wwi
“How Did WW1 Change the Way We Treat War Injuries Today?” BBC Guides. Accessed January 16, 2018. http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zs3wpv4.
World War I (West Indies Regiment)
On the outbreak of war in August 1914, the 1st Battalion of the WIR was stationed in Freetown where it had been based for two and a half years. A detachment of the Regiment's signalers saw service in the German Cameroons, where Private L. Jordon earned a DCM and several other men were mentioned in despatches. The 1st Battalion returned to the West Indies in 1916.
The 2nd Battalion was sent from Kingston to West Africa in the second half of 1915. They took part in the capture of Yaoundé in January 1916. The Regiment was subsequently awarded the battle honour "Cameroons 1914-16". The 2nd Battalion, which had been divided into detachments, was brought together in Freetown in April 1916 and sent to Mombassa in Kenya, to take part in the East African campaignagainst German colonial forces based in German East Africa.[16]
The five hundred and fifteen officers and men of the 2nd Battalion formed part of a column that took Dar es Salaam on 4 September 1916. After garrison duty, the battalion subsequently played a distinguished part in the Battle of Nyangao (German East Africa) in October 1917. For their service in East Africa the WIR earned eight Distinguished Conduct Medals, as well as the battle honour "East Africa 1914-18".
Following their active service in German Africa the 2nd Battalion of the West India Regiment was shipped to Suez in September 1918. It was then transferred to Lydda in Palestine where it spent the two remaining months of the War. Two battalions of a newly raised regiment also recruited from black Caribbean soldiers: the similarly named British West Indies Regiment (see below), saw front line service against the Turkish Army during the Palestine Campaign. General Allenby sent the following telegram to the Governor of Jamaica: "I have great pleasure in informing you of the gallant conduct of the machine-gun section of the 1st British West Indies Regiment during two successful raids on the Turkish trenches. All ranks behaved with great gallantry under heavy rifle and shell fire and contributed in no small measure to the success of the operations".
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_India_Regiments&oldid=817994620History
Investigative work in 1999 by a British team led by virologist John Oxford[28] of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London Hospital identified the major troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples, France, as being the center of the 1918 flu pandemic. In late 1917, military pathologists reported the onset of a new disease with high mortality that they later recognized as the Spanish flu. The overcrowded camp was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus with 100,000 soldiers in transit every day; a crowded hospital with thousands of victims of chemical gases where sick and wounded stayed together, as well as live piggery in the camp and live poultry in the nearby villages. These researchers postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated so it could migrate to pigs that were kept near the front.[29][30]
Earlier hypotheses of the epidemic's origin have varied. Some hypothesized the flu originated in East Asia.[31][32] Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the 1918 flu for the Pasteur Institute, asserted the former virus was likely to have come from China, mutating in the United States near Boston and spreading to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, Europe, and the world using Allied soldiers and sailors as main spreaders.[33] He considered several other hypotheses of origin, such as Spain, Kansas, and Brest, as being possible, but not likely.
Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting the influenza had earlier origins, beginning in Austria in early 1917.[34]
In 2014, historian Mark Humphries of Canada's Memorial University of Newfoundland stated that newly unearthed records confirmed that one of the side stories of the war, the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines on World War I's western front, might have been the source of the pandemic. In the report, Humphries found archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.[35][36] A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Associationfound no evidence that the 1918 virus was imported to Europe via Chinese and Southeast Asian soldiers and workers. It found evidence that the virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.
Sulfur mustard
Sulfur mustard, commonly known as mustard gas, is the prototypical substance of the sulfur-based family of cytotoxic and vesicant chemical warfare agentsknown as the sulfur mustards which have the ability to form large blisters on exposed skin and in the lungs.[2] They have a long history of use as a blister-agent in warfare and along with organoarsenic compounds are the most well-studied such agents. Related chemical compounds with similar chemical structure and similar properties form a class of compounds known collectively as sulfur mustards or mustard agents. Pure sulfur mustards are colorless, viscous liquids at room temperature. When used in impure form, such as warfare agents, they are usually yellow-brown and have an odor resembling mustard plants, garlic, or horseradish, hence the name. The common name of "mustard gas" is considered inaccurate because the sulfur mustard is not actually vaporized, but dispersed as a fine mist of liquid droplets. Sulfur mustard was originally assigned the name LOST, after the scientists Wilhelm Lommel and Wilhelm Steinkopf, who developed a method of large-scale production for the Imperial German Army in 1916.[3]
Mustard agents are regulated under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. Three classes of chemicals are monitored under this Convention, with sulfur and nitrogen mustard grouped in Schedule 1, as substances with no use other than in chemical warfare. Mustard agents could be deployed by means of artillery shells, aerial bombs, rockets, or by spraying from warplanes or other aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_mustard
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