As September 1918 came to an end, the men from Camp Merritt, today Cresskill, N.J., had boarded the world’s largest troop ship, the 950-foot-long USS Leviathan, at Hoboken, for the passage to France. Unfortunately, the ship also carried the same flu virus that had been killing troops at Camp Dix for two weeks.

Some, like Henry Murdoch from New Mexico, were lucky to escape the hell that was to be the voyage to France.