Last Breath

At a meeting of the San Diego Rowing Club on Thursday, March 13, the officers held a discussion regarding Freeth’s long stay in the hospital. Club secretary Charles Weldon had been giving them regular updates on Freeth’s condition.¹ Freeth had battled the flu for eight weeks—a nearly miraculous period of time for a disease that could kill a healthy person within twenty-four hours if pneumonia took hold. Death rates around the country had been staggering. When the flu hit the army’s Camp Grant in Illinois, for example, fourteen soldiers died on Tuesday, October 1, 1918; thirty died on Wednesday;