40th REINFORCEMENT.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16311, 11 December 1918, Page 7

40th REINFORCEMENT.

INQUIRY INTO EPIDEMIC. A MOTHER’S EVIDENCE. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Dec. 11. Tile inquiry opened before the Parliamentary committee to-day into the outbreak of influenza on the transport which carried tho 40th Reinforcements. Mr. A. S. Malcolm was elected 'chairman.

Mrs. J. R. Gibbons, the first witness, said tho transport carried 1117 men and muses. It was shockingly overcrowded, tho hammocks touched everywhere and the ventilation was sufficient for lino weather but there was none when bad weather came. They had been told the transport carried 1288 men on a previous trip, but on that occasion she carried no" cargo, whereas on this occasion she copied 60,918 feet of cargo and a largo 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 starved while the officers fed as if in a first-class hotel. The transport left with insufficient drugs, the medical officers wore youthful and inexperienced, vaccination in the tropics left the men too weak to resist disease, and the doctors w r ent down as soon as the outbreak occurred. One soldier wrote: “One would have thought the officers were wealthy saloon passengers, while tho men below were convicts or slaves.” Witness’ own'son wrote that the artillery quarters were fairly comfortable, but tho infantry quarters something . dreadful. A soldier whose temperature had been 104 wrote: “They didn’t give us anything to eat except big ship’s biscuits.” Another said: “Deaths are caused through starvation, lack of medicine and attention.” Another wrote:* “There was no medicine, and the men had next to nothing to feed them with, while the officers were feeding on poultry and Jellies and doing nothing to get the hoys better.” Another letter said: “The men jumped overboard in delirium. Most were recovered, but five were recorded dead at sea.”

Captain Port said the transport was making her tenth trip, and left under better conditions than ever previously. She was fitted according to Admiralty instructions, and he coujjl not admit overcrowding.