Training for the Trenches: A Practical Handbook Based upon Personal Experience During the First Two Years of the War in FranceVickers, Leslie
History
Training for the Trenches: A Practical Handbook Based upon Personal Experience During the First Two Years of the War in France
Vickers, Leslie
Defensive (Military science); Intrenchments; Military hygiene; Offensive (Military science); Siege warfare; World War, 1914-1918
practically all of those who had been inoculated recovered--their
cases being light--while those who had not been inoculated became easy
victims to the disease. As the war has progressed these figures have
been amplified till now there can be no question that the use of
"Inoculation" has made this dread disease a thing to be feared less
than the measles.
[Illustration: FIGURE 9:
Finished trench showing parapet and parados; firing step of earth;
flooring; and shelter dugout under parados.]
Officers adopted different methods in counteracting the teaching of
those who tried to keep the soldiers from submitting. Some of them
argued with the men and told them of the wonderful results that had
been achieved. Others warned their men that they would be left behind
when the battalion went to France. For my own part I adopted the method
of sending for the medical men whose business it was to administer
the "dose." When they were all prepared I marched in my men from some
light fatigue work in which they had been engaged, told them to take
off their coats and roll up their sleeves, and three at a time they
appeared before the waiting surgeons. The business was over in no time.
I marched them off to a place where I could talk to them and then
acquainted them with the advantages of inoculation. The announcement
of forty-eight hours' freedom from drill for the whole company to
let their arms limber up put the few that were disgruntled into good
spirits again, and I was able to report to the O. C. that 100 per cent
of my men were willing to be inoculated--and had been inoculated! So
little did any of them suffer from its effects that they readily lined
up in ten days time when they were to receive the second dose. At
intervals of two or three months in France the operation was repeated
and I never had a single man on the sick list from enteric!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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