Camp Funston and the Great Flu

This stone monument stands at Camp Funston, a sprawling training cantonment built on the grounds of Fort Riley during the First World War. Named for General Frederick Funston, a Kansas Medal of Honor recipient, the camp put roughly fifty thousand soldiers through basic training between nineteen seventeen and nineteen eighteen. General Leonard Wood, the camp commander, ordered this monument built in December of nineteen eighteen to honor the men who trained and shipped out from here.

But Camp Funston carries a darker fame. In March of nineteen eighteen, an army cook here reported sick with fever and aches, and within days hundreds of soldiers had fallen ill. Many historians point to this camp as one of the first recorded outbreaks of the influenza pandemic that would circle the globe and kill tens of millions of people.