"It is interesting," he said, "to compare the disease and battle
mortality percentages of this war with the percentages in other wars;
to see, considering the frightful weather and the trenches, how little
disease there has been among our troops. Compare the figures with the
Boer War, for instance. And even then our percentage has been somewhat
brought up by the Indian troops."
"Have many of them been ill?"
"They have felt the weather," he replied; "not the cold so much as the
steady rain. And those regiments of English that have been serving in
India have felt the change. They particularly have suffered from
frostbitten feet."
I knew that. More than once I had seen men being taken back from the
British lines, their faces twisted with pain, their feet great masses
of cotton and bandages which they guarded tenderly, lest a chance blow
add to their agony. Even the English system of allowing the men to rub
themselves with lard and oil from the waist down before going into
flooded trenches has not prevented the tortures of frostbite.
It was time to go and the motor was waiting. We set off in a driving
sleet that covered the windows of the car and made motoring even more
than ordinarily precarious. But the roads here were better than those
nearer the coast; wider, too, and not so crowded.
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