One of the cooks who shipped off to war from Fort Riley, Kansas had a cold. No one thought much of this new recruit's sniffles. After landing with his unit in Europe, his symptoms flamed into a severe cold. He finished serving dinner one evening, cleaned up and chose to stop by the infirmary to let the doc take a look. "We'll need to isolate you," the doctor said. "You have something more than a cold. Not sure what, yet." The cook developed a deep cough, one that wouldn't stop, and his skin turned blue. His symptoms grew worse every minute. An hour later some of his buddies joined him. They looked terribly sick. The cook didn't have the strength to speak with them, but he wondered if he looked as bad as they did. After five weeks, the cook's "cold" spread to 1,127 soldiers in his unit, forty-six of which died. Back in the United States, the cold had spread to other forts preparing to send recruits to Europe for service in...
Exciting coffee break stories and more!
