Armistice Day - remembering the 1918 influenza pandemic

Sound file

Those suffering from influenza had little interest in celebrating the end of the First World War.

This clip requires Flash Player 7 or higher. Download latest version of Flash Player.
 
Click on arrow to play (610kb).

Transcript

[Woman speaking] Well, I was very bad in bed. I worked at dressmaking, and I just fell on the table and [was] taken home in a taxi, and I ... had to sit up in bed when the war was over and wave a little flag; I couldn't go out to celebrate. My boyfriend was away at the war at the time.

[Woman speaking] And it came, Armistice Day. I went to town early that morning – a friend came and drove me in – as we simply had to have more hospitals, more room to nurse cases. I got into town just before 9 and the bells started ringing. I said, 'Whatever is going on?' 'It's peace,' they said, 'Peace!' How I loathed the sound of it. Everything shut up, and I could get nothing, not a thing until tomorrow. And that was just the day that I'm sure cost hundreds of lives. But simply had those people been able to be taken in to those hospitals that day, they might have been spared. You couldn't do a thing about it; it was peace and everyone was celebrating.

Radio New Zealand Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero. Any re-use of this audio is a breach of copyright. To request a copy of the recording, contact Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero. Reference: clip from The great plague, 1967 radio documentary by Jim Henderson, TCDR562

How to cite this page: 'Armistice Day - remembering the 1918 influenza pandemic', URL: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/sound/armistice-day-influenza-pandemic, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 26-Mar-2009

Community contributions


There are currently no community contributions for this page - please fill out the form to the right if you would like to add your story

What do you know?

Can tell us more about the information on this page?
Perhaps you have a related experience you would like to share?

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Comments will be reviewed prior to posting. Not all comments posted. Tell me more...