Throughout the centuries, deadly diseases have decimated the soldiers but many were a consequence of defecation
An army could lose more soldiers to disease than to the deadly actions of its enemy in the majority of the eras covered by military history. Over the centuries, millions of deaths in the military have been attributable to diseases, notably those that are insect- or water-borne. Unfortunately, armies decimated by the illness typically brought the seeds of their demise with them in the form of shoddy field sanitation practices.
After all, a properly supplied army of 10,000 men could produce about four tons of fecal waste every day; in the absence of sufficient latrines that were carefully placed away from water sources and field kitchens, it would only be a matter of time before potentially deadly and debilitating diseases started ravaging the ranks. Because of this, there is solid evidence to support the claim that the basic latrine was just as crucial to the success of a military campaign as effective artillery, logistical support, sufficient ammunition, and well-trained infantry.
According to Historynet, protecting soldiers from disease vectors is now such a command priority in the U.S. Army that field sanitation doctrine is taught and implemented in every unit and at every level of military training. Proper sanitary regulations, however, are a relatively recent phenomenon that only began to get official support and attention following the senseless casualties of the Spanish-American War and the Civil War. Traditionalists in the military steadfastly fought for reform. While medical officers lobbied for better sanitary procedures, tactical commanders generally did not share their worries or comprehend the relevant science, which frequently had deadly repercussions.
The British Army’s sanitary commissioner in India was a military surgeon who wrote in 1868 that “The recommendations of Medical Officers did not always meet with the attention they now do”. The risks of such blatant disregard were made painfully obvious to the British Army during the Crimean War, when, according to official sources, it lost 25 times as many soldiers to disease as to enemy activity.
To varied degrees, the importance of a consistent water supply and effective field sanitation has always been understood, and no commander deserving of his rank has ever purposefully disregarded those essentials, especially if his army was stationed in one place. A force that was immobile for more than a few days was at a high risk of decimation from disease if necessary precautions weren’t taken.
Nobody questioned the fact that a military encampment could easily become a pestilential fever zone if there were too many soldiers present in a small area. The issues that unavoidably arose when appropriate sanitation was disregarded, however, were not as well understood in the centuries prior to the germ theory’s eventual acceptance. Cholera, typhus (when it first appeared around 1450), cryptosporidiosis, and dysentery in both its amoebic and bacillary forms were the biggest concerns.
There were numerous examples of the danger caused by insufficient sanitation. Typhoid was an epidemic that supposedly killed over a third of Athens’ population over a six-year period beginning in 430 BCE. Because up to a fifth of Henry V‘s army had been killed or rendered invalid by dysentery during the earlier Harfleur siege, his legendary triumph at Agincourt in 1415 was all the more remarkable. Dysentery, which was rightfully dreaded for its high fatality rate, was such a common issue in siege warfare throughout the medieval era that it was referred to as “the siege disease” or “the bloody flux.” In fact, after the Siege of Meaux in 1422, Henry V himself passed away from the illness.
In the modern era, disease rather than combat was to blame for up to two-thirds of all fatalities during the American Civil War. The most deadly illness for certain military members was diarrhea, the soldier’s age-old enemy that was responsible for up to a fifth of all non-combat fatalities. A legendary low point in the U.S. Army’s history occurred during the Spanish-American War when the ratio of disease-related mortality in the training camps to combat-related deaths was almost seven to one. The greatest destructor of armies throughout history has always been unchecked disease, and most disease outbreaks in military contexts were caused by the mundane issue of how to handle human excrement.
Military personnel have always discussed this aspect of warfare in a more straightforward and unadorned manner than most historians. Although soldiers are used to a hard life, this aspect of military life was significant because of how frequently it made their suffering worse. In wartime situations, what was typically a straightforward and private task became challenging, very public, and occasionally terribly hazardous. No one ever forgot what it was like to live for weeks or months without a usable latrine. Troops despised it, laughed about it, made crude jokes about it, and even wrote poetry about it. The subject comes up in soldier accounts from 1800 to 1945 in every era, with every army, and in every fight.
Hard fighting under challenging circumstances was a hallmark of the Italian Campaign in World War Two. Fighting in Monte Cassino was a horrible idea. The only cover that could be built was in the form of sangars, fortified positions built from walls of rock and stones since rocky terrain hindered the building of combat positions or trenches below ground level. Even these were questionably effective shelters since German artillery had pinpointed the approaches to the mountain so precisely that it was difficult to move during the day without incurring quick and lethal fire.
In frontline circumstances when artillery and direct small-arms fire were regular dangers, a man who emerged from his hole or trench to relieve himself might not survive long enough to pull his pants back up.
They were unable to leave their positions when they suffered attacks of diarrhea due to the abysmal conditions at Passchendaele. The soldiers slept in mud-filled shell holes since it was impossible to dig traditional trenches in the water-logged land. The liquid excrement from soldiers’ defecations was thrown over the edge of their holes in bully beef tins.
In the British ranks, diarrhea was widespread, frequently as a result of contaminated drinking water.
In fact, finding potable water on the battlefields of World War I was a nightmare. Rotating units entered the trenches, and for the days or weeks that they were there, the only water resupply they received came from what could be sent forward to them at night. When that failed, they drank whatever water was at hand. It was always the last resort, but in times of need, fastidiousness was not tolerated.
Simple logistical tasks became difficult due to the lengthy combat on the Somme in 1916, and difficult tasks were occasionally impossible.
Gas gangrene, also called “clostridial myonecrosis” is an infection brought on by bacteria that causes the tissue it infects to release a foul-smelling gas, hence the name.
Armies attempted to move supplies and water to the men in the lines even in the harsh conditions of the World War I trenches, but many British soldiers claimed that although tea was transported every day, it did so in two-gallon petrol cans, each of which carried a different disease.
It was simply one more source of anguish for the men on the line in a situation that swiftly beyond all known thresholds of misery.
Even as late as the early 20th century, most militaries were still unable to efficiently provide designated containers for a water refill, despite how crucial clean water is to an army’s health. Even during World War II, there was little uniform military reaction to the issue despite the dangers that came with tainted water being clearly identified and understood.
When the water arrived in five-gallon cans that had formerly carried diesel fuel, U.S. Marines battling in the oppressive heat and dust of Peleliu in the Palau Islands experienced the same physical afflictions as had their forebears at Passchendaele. Men who were exhausted to the point of desperation drank the polluted water even though they knew it would make them violently ill. No amount of scrubbing or scouring ever seemed to entirely remove the fuel residue from the cans. They were left with no other option due to the logistics and supply chain’s lack of foresight.
Proper latrine facilities were especially important because of the incidence of diarrhea in the field, but in front positions, these facilities were rarely secure or sanitary enough. Even areas in the front’s rear that were out of the enemy’s guns’ range were not completely safe because artillery shells made no allowances for times when a man might be incapacitated by a call to nature.
Of course, having diarrhea during the height of war is never a good idea. A British commander came across himself in just such a circumstance during the Battle of Talavera in the Peninsular War in 1809, with both sides strongly engaged and the action well started. He felt he couldn’t walk to the back to relieve himself because he was the commander of an artillery battery under heavy fire and didn’t want his soldiers to think he was trying to flee the fierce cannonade of the French guns.
A static battlefield was stifling in hot weather, which aggravated the disease vectors of bacteria and vermin. A terrible atmosphere of heat, dust, and flies on a biblical scale, as well as the mud and cold that other battles of that war were infamous for, typified the combat at Gallipoli in 1915. The fought battleground was covered in flies, which were brought on by human waste and decaying bodies. The flies got on the men, the equipment, the food, and the ground.
The flies deposited eggs, which soon developed into maggots and infected the trench floors with their rotting corpses that were barely an inch or two deep in the dirt.
The soldiers called this severe form of diarrhea “the Gallipoli Trots” or “the Gallipoli Gallop” because it was spread by flies that fed on decaying bodies and human waste. The slit latrines, already insufficient and overused, turned into a smelly nightmare as more and more soldiers began to have dysentery.
In addition to the full spectrum of gastrointestinal illnesses like amoebic dysentery and cholera, soldiers who fought in the jungle campaigns in Burma, the Philippines, New Guinea, and other theaters of the Pacific War in World War II frequently suffered from malaria, dengue fever, and other mosquito-borne diseases. Sick soldiers were moved to the back when it was practical, but there were times when a medical evacuation was just not an option. It was normal to witness wasted, fatigued soldiers carrying their weapons and continuing the battle while having the seats cut out of their uniform pants due to virtually uncontrollable diarrhea.
Similar strategies were used during Napoleon’s Grande Armée’s withdrawal from Moscow in the previous century, in 1812. Men resorted to cutting apart the seams of the backs of their pants to be able to defecate without having to lower their breeches because of how difficult it was to do so in the bitter cold of the Russian winter. Individuals who did not use this tactic occasionally found themselves in dire situations.
The ordinarily straightforward process of relieving oneself may become nearly impossible for German soldiers on the Eastern Front during World War II. Even partially stripping off the layers of clothing that saved one from freezing to death made every bowel movement a taxing operation, and exposed flesh froze alarmingly quickly. Frost-numbed fingers could not even manage buttons. This situation still exists in some climes today, and many modern soldiers have cited having a flushing toilet in a warm room as one of life’s greatest comforts after spending months in the field.
Modern armies started standardizing their health doctrines to meet the need for adequate latrine facilities around the end of the 19th century after realizing the importance of field sanitation. Any commander “who does not give this subject the proper attention must necessarily be a failure”, the U.S. Army warned its officers in 1918.
To that purpose, instructions were provided on how to build and use latrine facilities in a range of tactical settings. They included more permanent facilities built to accommodate a big encampment, as well as simple straddle trenches, temporary box latrines with burn-out pits intended for extended usage, and others. The hazards to water sources and the threat of fly cross-contamination were well acknowledged, and a large portion of the medical advice was focused on reducing those particular risks.
When combined with the development of antibiotics, these efforts were mainly successful and directly contributed to the drop in disease-related deaths during the 20th-century wars. But, in the chaos of the battlefield, it was frequently impossible to follow officially required and medically prescribed procedures. In those cases, soldiers were forced to make do with their best efforts.
The major military campaigns of history have succeeded or failed for a variety of reasons, but the ordinary but absolutely essential like clean water and well-planned latrines are frequently ignored in all the important aspects of strategy, logistics, maneuver, and battle. Armed forces that neglected these two necessities usually discovered that they had produced a foe that was more dangerous than any enemy they had encountered across the battlefield.
