Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the

documentary podcast. Every week we bring you a range of stories from our

presenters and reporters across the world. If you have the time please rate the

documentary on your podcast app and leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. A hundred years ago this year the devastating First World War, the so-called War to end

all wars was in its dying days. The great powers of Britain, France,

Austria, Hungary and Germany were engaged in a tussle for supremacy, which would drag every continent into the mire and mud at the

battlefields. Millions of young men lost their lives. Women were widowed and many children

grew up without ever knowing their father. But something was

amount to cause even more devastation on an unimaginable scale and few countries

would escape it. The doctor came on the Monday,

as I think he knew there was no hope for mother.

Once the infection breached the lungs,

they virtually drowned in their own fluid.

All nurses, everybody you can imagine, was ill and crawling about coping

with the ones who were the most ill. The flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 would

affect most of the world's population and kill an estimated 50

million or more people. If you think about that toll that sort of surpasses

the combined death toll of both of the first and the Second World War.

Over the next hour I'm going to tell you the story of one of the most catastrophic events in human history.

Here we're talking about dramatic speed symptoms which were engulfing.

One man wrote, I wonder whether our race will survive. In that situation, hearing a sneeze would have been

spine chilling. You're listening to pandemic on the BBC World Service. More deaths and burials, total now 42, but it's only to be expected when human beings are

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