COMPASS VESTA CASE WITH A DIFFERENCE

[Paul S.]

Here's the real story: 48 men KIA or DoW and 49 dead of disease.

214 sent home due to disease!

That was the true scandal of the war.

Correction: '214 sent home due to wounds or disease!'

Remember too, that this was decades before the discovery of penicillin. Antibiotics had not been discovered. Back then, diseases such as malaria,, typhus, cholera, and dysentery were common, particularly in military camps in which hygiene was often 'spotty'.

A true perspective of 'disease casualty rates' and the advancement of military medicine and sanitation comes from looking at the numbers and percentages from the Crimean War and the US Civil War, and then WWI and WWII.

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[Gil Boyd]

I note nothing mentioned about sexually transmitted diseases, but those in themselves took tally for many a soldier abroad. I saw close up a Doctors kit from those times, and blimey not something you would want to use, without a general aneasthetic.
Reminds me as a young soldier being played the Syphillis video from the U.S. on men returning from Vietnam, whilst we were in Malaya, no comparison I know, but it was meant to shock us, and it certainly had an effect.
I went straight down to Jahore Bahru that night with a bunch of mates and had a bloody good massage!

[Surpmil]

Correction: '214 sent home due to wounds or disease!'

Remember too, that this was decades before the discovery of penicillin. Antibiotics had not been discovered. Back then, diseases such as malaria,, typhus, cholera, and dysentery were common, particularly in military camps in which hygiene was often 'spotty'.

A true perspective of 'disease casualty rates' and the advancement of military medicine and sanitation comes from looking at the numbers and percentages from the Crimean War and the US Civil War, and then WWI and WWII.

Good catch on the numbers, but the diagnosis remains the same: generalized obtusity and catastrophic unpreparedness.

As for military camps, very topical considering the 1918-19 "Spanish Flu" and it's mysterious origins: one interesting theory. It may or may well not be relevant, but there were about 100,000 men of the Chinese Labour Corps in France IIRC.

Certainly there has been a slow continuum of improvement since the US Civil War for example. At the same time, I'm personally convinced that there are many herbals that are highly effective, and as far as war was concerned sadly a great many men and limbs could probably have been saved that weren't.

I don't believe the authorities ever accepted the fact, but there's plenty of evidence that malaria was found in certain regions of NW France in 1917-18 and maybe earlier. It's been suggested it came with the Indian Army Corps in 1915, but there were so many British reservists who had served in India there as well probably no one could say where it came from.

[Paul S.]

Good catch on the numbers, but the diagnosis remains the same: generalized obtusity and catastrophic unpreparedness.

As for military camps, very topical considering the 1918-19 "Spanish Flu" and it's mysterious origins: one interesting theory. It may or may well not be relevant, but there were about 100,000 men of the Chinese Labour Corps in France IIRC.

Certainly there has been a slow continuum of improvement since the US Civil War for example. At the same time, I'm personally convinced that there are many herbals that are highly effective, and as far as war was concerned sadly a great many men and limbs could probably have been saved that weren't.

I don't believe the authorities ever accepted the fact, but there's plenty of evidence that malaria was found in certain regions of NW France in 1917-18 and maybe earlier. It's been suggested it came with the Indian Army Corps in 1915, but there were so many British reservists who had served in India there as well probably no one could say where it came from.

RE: Malaria -- One needs to remember that there were also African troops serving with the British and French forces. Much of the ANZAC in 1916 had just come from Egypt, Gallipoli, and Palestine as well. Some BEF battalions (regulars) also had been on service in India and elsewhere before going to France. As for AEF, the late arrivals, Malaria, while not common, was also a problem in the US at that, pre-DDT, time.