Soldiers & Disease

When you think of the history of war, what do you think has been the biggest killer of soldiers? Guns? Grenades? Missiles? Bombs? If you think retro, do you consider clubs, arrows, or swords? While these have wrought significant damage, another killer should be added to the list: disease.

Typhus

Typhus has a number of colloquial names, including "war fever" and "General Typhus." People become infected with typhus when feces from body lice that are infected with the organism Rickettsia prowazeki are inhaled or enter the skin through open wounds.

In 1489 in Spain, during fighting between the Christians and Muslims at Granada, the Spanish reportedly lost 3,000 to war casualties and 20,000 to typhus. And typhus is said to have been a decisive factor in the failure of Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. It, along with dysentery (see below), reduced Napoleon's army by 80,000 men in just one month.

At the beginning of the First World War, typhus broke out along the eastern front, decimating the soldier and civilian populations of Serbia, and the Austrian soldiers that had been captured. But in the Second World War, preventatives such as louse powder and DDT significantly cut cases among soldiers. And by the time of the Korean War, thanks to preventive measures like pesticides and vaccination, typhus among soldiers was almost non-existent.

Dysentery

Dysentery, and its resulting dehydration, has claimed many a soldier in the past. One famous victim is England's King Henry V (c.1387–1422), who died of dysentery after the siege of Meaux. Another is English navigator Sir Francis Drake (1540–1596), who died of it shortly following a naval battle with the Spanish in the Caribbean. And during the First World War, dysentery was a fact of life for soldiers in the trenches. Indeed, statistics collected following the war show that of every 100 Americans that fought in the war, two ended up dead, either from disease (the principle culprit being dysentery) or from combat.

Malaria

Malaria is primarily, but not exclusively, a tropical disease. Like smallpox, malaria has a history of being used as a biological weapon. In 1809, hoping to spread malaria among British troops stationed in the area, Napoleon flooded Holland's countryside. In her book, The Miraculous Fever-Tree, Fiammetta Rocco quotes Napoleon as saying: "We must oppose the English with nothing but fever, which will soon devour them all."

In the American Civil War, malaria caused 10,000 deaths in the Union army. An article about malaria shows similarly shocking numbers for other conflicts. For example, during a French campaign in Madagascar in 1895, "…there were 13 deaths in action and over 4,000 deaths 'due almost entirely to malarial fevers and their sequelae.'" About two decades later, in Macedonia during World War I, "…malaria immobilized British, French, and German armies for 3 years. On one occasion, when the French commanding general was ordered to attack, he replied: 'Regret that my army is in hospital with malaria.'"

Additionally, in that area during World War I, "…nearly 80 percent of 120,000 French troops … were hospitalized with malaria. In an average British strength of 124,000, there were 162,512 admissions to hospital for malaria during the years 1916 to 1918, in contrast to 23,762 killed, wounded, prisoner, and missing in action."

During World War II, things had not improved, as illustrated by the example of the Sicilian campaign which raged between July 9 and September 10, 1943, when there were 21,482 hospital admissions for malaria compared with 17,375 battle casualties. Similarly, numbers cited in an essay on the US Army in World War II, show that among soldiers fighting at Guadalcanal and in the Papuan peninsula, "For every two soldiers lost in battle, five were lost to disease – especially malaria, dengue, dysentery, or scrub typhus …." And during the Vietnam War, malaria reduced the combat strength of some American units by more than half.

The Other Diseases

A soldier might add boredom to his list of the battlefield's worst enemies. And when a man (since most armies have been comprised of men) gets bored, his mind usually turns to…

Syphilis was sometimes called morbus gallicus, or the French disease, because of its association with the French army. After conquering Naples in 1494, French King Charles VIII's army became infected by a syphilis epidemic. In the process of returning home, French soldiers spread the disease throughout Europe. The French themselves sometimes referred to syphilis as la maladie anglaise (the English disease) – a typical case of enemies engaging in mutual stigmatization.

The same type of stigma that was once applied to French soldiers may one day be applied to African soldiers regarding AIDS. According to a 2004 study undertaken by researchers in Nigeria, AIDS may now be the leading cause of death for African military and police forces.

A Fearsome Enemy

Historically at least, numbers talk.

And historically, in most cases, armies faced off against an enemy with similar equipment. And even if the equipment wasn't equal, both sides had an equal likelihood of catching any number of battlefield diseases.

But over time, with inoculations, prophylactics, and powders, disease began to abate – at least among western armies. Also, the world has changed.

On one side are well equipped, well provisioned, and well inoculated regular armies. On the other are irregular armies, made up of people with iffy and often homemade equipment, haphazardly provisioned, and often not inoculated, using guerrilla and/or terror tactics.

To even the playing field, what wouldn't an irregular army resort to? And it may be now that the real danger is in the homemade equipment – dirty bombs, and biological weapons, such as anthrax – which may just result in a comeback of sickness as the greatest killer of soldiers.

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