Sickness at Camp Thomas

As the summer of 1898 wore on, sickness in Camp Thomas grew amid extremely unfavorable sanitary conditions. Soldiers lacked bathing facilities, drinking water from Crawfish Springs was contaminated when teamsters bathed in the creek before filling their barrels, animal corrals were left unclean, and refuse from the men was dumped into shallow pits behind crude company kitchens that became open cesspools. The litter attracted millions of flies and evidently contributed to the spread of typhoid fever. Typhoid fever, dysentery, and malaria were the prevalent diseases, with typhoid causing the majority of deaths. One examining board concluded that tent flooring would have prevented much sickness and that both the soil and water were polluted, while soldiers complained that their drinking water was terrible. Hospitals, doctors, and nurses were inadequate, leaving care and treatment scarce, and conditions in an "incurable ward" were so dire that the living were said to be nearly indistinguishable from the dead. The former Park Hotel at Chickamauga, bought for $10,000.00 by Mrs. Mary T. Leiter of Chicago and given to the government for the comfort of the boys at Camp Thomas, became Leiter Hospital, but by August its 255 beds crowded a space meant for no more than 130. Tents were added and medical officers doubled, and a second general hospital, Sternberg, opened near Wilder Tower in August with 750 beds and a staff more than twice Leiter's. That month Secretary of War Russell A. Alger ordered the camps to begin closing, with sick soldiers in Sternberg Hospital and Leiter Hospital sent home on furlough, while other troops were transferred or discharged. During this time 425 soldiers died in Camp Thomas, more than were killed in combat during the four months' war with Spain, and a postwar investigation determined that over 750 soldiers died there, while many others suffered lifelong complications from typhoid fever.

Chickamauga, Georgia · United States