TRANSPORT EPIDEMIC.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume V, Issue 1507, 11 December 1918, Page 9

TRANSPORT EPIDEMIC.

SCOURGE OF FORTIETHS. OPENING OF INQUIRY. EVIDENCE OF SOLDIERS' LETTERS. Press Association. WELLINGTON, December 11. The inquiry, before a Parliamentary Committee, into the outbreak of influenza on the transport which carried Ihe 40th Reinforcement, opened to-day. Mr A. S. Malcolm was elccied chairman. Mrs J. R. Gibbons, the first witness, said that the transport carried 1117 men and ' nurses. She was shockingly overcrowded. The hammocks touched everywhere. The ventilation was sufiicient for line weather, hut there was none when bad weather came. Thev had been told that the transport carried 1288 men on a previous trip, but on that occasion she carried no cargo, whereas on this occasion she carried 60,918 feet of cargo, and a large quantity of spare stores and Red Cross gifts. The only covered-in space was reserved for officers and airmen. Soldiers' letters showed that the soldiers were starved, while the officers were fed as in a firstclass hotel. The transport was left with insufficient drugs. The medical officers were youthful and inexperienced. Vaccination in the tropics left the men 100 weak to resist disease. The doctors went down as soon as the outbreak occurred. One soldier wrote:—"One would think the officers were wealthy saloon passengers, while the men below were convicts or slaves." The witness's own son—who died on the voyage—wrote that the Artillery quarters were fairly comfortable, but the Infantry quarters were something dreadful. A soldier whose temperature had been 10-1, wrote, "They don't give you a thing to eat exceipt big ships' biscuits." Another said, "Deaths are caused through starvation, lack of medicine and attention." Another wrote that there was no medicine. The men had next to nothing to eat, while the officers were feeding on poultry and jellies, and doing nothing to get the boys better. Another letter said that men jumped overboard in delirium. Most of them were recovered, but five were recorded as having died at sea. Captain C. P. Post, a member of the Transport Board, said that the transport was making her tenth trip. She left under better conditions than ever previously. She was fitted according to Admiralty instructions. He could not admit overcrowding.