The trench foot – Suffering in wetness and mud - Spread

Spread

There are no reliable data on the exact spread of the " trench foot", for a simple reason. Military doctors first did not distinguish the immersion foot from other frostbites, as the army doctor Professor Hans Kilian noted after the 2nd World War. It can be deducted from the hospital reports on the German Army of the "Reichskriegsministerium" (German War Ministry) that the peak of the wave of infections was in the years 1914/15. From 1915 the prevention measures were effective in all armies. The phenomenon also spread during the fall and winter months. The hospital report stated "In November 15 people from the XXV. Reserve Brigade had their feet frostbitten from the service in the communication trench. In some of 14 soldiers the lower legs had to be amputated." What worries the doctors is the fact that it is not the sharp frost that brings on the disease: "Further 150 frostbites could be observed in the brigade, although the outer temperatures hardly went below zero degrees." Here we encounter for the first time the typical manifestation of the "trench foot": It is actually the combination of low temperatures and wetness that brings on the "immersion foot". Professor Hans Kilian proves with tests and with the help of the statistics from the First World War that this combination is disastrous for the soldier's foot up to temperatures of 10 – 12 degrees.

Also the French meanwhile suffer from this phenomenon. Here for example 233 soldiers in the front section at the Chemin de Dames in humid April of the mentioned time within a colonial battalion consisting of 2 324 men. Also here they first talk about frostbites. The most detailed statistic is led by the British: Here the military historians recorded as early as in the first war half year 1914 about 20,000 cases. Thus it is clear that at the latest at the turn of the year 1914/15 the "trench foot" has turned into a mass phenomenon.