Tuesday May 14th, 1918
Cleaned gun and tackle, 9am. Very hot again. Wrote home. Flies are a terrible nuisance. Work on Commandant wiring – 15 yards right of Commandant and up to road – finished 10:30. Tired.
Flies
Frank is obviously fed up with the flies. This was a common complaint of commentators in Macedonia. Illtyd Davies probably shared Frank’s experience most closely. ‘… flies were numerous, at times they made life a misery. Eating a biscuit and jam was a work of art, unless one continually waved a hand over the biscuit, it would be black with flies.’³
They are much more of a problem in warmer weather and we already know that Macedonia can get very hot. As VJ Sliegman, an officer with the ASC in the BSF recalled, ‘The summer, I may mention, begins in May and ends in October. Hence the story of the Macedonian who died and went to Hell, and after 24 hours there, wired back for his blankets.’²
Hygiene
Flies were not only a nuisance they were recognized as carrying a variety of diseases. While malaria was the biggest threat to the health of the BSF, it was not alone. As G Ward Price wrote, “But malaria is by no means the whole tale of the plagues of Macedonia. There are dysentery and diarrhoea, both very weakening, and almost unavoidable, at any rate to a mild degree. For these the flies are chiefly responsible. In fact, the fly is probably as deadly as the mosquito. The only way to keep down flies is to see that they get nothing to feed on. All food must be in boxes with wooden lids, which are kept shut. Nor will flies go where it is dark, so that latrine trenches are made eight feet deep.’¹
In addition to the control of flies, sanitary officers had a variety of strategies to combat dysentery and cholera. These included, as referenced in the Battalion diary today, restricting the duties of men who were ill. ‘A strict supervision of cooks and cook-houses is essential. Indeed it would be well, where facilities exist, to have all cooks and handlers of food bacteriologically examined to see they are not carriers. Certainly any suffering from diarrhoea should be so examined.’º
It is interesting that several of the techniques for controlling many of the diseases faced by the troops in Macedonia, remain good practice today. It is a shame that, once the disease took hold, the treatment was more rudimentary.
13th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 14th May 1918 – Saida
The companies are now employed on Commandant one and a half by day and one and a half by night. The remaining Coy finds all the RE parties for work. No man who has suffered from dysentry or fevers of the enteric group is to be employed as a cook or waterman.
References & Further Reading
¹ ‘The Story of the Salonica Army 1915-1917‘ by G. Ward Price, American war correspondent. Written mid-1917. memoir on Salonika:
² ‘The Salonica Side-Show’ By VJ Seligman, officer with the ASC (1919) Page 67
³ ‘A Little Account’ by Illtyd Davies, page 26, from a collection of the Salonika Campaign Society
º Memoranda on Some Medical Diseases in the Mediterranean War Area with some Sanitary Notes’, 1916, published under the Authority of HMSO, London. Page 14