Conclusion
Those who served the United States in uniform during World War I believed that their country had gone to war for a reason. They believed that they were serving to help win the war, and that in the struggle, they might be put in mortal peril. They knew that they might be "called upon to die" for the nation's sake.
When the epidemic was reaching its height, statistics quickly confirmed the predictions about crowds with which scientists had warned officials at many levels of government. Yet, unknowing thousands of soldiers still were crammed into troop trains, squeezed too many to a seat as trains traveled to the East Coast. By the time some trains reached their destinations, corpses of young soldiers were stacked in the baggage cars. Similarly, overcrowded troop ships still sailed the Atlantic for a week or more. By the second day out, the first of the dead were being buried at sea. When the ships arrived in England or France, the freshest corpses were unloaded, and the sickest men were brought to hospital wards. The rest of the men, many of them infected and contagious, began their march eastward.
Had these men - had the civilians who were dying only because they had attended rallies or parades - learned that many Mayors and Governors, and certainly their President, had been urged to save their lives just by doing things differently, what would they have thought? That they were being "called upon to die" for the sake of their country?
C. LeRoy Baldridge, Poster for Fourth Liberty
Loan Campaign (Pvt. Treptow's Pledge), 1918
Temple University Libraries,
Digital Exhibits, The War on the Walls
Note: Private Martin Treptow of Wisconsin was
an Army courier, killed by machine guns while
delivering a message. In his pocket diary were
found the words quoted above.
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