Health Part 1: Sickness, Epidemics, and Disease Deaths and Invalids from Ordinary Sickness At the end of the campaigning season count the number of weeks in which the unit was not hit by an epidemic. Add up the percentages of sick during these weeks, and divide this by double the number of weeks. The resulting figure is the percentage dead from ordinary sickness. The yearly percentage of invalids is in a pleasant climate double the number of deaths from ordinary sickness, in a rough climate three times the deaths, and in a notoriously horrible climate four times these deaths. The scenario or the umpire decides how to define the climate. For practical reasons soldiers dead and invalided from normal disease might be removed from a wargame at the end of each campaign, but if some months are especially dangerous a different basis and calculation could be used. Epidemics Robinson distinguishes between a “Clean Army” which has a rest day per week with a bath, washing facilities, good sanitary conditions, and the baggage train of which is brought up every week to allow a change of uniform, and a “Dirty Army” which fails in one or several of these respects. Make a roll of percentage dice for each unit as often as described in the schedule below. Situation Clean Army Dirty Army In a normal area 1 per 4 weeks 1 per week Besieging a town 1 per week + 1 per fortnight 3 per week Being besieged 2 per week 4 per week In Other Risk Areas 1 per week 2 per week If a 01 or 02 is rolled, an epidemic has broken out with the unit. If an epidemic breaks out any friendly or enemy unit within one day’s normal march (as defined in your rules) from the place of the outbreak must toss the dice one more time. For each unit hit by an epidemic throw a D6 and multiply the number arrived at with 10: This is the percentage of the non-sick troops that are hit; add their number to the already sick, and half the total sick die. Each following week you throw percentage dice for each unit hit; if you get 76 or better the epidemic has stopped with this unit. If you get 1-75 the epidemic goes on, and you must throw a D6, multiply it with 10, and you have the percentage of the non-sick to fall ill this week; half of them die. (And so on.) You may consider these rule proposals to be too rough, but I am afraid that they could be rather worse: In 1829 the Russians in Bulgaria had 20 % of their force fit, 40 % were hospitalised, and another 40 % had died. In the first phase of the Ashanti War 1873, 93 % of the British marines fell sick; 17 % died. Halsall mentions several earlier armies incapacitated by illness. Yes, it is hard, but still you may find some consolation in that your adversaries will often suffer at least as badly as your army, and that matters improved much from around 1870. I have too little statistics available for those 120+ years, but it is obvious that there was declining percentages of sick, that epidemics grew rarer, that the mortality from all sorts of sickness was reduced drastically, but that the risk for injuries probably grew in a steadily more technical and motorized environment. One solution could be to use the rules above, but with a reduction of the percentages lost for every decade passed since the 1860s, but there would be exceptions. References Wendy J. Atkin: All Serving Their Country”. Nurse Lucy Fathers and the Boer War Memorial of Sleaford. In Soldiers of the Queen, issue 87. UK 1996. Lt.Gen. Sir Neil Cantile: A History of the Army Medical Department, Vol. II. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh and London 1974. ISBN 0-443-01122-2. Hawthorne Daniel: For Want of a Nail: The Influence of Logistics on War. McGraw-Hill, New York 1948. James F. Dunnigan: How to Make War. Arms and Armour Press. London 1982. ISBN 0- 85368-539-8. John Ellis: The World War II Databook. The Essential Facts and Figures for All the Combatants. Aurum, London 1993. ISBN 1-85410-254-0. Lt.-Col. George Armand Furse: Mobilisation and Embarkation of an Army Corps. Clowes, London 1883. Guy Halsall: Death, Disease and Disability in Pre-industrial Warfare. In Wargames Illustrated, issue 75, UK 1993. Geoffrey Parker: The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659. The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars. 2. ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, reprint 1995. ISBN 0-521-08462-8 and 0-521-09907-2. Rod Robinson: Has Your Army Got the Dreaded Lurgy? In Lone Warrior issues 39 and 40, UK 1982. Roland G. Rutpenthal: The European Theatre of Operations: Logistical Support of the Armies. Vol. II: September 1944 - May 1945. Centre of Military History, Washington 1959, reprint 1987. Otto Waldschutz: Das Sanitätswesen und das Veterinärwesen. In EinfUhrung in das Heerwesen. Vienna 1911. Health Part 1: Sickness, Epidemics, and Disease Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #144 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com