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[World War I, Influenza].

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Reference
158798
Media type
Audio

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Rights Information
Reference
158798
Media type
Audio

This content is for private viewing only. The material may not always be available for supply.
Click for more information on rights and requesting.

Categories
Interviews (Sound recordings)
Oral histories
Sound recordings
Duration
00:00:55
Broadcast Date
Unknown
Credits
RNZ Collection
Ritzema, Barry Charles, Interviewee
New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (estab. 1962, closed 1975)

An brief excerpt of an interview with army instructor, Charles Ritzema, who recalls the influenza epidemic at Trentham camp in 1918.

Interviewer: And were you in Trentham most of those training years during the war?
Ritzema: Yes
Interviewer: Through to 1918?
Ritzema: Yes, to 1918, until the flu came along.
Interviewer: What happened then?
Ritzema: Oh, well, we all went to hospital [chuckles].
Interviewer: Was the camp evacuated then?
Ritzema: No, well the hospitals were full. We didn't... the first intimation I had of such a thing as the flu, uh, there was about out of say a thousand men, about two hundred turned up. And we suggested then to the chief instructor Captain Purdon, that we'd be better off helping in hospitals, rather than worrying about this and we volunteered ourselves to go to hospital and give a hand out. And we... I got the flu then and it just about settled me."

Transcription by Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero