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.The disaster was anexample of how the exigencies of war created circumstances that helped the flu epidemicflourish.The Leviathan carried 6,700 as a passenger ship, but refitted as a troop transportship it was authorized to carry 11,000.Overcrowding and poor ventilation below deckcreated nearly perfect conditions for the airborne flu virus to flourish.Soldiers efforts to hide their illness also increased the chances of infectionspreading in the enclosed ship environment.Ivan Farnworth recalled how he rolled thethermometer on top of his tongue and convinced the medical officer that he had anaturally red face to pass the medical exam.His buddies then wrapped him in an over-coat and carried his belongings onto the ship.Farnworth recovered from his bout withthe flu on the journey overseas, but probably infected others who may not have been solucky.Farnworth did not sail on the Leviathan, but his story reflected similar effortsmade by ill men on this ship to stay with their unit and avoid reassignment after theirrecovery.Some made it by medical examiners only to fall out of ranks, unable to keepup as their units marched up the gangplank.Alerted to the ruse, medical officersboarded the ship and removed a hundred men before the Leviathan left.Despite theseprecautions, within one day at sea, over 700 men fell ill.Two days later an inferno ragedaboard, according to one navy report. Conditions during the night cannot be visualizedby anyone who has not seen them, the report noted.Sick men vomited where they layand pools of blood from severe nasal hemorrhages of many patients were scatteredthroughout the compartments, and attendants were powerless to escape trackingthrough the mess. Medical attendants tried to nourish patients by giving them water FIGHTING OVERSEAS 129and fruit, which the ill men often threw up immediately. The decks became wet andslippery, groans and cries of the terrified added to the confusion of the applicantsclamoring for treatment, the report continued.15 Seventy died during the voyage, andhundreds of the two thousand ill men unloaded in Brest died within days of the land-ing.The tragic crossing did not interfere with the ongoing war effort, however.For fivedays after the Leviathan landed, overworked black stevedores replenished its coal sup-plies, often sleeping in the same bunks that flu victims had just evacuated.Although theexperience of the Leviathan was unusually severe, during the fall of 1918 deaths at seafrom influenza became a normal part of the journey to France.Once troops left the ship, their journey in many respects had just begun.Nowsoldiers had to travel to their training camps, and then eventually to their battle posi-tions.Moving around was constant in the lives of soldiers, and one enduring memoryfor soldiers was traveling in French boxcars, called Forty and Eights, because theycould hold either forty men or eight horses.Trains transported soldiers traveling longdistances.More commonly, units changed their posting on foot. I would say [France]was the largest country in the world, wrote Private Christian Blumenstein, due to thefact that it seemed so, in all of the hiking that we did when I was there. 16HEADING TO THE FRONT: THE ORGANIZATION OFTHE AMERICAN ARMYEarly decisions reached by General John J.Pershing about the organization ofcombatant divisions reflected his assumptions about how soldiers would fight.TheAmerican square division contained four infantry regiments and three artilleryregiments.Each American division contained 979 officers and 27,082 men, and enoughsupport troops to bring the total near 40,000 troops, making them twice the size ofEuropean Divisions.Pershing s doctrine of open warfare privileged the firepower of theinfantry over the artillery, a preference apparent when Pershing rejected an earlysuggestion by Colonel Charles P.Summerall to double the size of both the infantry andartillery.As a result, these supersized American divisions went into combat with thesame number of artillery troops and guns as smaller European divisions
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