Victory and Virus (1918) by Kathleen Wynn

At that quiet place by the busy road between Waihī and Tauranga I sense long-ago voices drifting like smoke in the thin morning air. I look at the graves, laid out in neat rows before me, find the one I’m searching for, and listen. I’m seven years old again. 

It was spring, 1918.  The war was over and the feeling of victory was in the air. Flags flew. ‘Welcome Home’ banners fluttered.  No longer would my mother and my little sister Mavis and I have to ask God every night to bring our soldiers home safely.  My mother’s two brothers and one sister had been among those on active service and they were back with us joining in the excitement of the celebrations.

But no one had had an easy war.  Uncle Harold came back with only one leg and one of our neighbours’ sons, Jimmy Collins, was so ill with ‘flu he caught on the troopship he had to go to hospital.  My mother’s sister, Aunt Maude, came near to losing her life when the hospital ship, Marguette ¹ on which she was a nursing sister, was torpedoed in the Aegean - she survived ten hours in the sea before being rescued.

For us it was a happy time as life settled back into a normal pattern.  Dad went to work as one of the chief gold assayers and metallurgists at the big Battery at Waikino where the quartz from the Martha Mine, five miles away, was crushed and treated.  Mum had our new baby sister, Alma, to look after as well as Mavis and me. And Mavis and I went to school and when school was out we played. 

Mavis could hold her own with any boy. When my mate, Jackie Brown and I wrestled together, Mavis would watch us and then challenge Jackie.  He was my age, seven, and Mavis was five.  Jack would bashfully agree to a round or two and together they’d wrestle with great gusto.  Mavis always declared herself the victor.

Then, to make sure there was no doubt about her superiority, “Dare you to beat me to the top branch of that tree,” she’d yell.  Up she’d scramble, fast as a feral cat.  “I’m the winner,” she’d declare gleefully while Jackie would come puffing down, muttering, “If she was a boy, I’d show her!”

One of my chores every Saturday was to gather up the leaves that had fallen on our lawns.  I hated this job. One Saturday Jackie and I wanted to work on the mansion we were building in one of Browns’ macrocarpa trees.

“Oh Dad, it’ll take all day to pick up those leaves,” I moaned.

“Let Norm go.  I’ll do the leaves,” piped up Mavis.

Dad looked at Mavis. He looked at me. 

“Go,” he said to me, “And make sure you thank your sister when you get back.” 

I took off like a cat over a garden fence. When I returned in the evening I found all the leaves piled in a neat heap at the rear of the house ready for burning.  I forgot to say thank you to Mavis till Mum reminded me.

A couple of days later when I was at school my head started to ache and my throat felt scratchy. My teacher let me lie down in the sick bay.  At home time, Mavis was at my side.  “I’ll carry your bag, Norm,” she said and picked up my satchel along with her own.  I was feeling so sick by then that I let her trot along beside me, lugging the two school bags as best she could.

At home, Mum put me straight to bed.  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.  My throat was hurting so much now it felt like the coals from Mum’s stove were sliding down my tonsils. I started shivering even though my body felt as though it was on fire.  Mum brought a cold flannel and pressed it to my burning forehead.  Mavis brought me a glass of water which I couldn’t drink until Mum put it to my lips.

My cough got worse during the night. I started gasping for breath. Early in the morning Dad went to fetch Doctor Short. He looked so tired when he arrived.  He’d been up all night attending to patients with the same symptoms as I had.  He and all the other medical people in the town were worked off their feet during that awful time.  They had none of the wonderful antibiotic medicines that exist today to combat the enemy.

“Make him a steam tent,” said Doctor Short. 

Alma’s big cot would be perfect for this.  Mum found a heavy white sheet.  Dad placed the cot alongside the coal range.  He got a huge iron kettle, filled it with water and kept it boiling on the stove. From the spout of the kettle a long tube was led into the cot.  Mum put a big dose of Friar’s Balsam into the boiling water and then it was up to me to breathe the fumes.  A hundred times I thought I was going to die from suffocation.  How any plague could resist that stuff was more than I could understand.

For what seemed like ages I stayed in this steam-tent.  All around us, our neighbours were getting sick just like me. Many were dying.  The town became like a morgue.  All the schools were closed and there was hardly a sound all day.

So deadly was the epidemic there were notices up around the town like this one:  “Any person suffering from or recovering from Influenza deliberately coming in contact with other persons will be dealt with as the laws directs.

Note:  ‘Contact with’ means working with, accompanying or talking to”.

I remember my mother and father discussing this edict, but they reckoned they had never had influenza themselves so my mother made soups and my father took them in thermos flasks to people who were too ill to make their own meals.  Sometimes Mavis went with him.  She told me Dad never let her go into a house.  She just left the thermos on the doorstep. 

When Mum wanted to do her shopping she rattled a kerosene tin that was hanging from a beam on the verandah outside the grocer’s shop.  The grocer came to the door, took her order and put the groceries on the pavement.  Mum collected them and paid by putting her money into a mug with disinfectant in it.

At last the day came when Mum wrapped me up in rugs and I was able to sit on our front verandah in the sunshine to convalesce.  Sometimes, while I was sitting there, I’d see the delivery boys run to the front gate, almost throw the parcels on to the letterbox or on to the top of a gate post and then run off as if they were being chased by mad dogs.

I was almost well again when, one day, Mavis said she was hurting all over.  She started coughing.  Before long she could hardly breathe.   Mum wrapped her in a rug and cradled her in her arms. Dad raced to get Doctor Short. We didn’t have a telephone and although we didn’t live all that far from town where Doctor Short had his surgery we didn’t have a car either.  Dad was quite a sprinter but it still took time.

Mum was trying to get Mavis to take a sip of water when Dr Short arrived on his bicycle.

“She has diphtheria,” Doctor Short said as soon as he saw Mavis. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”

Dad didn’t need to be told twice.  He gathered Mavis in his arms and with Dr Short at his side carried her to the Waihī Hospital. 

At home Mum paced the living room restlessly at first.  Then Alma woke and whimpered. Mum picked her up and wrapped her arms tightly around her.  From force of habit she changed and fed her and then still holding her close she slid into the old rocking chair in the corner of the room, and stared at the door.  Her face was the colour of our walls, a sort of greyish yellow.  She looked at me once and tried to lift her mouth in a smile but it was short-lived.   I could see the tiredness in her eyes and knew enough to keep quiet.

It would have been no more than five hours later that Dad came home.  Mum took one look at him and she knew.

I never saw my sister again.  It was September 1918 and Mavis was five years and two months old.

This tragedy would have been repeated many times over during that terrible year but for us at that moment it seemed our world had ended.  

 Norman, Alma and Mavis Wynn

 Waihī, 1918

About the writer: Kathleen Wynn says, "The idea for Victory and Virus – 1918 comes from my father-in-law’s autobiography. Norman Richard Wynn was born in the gold mining town of Waiuta in 1911, moved to Waihī when he was two, then to Te Aroha for the rest of his life and died in 1979. His family history, which he compiled in 1968, is a treasure trove of information and I have found many a compelling story in it.”

She adds, “I am a freelance writer and editor, a secondary school English teacher at the Teen Parent School, Whangārei (retiring this year, 2011) and a tutor for the North Tec Online Applied Writing Programme. I ghostwrite biographies and reflections mainly for hospice patients, write poetry for children and transcribe recordings of meetings, interviews, etc. In 2009 I compiled a book of my students’ writing, Find Your Voice and a year later brought out the sequel, Speak Out.”

‘Victory and Virus - 1918’ was written for the Memoir & Local History Competition 2011, run annually by the New Zealand Society of Authors (Bay of Plenty Region) with support from Tauranga Writers.