On Aug. 20, 1919, back at Texas A&M after spending the previous football season outside Verdun waiting on the war to end, D.X. Bible sat down to write a few recruiting letters. He needed a good pitch. A lot had changed in the 12 months he’d been gone. Fifty-five Aggies died in the war. Nearly as many in College Station were victims of the Spanish flu, a global epidemic more deadly than the war itself.

An A&M class historian would call the fall of ’18 “the darkest period in the history of the school.” Times demanded someone to rise to the occasion. Bible took up the challenge with a curious plea.

Dear “Chicken,”

Guess you are beginning to show symptoms of the “Pigskin Fever,” if not get around some of the “Old Farmers,” catch a bad case and come back this fall and get fifteen hundred others infected with it. Every one is expected to put politics, business, and even their best girl aside and report September 15, for duty at College Station. Blot out everything that will interfere with this arrangement. ...

“Chicken” was otherwise known as Richard Henry Harrison Jr. He was kin to two U.S. presidents of the same surname in the previous century and second in what would prove to be a long line of Harrisons at A&M. He’d go on to distinguished service as a Bryan physician and the Aggies’ team doctor under Homer Norton and Bear Bryant.

Dr. "Chick" Harrison, one of the first four graduates from the Texas A&M Veterinary School, presents his diploma to Dr. Alvin Price, Dean of the school, as a memento. Texas A&M player Richard Henry "Chick" Harrison played for the Aggies in 1917, left for World War I, and was then summoned back in a letter by legendary coach D.X. Bible. Harrison had also suffered from the Spanish Flu. (Texas A&M)

But all Bible cared about in the fall of ’19 was that Chicken could run, pass and kick, and the Aggies needed every good man they could get.

The story of how Bible got the band back together is both a beloved chapter of A&M lore and a lesson for the trials we face a century later. As bad as the coronavirus has proved to be so far — not to mention the uncertainty of what’s still to come — it simply can’t compare to the twin ravages of war and pandemic. If we somehow survived a flu that claimed 675,000 U.S. lives and maybe as many as a hundred million worldwide, this, too, shall pass.

Of course, it’ll first require a little of the same gumption demonstrated by Chicken and his brood.

“They thought you could do anything you put your mind to,” Sam Harrison said of his grandfather’s generation. “I think it was driven by the war, the Spanish flu. How quickly you could die. Take a brother and leave a sister. An amazing time.

“They just reveled in it.”

First, though, their coach had to sell them on the possibilities.

Dark times

Two years before Bible’s return, in his first season at A&M, the Aggies had posted one of the most remarkable performances in school history. Or anywhere else, for that matter. They went 8-0, outscoring opponents 270-0 and winning the championship of the fledgling Southwest Conference. As invincible as the Aggies had seemed in ’17, the future promised even more.

Then it all came unraveled in the spring of ’18, when Bible enlisted in the Army Air Service. His assistant, Tubby Graves, took over a squad that lost three starters to the war effort days before the season was to start. More lettermen soon followed.

That the Aggies or anyone else played football at all in the fall of 1918 was a little short of a miracle. The War Department had first banned competition, then cleared it only after lobbying from some of the game’s biggest names. Amos Alonzo Stagg, godfather of the sport, argued as late as September that football training “would undoubtedly make better officers” as they already had made “a good account of themselves in France.”

Col. Robert Rees, head of the Student Army Training Corps, in place at A&M and more than 400 college campuses, eventually relented, but with one caveat: Football players were prohibited from leaving campus during the month of October except on Saturday afternoons, effectively eliminating road trips.

The travel rule was relaxed in November, when two trips were allowed, as long as players weren’t off campus more than 48 hours.

The result: cancellation of nonconference and even some conference games, and the substitution of contests against nearby military bases stocked with former players.

Or at least that was the plan until the influenza came roaring back that fall.

The Spanish flu has never really gotten its just due as a global scourge. Whether it was the fact that it coincided with the first world war or simply because of the culture of the times isn’t clear. But wartime censors in the U.S., United Kingdom and France did their part, tamping down news of the flu’s reach and severity to avoid sparking panic or abetting the enemy’s cause. As a result, the story went vastly underreported, particularly compared with news coverage today. Even the nickname is a misnomer. Because Spain, a neutral nation, wasn’t party to the Allied agreement, the breadth of subsequent reports inside its borders made it seem like a hotbed. But it didn’t start there.

A page out of the 1920 Longhorn (Texas A&M Yearbook at the time). Lower right, Chicken (in hospital bed recovering from Spanish Flu). Texas A&M player Richard Henry "Chick" Harrison played for the Aggies in 1917, left for World War I, and was then summoned back in a letter by legendary coach D.X. Bible. Harrison had also suffered from the Spanish Flu. (Texas A&M)

Caused by an H1N1 virus with genes derived from birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first U.S. case was documented at a military base in Kansas. As troops spread worldwide, they packed the flu for the trip. It proved different from other pandemics in that it was more lethal among the young and vigorous, a fact that perplexes researchers to this day. Healthy immune systems overreacted, according to the CDC, often leading to fatal “cytokine storms,” a complication of COVID-19.

The first wave of the flu to hit the U.S. in the spring of ’18 proved to be fairly mild. But its return that fall was devastating: 195,000 U.S. fatalities in October alone, the deadliest month in U.S. history.

Rees quarantined military bases and cities shut down. And still some football teams continued.

The Aggies ended up playing seven games in the fall of ’18, winning six. Rice also played seven games. Baylor played six, SMU five and Texas nine, going undefeated.

An ill-timed rush to “a return to normalcy” — the 1920 campaign slogan of Warren G. Harding made it a catch-phrase ever since — probably contributed to the flu’s third deadly wave. The 1919 Stanley Cup Finals proved a fatal example. Four days after the Montreal Canadiens and Seattle Metropolitans called it a draw after several players collapsed on the ice and others were unable to play at all because of high fever, the Canadiens’ “Bad Joe” Hall died from the flu. Both teams attended his funeral.

Five months after a hockey star’s death from a global pandemic, it wouldn’t have seemed unreasonable to think maybe football wasn’t all fun and games anymore. Especially if you’d just returned from a war. Given the times, Sam Harrison says he’s sure his grandfather and other lettermen were “disenchanted.”

Bible no doubt had his work cut out for him.

Many changes have been made at A. and M. which will, I am sure, make your stay with us more pleasant and profitable. Our outlook for a successful season is indeed encouraging. The old stars among the Alumni have promised to come back from time to time and give us systematic help. A re-birth of college spirit has come into the hearts of every A. and M. man, and I’m convinced that the team that beats us will be the champion of the Southwest. ...

Chicken’s loyalty

The freshman class picture of Chick Harrison. Texas A&M player Richard Henry "Chick" Harrison played for the Aggies in 1917, left for World War I, and was then summoned back in a letter by legendary coach D.X. Bible. Harrison had also suffered from the Spanish Flu. (Texas A&M)

At the time he came up with his recruiting pitch, Bible was still two months shy of his 28th birthday. Still early in a brilliant Hall of Fame career that took him from LSU to A&M to Nebraska and finally Texas. Revered in both Austin and College Station, he remains the only man to serve as head coach of both rivals. An occasional new challenge seemed to invigorate him. Which might also explain three marriages.

The tone of Bible’s letter also suggested at least a wry sense of humor. Suggesting “Pigskin fever” to infect others might have seemed in poor taste given the fatal reach of La Grippe. Family members believe Chicken suffered a bout himself. But Bible probably understood the audience he was playing to.

Chicken’s father, Richard “Dick” Harrison, class of ’92, went on to become mayor of Bryan. Pretty good poker player, too. Rooster, as Dick was also known, won a tract of land that his great grandson, Sam, class of ’85, is just now developing. Sam, 57, a retired urologist and generous benefactor to his alma mater, like his late father before him, comes by his loyalty on both branches of the family tree. His great grandfather on his mother’s side, William Markham Sleeper, was a member of A&M’s first graduating class in 1879. The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas was so rawboned then, students slept in tents. Sleeper’s tent mate one year was Temple Lea Houston, Sam Houston’s baby boy.

Family members can’t say for sure what impact Bible’s letter might have had on Chicken. His bloodlines at the school were important. Maybe he’d have come back to play anyway. He never said. What they can attest to, though, was his loyalty to the university and football program. Even when he could no longer see the field in front of him, he went to games just to hear the roar. And when he could no longer do even that, he listened to the radio, living and dying on each play.

And at 80, not long before his death in 1981, he could still drop-kick a football over his house.

A letter from D.X. Bible and photo of "Chick" Harrison. Texas A&M player Richard Henry "Chick" Harrison played for the Aggies in 1917, left for World War I, and was then summoned back in a letter by legendary coach D.X. Bible. Harrison had also suffered from the Spanish Flu. (Texas A&M)

Chances are Bible was just preaching to the choir in his letter to Chicken.

If any information is desired I shall be glad to furnish it. Let me have a letter at once stating you will report September 15th, ready to fight for victory, fair and square, hard but clean.

Remember September 15th, and also remember, we want you, we need you, must have you.

This is the motto for 1919: “They Shall Not Pass.”

Cordially, your friend,

D.X. Bible

The ’19 Aggies, recovering from war and worse, responded to their young coach’s call. They would retroactively be awarded a co-national title by the Billingsley Report and the National Championship Foundation based on a 10-0 season in which, for the second time in three years, they yielded not a single point. Legend has it no one so much as crossed midfield against the Aggies. They made a prophet out of Bible.

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