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Updated: May 23, 2025
They put oil on them, and wrapped them round with cotton-wool, and tied labels to their tunics with the name of that new disease "trench-foot." Those medical officers looked serious as the number of cases increased. "This is getting beyond a joke," they said. "It is pulling down the battalion strength worse than wounds."
Shell-holes dotted our path everywhere. Apart from the rotten conditions, the journey proved most interesting; vehicles of all kinds, from motor-buses to wheelbarrows, were rushing backwards and forwards, taking up supplies and returning empty. Occasionally we passed ambulance cars, with some poor fellows inside suffering from frost-bite, or "trench-foot" as it is generally called out here.
There is so little chance to wash towels that they soon get unusable. In the way of wearing apparel, socks are always good. But, girlie, make 'em right. That last pair sent me nearly cost me a court martial by my getting my feet into trench-foot condition. If you can't leave out the seams, wear them yourself for a while, and see how you like it.
It was not until the end of the winter, when oil was taken up to the trenches and rubbing drill was ordered, two or three times a day, that the malady of trench-foot was reduced, and at last almost eliminated. The spirit of the men fought against all that misery, resisted it, and would not be beaten by it. A sergeant of the West Riding Division was badly wounded as he stood thigh-high in water.
Rubber boots reaching to the thigh were issued, sparingly at first, but gradually until every man had a pair, and whale oil and spare socks were available in large quantities to aid in the fight against trench-foot. Nothing, however, could prevent the mud, which lay a foot deep along the gangways of the trench.
The ranks were depleted by men suffering from fever, pleurisy, jaundice, and stomach complaints of all kinds, twisted up with rheumatism after lying in waterlogged holes, lamed for life by bad cases of trench-foot, and nerve-broken so that they could do nothing but weep. The nervous cases were the worst and in greatest number. Many men went raving mad.
I have told about lice and rats and mine-shafts there. Another misery came to torture soldiers in the line, and it was called "trench-foot." Many men standing in slime for days and nights in field boots or puttees lost all sense of feeling in their feet. These feet of theirs, so cold and wet, began to swell, and then to go "dead," and then suddenly to burn as though touched by red-hot pokers.
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