It was a bit too much like the 1918 flu for comfort—a young man, healthy and strong, dying mysteriously within days of falling ill. Moreover, the men at Fort Dix were the perfect age to be infected with a flu like the one that caused the disastrous pandemic of 1918. Only people well over age fifty would have lived through the 1918 flu and could have built up antibodies that could protect them from the virus. That meant that young men, indeed most of the population, would be vulnerable if the virus came again.
