Joshua Levine

You know, trench foot was, you know, the boots were leather.

They were perfectly good.

I think they got better boots in 1915.

But, you know, 20,000 people had trench foot by the end of 1914.

And your feet got wet.

cold.

They never dried out and they almost started to rot.

You know, people ended up with gangrene, they were losing toes, they were losing.

And so, you know, you had foot inspection, you know, in the morning where officers, it's a surreal picture where officers were sort of inspecting the feet of their men.

It's almost like the, you know, the Pope kissing the feet of the people.

And

And they would rub whale oil in, into their feet, into their socks.

The boots were changed slightly so they were rough on the outside so you could rub oil in and make them more waterproof.

In certain very wet areas, Flanders, for example, people were given rubber waders or rubber boots.

So that was, you know, and then after they'd more or less eradicated it, it actually became a crime.

It was considered a self-inflicted wound to have trench fever.

Trench fever, you got from the feces of lice and basically you had the lice you'd be scratching and...

feces will get inside or the poison will get inside and that was a really nasty disease it took a while to incubate and then you were you know high fever and pain for five days it would go it would come back and then it was one of these kind of things we'll probably move on to this but you know because you're out of action potentially for three months didn't kill you um people saw it as almost as good as a blighty wound you know you were out of the line for three months you felt terrible

But you weren't going to die.

So, you know, there was that.