WWI advice for avoiding flu

Given the recent media focus on flu, I thought I would share this 96-year-old advice for avoiding the virus.

This comes from the October 26, 1918 issue of The New Hampshire newspaper, under control of the US government and the Students Army Training Corps.  By this point in October, the Spanish Flu epidemic was mostly passed, but it had already killed ten student soldiers in the New Hampshire College SATC camp. The college had to delay its opening to the Officers Division of the SATC and non-soldier students until October 7, and women were not allowed on campus until October 15.  All students had to be inspected for signs of "grippe" before they could register.

I got an email from UNH the other day warning me to take precautionary measures against the flu, telling me to stay home and not go to classes if I felt sick.  I immediately thought of this advice to "avoid work." 

As an archaeology side note - during my summer excavation of the SATC barracks site with the anthropology department, I found this medicine bottle dating to 1918, which I can only assume was associated with some soldier recovering from the flu.

College training camps and the officers

As of October 10, 1918, New Hampshire College housed both a vocational division and a collegiate division of the Students' Army Training Corps.  The school newspaper was converted to contain solely military news (which was easy enough, since nearly all college courses were now "war courses").  Still, both the college students and the vocational men managed complain about the army in the paper.  For instance, when the army/college issued an article on the necessity of giving up college "freedoms" like fraternities and sports out of respect for the men doing their duty in the service, the students posted their own article  about how men in the service (i.e they themselves) would actually love to have sports to boost their morale.  When some patriotic person placed a message about the shortage of weekend passes being a necessity for the good of all, the vocational men placed their own ad mocking each other about about the silly excuses they used to try to obtain such passes.

Here are a couple short jokes about the students' new relationships with wartime courses and college training from the October 12 issues of TNH.

Students' Army Training Corps, you hopeless borps

As a history major conducting independent research on WWI propaganda and training camps, I read a lot of newspapers, yearbooks, and soldiers' poetry.  In my second summer of researching, I have a newfound respect for these men's sense of humor.  They composed parodies of popular songs, wrote poetry, and drew comics, and invented jokes.  They made fun of professors, college life, the Spanish flu, commanding officers, guns that wouldn't shoot, the army's lack of horses, and, most of the time, each other.  After coming across so many parodies and various instances of wartime wit, I decided to start this blog to share some of them. 

Here is an anonymous poem, "Nevermorps," satirizing the Student Army Training Corps (the War Department program that converted American universities to Army training camps).  I love how the author can lightheartedly make fun of army food and poker while still being obviously critical of the "imposter" program. 

Enjoy! :D