October 4th, seven deaths during the day. The sea was rough and the ship rolled heavily. Hundreds of men were thoroughly miserable from seasickness and other hundreds who had been off the farm but a few weeks, were miserable from terror of the strange surroundings and the ravages of the epidemic. Dozens of these men applied at the wards for treatment and the inexperience of army doctors in the recognition of seasickness caused a great many needless admissions to the hospital.
Many officers and nurses were ill in their rooms, and required the constant attention of a corps of well nurses, and an army medical officer to attend them.
Each succeeding day of the voyage was like those preceding, a nightmare of weariness and anxiety on the part of nurses, doctors, and hospital corpsmen. No one thought of bed for himself and all hands worked day and night. On the 5th there were 10 deaths, on the 6th there were 24, and on the 7th, the day of arrival at our destination, the toll was 31. The army ambulance boat was promptly alongside, and debarkation of the sick began about noon. The sick bay was cleared first and we at once began to clean up in preparation for the wounded to be carried westbound. E-deck was then evacuated, but all the sick could not be handled before night, about 200 remaining on board.
On the 8th these were taken off by the army, but not before fourteen more deaths had occurred. Although on this day almost the entire personnel (army) had gone, the nurses remained until the last sick man was taken off.
Pneumonia
It is the opinion of myself and the other medical officers attached to the ship that there were fully 2,000 cases of influenza on board. How many developed pneumonia there are no means of knowing. Over 75 cases of the latter disease were admitted to the sick bay, most of them moribund. Of these, 3 improved so much that they went back to their compartments, 29 were transferred to hospital ashore, and about 40 died. As the records required to transfer patients from the army to the navy medical officers were furnished in but few cases, and as my records embrace all the dead, I had no means of knowing how many died in the sick bay and how many in the E-deck ward. Cases of pneumonia were found dying in various parts of the ship and many died in the E-deck ward a few minutes after admission. Owing to the public character of that ward, men passing would see a vacant bunk and lie down in it without applying to a medical officer at all. Records were impossible, and even identification of patients was extremely difficult because hundreds of men had blank tags tied about their necks. Many were either delirious or too ill to know their own names. Nine hundred and sixty-six patients were removed by the army hospital authorities in France.
Deaths
Ninety-one deaths occurred among the army personnel, of whom one was an officer, as follows:
| October | 2 | 1 | death |
| ” | 3 | 3 | deaths |
| ” | 4 | 7 | deaths |
| ” | 5 | 10 | deaths |
| ” | 6 | 24 | deaths |
| ” | 7 | 31 | deaths |
| ” | 8 | 14 | deaths |
| ” | 10 | 1 | death |