daily decrease in the number of new cases of socalled Spanish flu reported by physicians. While that suggests that the epidemic is past its peak, the flu continues to take an awful toll on those who contracted it in recent days or weeks.
“Among the many sad victims of the influenza the family of Mr. and Mrs. R. J. Burnham, of Fairground Hill, has been doubly afflicted,” a Ballston Spa correspondent reports.
The Burhams’ eldest son, 36 year old Alvah, dies at 3:40 a.m. Approximately five hours later, his 23 year old sister Eliza succumbs to the virus. A third sibling died of pneumonia “only within a few months.” Five siblings survive, one serving in the U.S. Army in France.
At least three Ballstonians die from flu today. Florence Bennett Lovejoy dies at home on Mechanic Street at 7:15 a.m. Her seven year old son, Charles Lovejoy Jr., dies at the village’s emergency hospital. Mrs. Lovejoy lost a sister to the flu two weeks ago.
In Stillwater, 28 year old Mrs. Thomas P. Ryan dies at her West Street home this evening, within hours of her husband’s funeral, leaving their three children orphans.
James A. Byrne, “a soldier well known in Ballston Spa and Saratoga Springs,” predicts in letters from France that the war in Europe will be over within the next eight months. A private in Company A of the First Military Police, Byrne took part in a recent American offensive that captured more than 150 miles of German-held territory, along with approximately 15,000 German soldiers.
“I wish you could see the bunch of junk we captured, guns, autos, etc., enough to fill three city blocks,” Byrne writes, “And the prisoners, little and big, cripples and the strong go together. One I took particular notice of had his right leg so crippled that it made an angle of fifteen degrees with the right side of his body ... He would not have been admitted to the Boy Scouts of our country.
“The news just came that Austria wants peace. The Kaiser may, but he won’t get it, not till the Rhine is crossed. Germany has got to pay for all the French towns blown up. A town for a town is the motto.”
— Kevin Gilbert