സെന്റ്. ആൽബർട്സ് എച്ച്.എസ്.എസ്. എറണാകുളം/അക്ഷരവൃക്ഷം/The Great Death
The Great Death
Vision blurry, nauseous and a splitting headache. A sniper shivering in the summer at position, weeks ago this same man was shooting Germans and enemy forces one by one. The man coughs with extreme vigor, flings his gun down, throws up, loses balance and falls out of position. A fellow soldier looks at him with a frown and calls his mates to get a stretcher. A few trenches back a man suddenly faints and is transported to the nearest medical camp. Doctors perform an autopsy. They cut through the man’s chest. Adjust the lights. Blue liquid. Inside the soldier’s lungs. The man had drowned in his own lungs. And the sniper later gained the same fate. The bodies are transported to a room. These men are placed into that room with everyone else. At first men with these “unknown” deaths were labeled as just that. On Day Zero it was one, Day Two, 2. Within a few months this number skyrocketed to hundred thousands. But still the bodies were kept in the same room. A morgue worker picks up a corpse and due to the virus poking holes in the lungs and the air getting trapped underneath the skin the body pops and snaps when turned over. She goes to the little graveyard made by the army, every single spot is covered with tombstones. She remembers that there were at least a 1000 more inside. With no place to bury the man he is kept on top of a buried soldier. A few days later the morgue worker dies. With medical personnel running low, doctors complain to the army. The army says that Germany is weeks away from crumbling and that none of the troops must retreat. Weeks later doctors arrive and inform the Commander that over 5000 men have died and that the camps have run out of coffins. The doctors are ordered to step out of the room, the commander pulls out a pistol and takes his life. Doctors identify the disease that spread as Influenza A. The first time it came it was looked upon as just something that comes every winter but then it may have had contact with animals, mutated then spread it to doctors and soldiers in the front lines. A doctor investigating the spread of the disease walks into the kitchen and finds out that breakfast for the soldiers consists of Bacon, eggs and toast. She tests the animals. Over half of them sick. When she asks the chef whether the animals had come into contact with the soldiers, he recalls that a few months ago a worker accidentally broke a fence of the pig pen and the soldiers had helped the staff to put them back in. Bingo!. The cause of the spread. After reporting this in, the camps in that area were put into lockdown and quarantining the sick became the soldier’s main task. Sanitization became a priority and the army was forced to cough up enough soap for 5 million soldiers. On the other side the Germans were suffering with Influenza after a Prisoner Of War possibly spread it. The Flu of 1918 or The Spanish Flu helped tip the balance of the war at a critical moment and helped the Allied Forces win the war.
|
