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.Overcrowding, poor personal hygienic habits, and theconstant shuffling of the soldier population all created the perfect conditions for infec-tious diseases to flourish.Recruits, complained one medical officer, were shifted fromcamp to camp by the thousands, taking with them such diseases as they were incubat-ing, thus infecting all camps. 1 Whipping an army into shape quickly meant long daysof training and marching in all kinds of inclement weather.Exposed to the elements dayafter day, exhausted soldiers slept fitfully in poorly ventilated and overcrowdedbarracks.These men were easier victims for infections, and the infections came, noted this same doctor.Controlling outbreaks of airborne diseases such as measles, influenza andpneumonia proved the biggest challenge for the Army Medical Corps.As one medicalofficer aptly predicted, respiratory, not intestinal, disease will be the scandal of theWorld War. 2 These concerns prompted medical officials to propose some changes inthe training regime and living environment.Gorgas, now the Surgeon General of theArmy, recommended building more barracks to reduce overcrowding and creatingdetention camps to quarantine men exposed to infectious diseases.He also urged thearmy to modify the training schedule to reduce exhaustion among newly inductedtroops.Building up their physical stamina, he reasoned, would make them less suscep-tible to infectious diseases.These recommendations received scant consideration in aWar Department determined to send large numbers of trained troops overseas as quicklyas possible.Lengthening the training regime threatened to delay the stream of Americantroops headed for France, an unacceptable military and political alternative in 1917.Barrack construction lagged throughout the war as the military, in competition withcivilian businesses for scarce resources, faced problems securing the materials andlabor needed to build an adequate number of structures.Large numbers of troops train-ing in southern training camps never set foot in a barracks stateside, living instead intent cities meant to serve as temporary quarters while barracks were being built.The cost of ignoring this medical advice became immediately apparent in 1917when epidemics of measles, mumps, scarlet fever, meningitis, and pneumonia swept thetraining camps.Measles exacted the worst toll on the growing army, requiring over48,000 hospital admissions and accounting for 30 percent of the deaths in the army thatyear.The isolated and insular lives of many rural recruits before the war dramatically THE WOUNDS OF WAR 165increased their risk to infection.Coming from thinly settled southern, rural areas,a good proportion of troops were exposed to measles for the first time when theyentered the army.Measles alone was not deadly, unless complications of pneumonia setin during the normal 14-day course of the illness.Medical workers did their best toprevent the spread of the disease by placing patients behind screens in hospitals, rigor-ously disinfecting their bedding and clothes on a regular basis.Only medical workerswho had acquired immunity through a previous bout with the measles cared for strick-en soldiers.Doctors also tried to make patients as comfortable as possible while theirbodies fought the infection by keeping them on a liquid diet and protecting their eyesfrom direct light.To guard against pneumonia, patients remained in the hospital for10 days after their fevers broke to ensure a complete recovery.Stateside epidemics often played havoc with the military s proposed trainingregime, calling into question how much time the army actually gained by refusing toreduce the daily workload placed on soldiers.In camps struck by an epidemic, trainingand transport schedules became meaningless once large numbers of troops were placedeither in the hospital or under quarantines.Troops whose training was compromisedoccasionally had time to make up these deficiencies before heading off to France, butnot always.In the fall of 1918, the American army launched its major offensive alongthe Western Front with many undertrained men [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]