“I made money quickly,” explained Charles Sligh, “The requests for flowers were often so great that all the florists in this community sold out of their supplies every day , and the prices of everything back then were very high.”1 Along with florists, funeral directors and attendants were also making a killing during the First World War. “The funeral home that was half a block from me had pine boxes on the sidewalk, filled with piles. Two of my friends and I used to go down there and play on those boxes; it was like playing on the pyramids.”2 Even though business for these professions was booming, it wasn't because of the war. It was the result of an unexpected killer who swept across the world, claiming victims at an unprecedented rate. The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic spread its lethal tentacles across the world, even into the most remote areas of the planet, killing fifty million people or perhaps more. The flu killed more people in one year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century, and it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS killed in twenty-four years.3 Influenza normally kills the elderly and children , but this deadly and abnormal trend has claimed young people, those between twenty and thirty, as its target victims. This was the case of Jules Bergeret. Jules was a “big, strong man” who owned a tavern during the epidemic and celebrated his 32nd birthday on December 11. Within two weeks Jules, his mother, his sister, and his 25-year-old wife all fell victim to the flu, and on December 22 he died.4 The virus left victims bleeding from the nose, ears, and mouth; some coughed so badly that autopsies would later show that their abdominal muscles and rib cartilage had been torn. Casualties......middle of paper......: A Survey, (1927)John. M. Barry, The Great Influenza, The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (New York: Penguin, 2004), 179 “Gauze Masks for men on port keep Flu away,” Stars and Stripes, 1 November 1918. Nancy K Bristow, American Pandemic, The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 193John. M. Barry, The Great Influenza, The Story of History's Deadliest Pandemic (New York: Penguin, 2004), 171Nancy K. Bristow, American Pandemic, The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press , 2012 ), 156Anne A. Colon, “Experiences during the Epidemic,” The American Journal of Nursing (1919): 607“Spanish Influenza,” Journal of the American Medical Association 71(8):660Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (United States: The Modern Library, 1936), 255