Residents of the town of Gatooma also set up their own drive, which funded the purchase of two more planes, Gatooma Nos. 1 and 2. The black elite in the towns donated to the settlers' patriotic funds and organisations, and also set up their own. A war fundraising tea organised by black Salisburians in early March 1915 boasted entertainment in the form of a black choir, as well as the presence of Taylor and a junior native commissioner, each of whom gave speeches in English, Sindebele and Shona. Rural black people, by contrast, did not generally understand the concept of donating money to war funds, and misinterpreted encouragement to do so as being threatened with a new tax. When the Matabele chief Gambo began collecting war donations from his people in early 1915, also urging other chiefs to do the same, he took care to thoroughly explain the war fund's purpose and the voluntary nature of contributing, but some villagers still misunderstood and came to believe they would have livestock confiscated if they did not give money. The Company ultimately sent officials around the countryside to clarify the matter. The Kalanga, a small community in the south-west that provided a disproportionately large number of volunteers for the Rhodesia Native Regiment, also proved conspicuous for their extremely generous financial donations; in June 1915, they collectively donated £183, "a staggering sum", the historian Timothy Stapleton comments, to the Prince of Wales Fund. The 1918 flu pandemic, often referred to at the time as "Spanish flu", spread quickly into Southern Rhodesia from South Africa in October 1918. A week after the first case was reported in Salisbury, over 1,000 people were infected. Public buildings in the towns were converted into makeshift hospital wards, appeals were put out for trained nurses to attend the sick, and soup kitchens were set up to feed children whose parents were too ill to look after them. Newspapers in the colony published basic instructions on how to deal with the disease. The mine compounds, where hundreds of black labourers lived and worked together in close proximity, were worst affected. The whole country was ultimately infected, with even the most remote villages reporting deaths. Many members of the Rhodesia Native Regiment were infected, and 76 of them died from the disease having survived the war. By the time the pandemic had ended in Southern Rhodesia around mid-November 1918, thousands had been killed. News of the armistice on 11 November 1918 reached Southern Rhodesia the same day, and was announced to the town of Salisbury by the repeated blowing of the klaxon at the Castle Brewery.