As the City of Wilmington marshaled its resources for the deadly struggle to alleviate suffering during the pandemic of 1918, branches of local government rendered unwavering service combating the so-called Spanish Influenza. One of the most challenged governmental operations, the ambulances, toiled under great strain. The division’s never-ending, tough work made even tougher by unprecedented “heart-breaking calls” left the crews reeling.
The City of Wilmington started contracting with the Phoenix Fire Company in 1877 to operate the emergency transport system. Forty-one years later as the calendar turned to a tragic year, 1918, the Phoenix Ambulances struggled with a heavy workload, the City’s booming industries pushing everything to the limit to meet war demand. Then once autumn arrived the virus crept into the City as doctors started reporting cases of a mysterious infection. Some of these were so severe that they needed hospitalization.1
Toward the end of September, a handful of emergency calls turned into an unimaginable influx. Around the hospital at Ninth Street and Delaware Avenue, the ambulance gong clanged continuously night and day, the units hardly able to carry all the sick. Consequently, people started pressing their automobiles into service, their mission being indicated by Red Cross flags, as they brought “men wrapped up in blankets to the hospital.”
The calls surpassed what the City could handle so a plea to help the overburdened system went out on October 5, asking for assistance to increase medical transportation capacity. The Fame Fire Company, another city volunteer firefighting organization, promptly put one if its wagons in service as an ambulance, the men removing the hose and placing mattresses in the bed of the truck. And the police patrol unit was pressed into duty.
Additional units came from outside the City. The Delaware College in Newark volunteered its vehicle, and the Board of Health arranged to use the New Castle County Hospital Ambulance stationed at Farnhurst, along with the “federal ambulance from the guards’ barrack.”2
The significantly increased force went to work immediately. They made trips all day and night at top speed, without pause, one of the most frequent sights being “an ambulance dashing frantically up the street,” wrote the News Journal.
Crewing the college unit, the first day, student Wayne Brewer, spent practically all-night Thursday carrying patients to hospitals. Other students included Robert L. Barkley, Marion P. Boulden, L L. Cobb, Thomas W. Mulroony and J. J. Harold Kolhman, according to the Newark Post. 3
The Phoenix vehicles made 632 calls as of October 16, 1918. George McVey and Joseph Bonifacino, Jr. chauffeured these wagons “on the day and night cruises of mercy and the attendant sights and scenes of the plagues harvest touched the extremes of human compassion,” the Morning News reported. “Their visits were often to homes containing the dead, dying and near dead in scenes of squalor where the healthy would be taxed to live. . . .They spoke of unspeakable sadness.” 4
Finally, on October 22, the Phoenix crew had its first quiet day in weeks, responding to only one call. The men had worked hard the past three weeks, and the respite was a treat to them a reporter advised.
The scenes that unfolded 102-years-old are unimaginable. Here’s how the news journal described those dark, dark days: “In these stress times of war and pestilence this fact is not to be overlooked – that those who man the ambulances deserve no less credit than those overseas who man the guns. In the trying day and night duty there had been no faltering or murmuring,” an Evening Journal reporter wrote. They had “steeled their emotion of compassion so that it wouldn’t interfere with the course of their duty.”
The influenza severely hit the ambulance service as the volunteer crew did what they could. At a time when people in the City stayed home to escape the virus, the ambulance attendants did what they had to – rushing into the homes of the sick and infected to offer aid.
The next year, at the request of the Phoenix Fire Company, the Wilmington Police Department assumed responsibility for running the ambulances. Beginning November 17, 1919, the police ambulance, a dark green Cadillac with a Red Cross on the side and the words police ambulance on the body, went into service. The fire company sold the old Phoenix units, as Wilmington Police Chief Black appointed Officers Graham and Robinson to serve as drivers and Grussemeyer and Norman W. Brown worked as police attendants.
The strain the highly contagious virus put on Wilmington’s volunteer fire companies had been enormous. But, the men enlisted on the very front lines of this deadly struggle in Wilmington had stayed strong, holding up under the constant pressure of unparalleled stress and uncertainty while constantly facing death. Now, 102-years-later, it’s not unlike today as first responders all across the nation battle another virus.
For more on the Spanish Influenza in Wilmington See
Wilmington Nurses Paid a Heavy Toll
For more articles see the Delmarva Spanish Flu Archive.