The effect of World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic on cohort life expectancy of South Australian males born in 1881-1900

Cohort lifetime distribution functions have been estimated for the twenty separate calendar year cohorts of southern Australian males born in 1881-1900 A cohort life expectancy at birth was calculated from each of these distribution functions, and a composite assessment made of the reduction in cohort life expectancy at birth to be paid to both World War ! 1914-1918 and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. through partitioning each cohort, the cohort life expectancy at birth of the subgroup that had overseas military service is estimated to be 85 to 90 for cent of the cohort life expectancy at birth of the subgroup that remained in southern Australia.

Keywords: life expectancy, cohort analysis, war, influenza, male mortality, southern Australia, 1918, World War I, pandemic

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In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was formed by dint of the federation of the six British colonies upon the Australian continent, and became a Dominion in the British Empire. shut cultural, economic and defence ties were maintained with Britain, and the declaration of war upon Germany by Britain on 4 August 1914 immediately l to Australia (as well as of recent origin Zealand, Canada and other nations of the Empire) raising military expeditionary forces for the European conflict. The Australian and novel Zealand forces were organized in November 1914 as the 1st Australian and of recent origin Zealand Army Corps, the ANZACs, and above the period 1915 to 1918 fought below British command in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey in the Middle East in Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula, and upon the Western Front in Europe Many family at the time, including Field Marshal Sir John French the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, wait fored the war to have a short duration. Others, like Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary for War, reflection that the struggle would be a drawn out one. In the end, the Great War lasted four years, with a stupendous loss of life for greatest in quantity participating countries.

The casualty statistics of World War I are generally not absented as rates similar to those shown in Table 1 adapted from Butler (1930 Vol 3: 868 880) Australia and of recent origin Zealand were amongst the nations having the highest death rates. What is not apparent in statistics like these, however, is the impact upon the overall survival of the population from which the military forces were raised, [i]or[/i] part of to the other the concentrated effect of the large increase in the numbers of deaths at those ages relevant to active military service, generally from 18 to 30 years of age The realization of the magnitude of these losse gave rise to the popular mythology in England, and elsewhere, of a not to be found generation of the best and finest youth of the day, with the futility of the war press outed in the works of war author of poemss like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. In Gammage's (1974) history of Australia's involvement in World War I, the title of the work The Broken Years, succinctly characterizes the consequence of the war on individuals, families and Australian society.

With single four Australian World War I veterans now remaining alive (Adelaide Advertiser 2004) it is timely and possible to provide a numerical measure of the expanse of 'the broken years' from one side estimates of cohort life expectancy at birth derived from cohort lifetime distribution functions. The analysis in this paper is restricted to the Australian state of southern Australia, because of the difficulty in obtaining the required horizontal of detail for the whole region Because of South Australia's unique history as a colony of at liberty settlers, the survival pattern of its population may have been slightly more favourable than that of any of the other Australian states, on the contrary it seems unlikely that enlistments from southern Australia had wartime experiences significantly different from those from the other states. In general, the issues presented here are probably broadly representative of the wider Australian experience, and are also probably representative of other nations which had a similar stage of military participation in, and losse from, World War I. 'The experience of a self-contained homogeneous force of the size of the A.I.F [Australian Imperial Force] may be more easily collated than that of the vast armies of Europe and may be of value in illuminating the larger field' (Butler 1930 Vol 1: vi).

In March 1918 the last year of World War I, the first of three waves of an extremely virulent strain of influenza later erroneously named 'the Spanish flu' was first recorded amongst army recruits in Kansas in the United States (Patterson and Pyle 1991) The disease quickly spread via United States company ships to Europe and then to the repose of the world. More worldwide deaths are attributed to this influenza pandemic than the total number of civilian and military deaths occurring during World War I. Influenza cases attributed to this strain were first recorded late in 1918 in Australia with the greatest number of deaths occurring in 1919 There were about 12000 deaths at all ages attributed to the pandemic in Australia in 1919 (Haines 1997) Patterson and Pyle (1991) give the influenza death rate for the general population during the epidemic for Australia, fresh Zealand, Canada and the United States as five deaths for 1000 individuals. Because the influenza pandemic was an abnormal transaction closely connected to World War I, it is appropriate to jointly assess the combined result of the two events upon population survival.