With Our Fighting Men: The story of their faith, courage, endurance in the Great WarSellers, William E.
History
With Our Fighting Men: The story of their faith, courage, endurance in the Great War
Sellers, William E.
Great Britain. Army -- Military life; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
Mr. Hall's tribute is surely well earned. In this war woman has been
as brave as man or braver. She has given of her best and dearest, she
has worked and prayed and endured. And away out there among our
wounded and dying, far from the excitement of battle, by day and by
night she has given herself--all she is and all she has--to the
service of her country. And in doing so she has earned the undying
gratitude of those to whom she has ministered, and of the land she
loves so well.
* * * * *
I turn now to consider another branch of Red Cross work at the
front--the treatment and prevention of disease.
This has been the "healthiest" war ever undertaken by the British
Army. The great problem of all armies is how to keep out infectious
disease, and never before has the problem been solved. If still not
completely solved, it is certainly in the fair way to solution.
In the campaigns of the forty years previous to this war the
proportion of sick to wounded was twenty-five to one, and of deaths
through disease to death by shot, shell, or bayonet, five to one. In
the South African War the proportion of sick to wounded was over four
to one. We all remember the terrible share that enteric had in the
wastage of that campaign. How the soldiers dreaded it. "Better," they
used to say, "three wounds then one enteric."
Now enteric has almost entirely disappeared. Speaking in February 1915
the Under Secretary of State for War said that so far during the
campaign there had been only six hundred and twenty-five cases in the
British Expeditionary Force and of these only forty-nine had died--a
percentage of deaths less than half as great as that among the victims
of typhoid in the forces still in this country.
Of typhus and cholera there had not been a single case. Strange to
say, one hundred and seventy-five of the men had had measles, and
among these there had been two deaths. One hundred and ninety-six men
had had scarlet-fever and there had been four deaths. How far the
healthiness of the climate affects these figures it is difficult to
say, but it must be remembered that it has been a terribly wet winter.
How far inoculation against typhoid has prevented the disease is also
an interesting question. The doctors have a note of victory in all
their statements on this subject, and the figures seem to justify
their satisfaction.
Certainly preventive measures have counted for much. Early in the war
the medical officers of the various ambulances acted, so far as time
permitted, as sanitary officers, and in later days a well-organised
Sanitary Section has accomplished great things. The cleansing of
camps, the appointments of sanitary offices, the provision of baths,
and, generally, every possible attention to hygiene, have kept our men
exceptionally free from sickness, and no praise can be too high for
the men who have accomplished so much for the British soldier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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