Hometown: Oostburg, WI
Branch: U.S. Navy
Unit: Great Lakes Naval Training Station
Date of Sacrifice: September 25, 1918 - Great Lakes Naval Training Station, northern Illinois
Age: 21
Conflict: World War I, 1914-1918

In 1914 war erupted in Europe, and the United States remained neutral. In April of 1917 America officially entered the conflict by declaring war on Germany. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Selective Service Act into law on May 18, 1917, requiring all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service.

As a young man, John Lammers worked for the Denmark Condensed Milk Company at its “condensery” located in his hometown of Oostburg, Wisconsin—a small village of Dutch immigrants surrounded by dairy farms. In the early 1900s, prior to mechanical refrigeration, milk that was not quickly consumed or used to manufacture butter and cheese had to be “condensed”—removing most of the water to make it transportable as powdered “evaporated milk.”

At age 21, John Lammers registered for the draft in June of 1918 and enrolled in the United States Navy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a month later. He was required to report to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois. Although it was just a 125-mile train ride south across the state border, the farms of his hometown and the large naval facility near Chicago were worlds apart.

The U.S. Navy established its Great Lakes training facility in July of 1911. With the build-up for war in Europe, by 1918 the facility had 776 buildings on 1,200 acres of land and housed 45,000 sailors.

Lammers trained as a Fireman, Third Class. A fireman from that era was not what we now think of as a firefighter. Ships in the early 1900s were primarily powered by steam from coal-fired boilers. The job of a fireman was hot, dirty, physical, and confined as he stoked and tended the ship’s boilers.

Although World War I (1914-1918) was one of the costliest in history, claiming an estimated 16 million lives, a more deadly fear swept the world in 1918. The “Spanish Influenza” took an estimated 20 million to 50 million lives—about one-fifth of the world’s population at the time. There were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat the flu strain, which was first observed in Europe and claimed some 675,000 American lives.

A nurse at the Navy Hospital in the Great Lakes training facility, Josie Brown, described being overwhelmed with influenza patients: “We didn’t have the time to treat them. We didn’t take temperatures; we didn’t even have time to take blood pressure. We would give them a little hot whisky toddy; that’s about all we had time to do.”

Why was it called the “Spanish Flu?” According to History.com:

Spain was one of only a few major European countries to remain neutral during World War I. Unlike in the Allied and Central Powers nations, where wartime censors suppressed news of the flu to avoid affecting morale, the Spanish media was free to report on it in gory detail. News of the sickness first made headlines in Madrid in late-May 1918, and coverage only increased after the Spanish King Alfonso XIII came down with a nasty case a week later. Since nations undergoing a media blackout could only read in depth accounts from Spanish news sources, they naturally assumed that the country was the pandemic’s ground zero. The Spanish, meanwhile, believed the virus had spread to them from France, so they took to calling it the “French Flu.”

In September of 1918, just two months after John Lammers arrived at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, the Spanish Influenza had arrived as well. He fell ill from the disease, and his parents were notified by telegram that he had died in the Navy Hospital on September 25, 1918.

John Lammers is remembered in his hometown, with Oostburg’s Hartman-Lammers American Legion Post 286 named in his honor.

Sources
Card photo and John Lammers’ draft registration card provided by Ms. Lynn Dirkse
History.com: The United States officially enters World War I
Naval History and Heritage Command: Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois
Encyclopedia of Chicago: Great Lakes Naval Training Station
Naval History and Heritage Command: Influenza of 1918 (Spanish Flu) and the US Navy
The Sheboygan Press, Sep. 26, 1918: Oostburg Jackie is Victim of Spanish Influenza Today
American Produce Review, Volume 44
History.com: Spanish Flu
History.com: Why Was it Called ‘The Spanish Flu?’
National Archives and Records Administration: The Deadly Virus