[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

P.U.O. is the abbreviation for Pyrexia of Unknown Origin......so this soldier woould have had a raging temperature with no obvious cause for it......there would be no suppurating wound/infection visible, yet he would have had a regularly raised temperature.

I think I know the answer of the origin of that illness, you will have heard the expression up to hear in muck and bullets, its not far off, but short of reality
Trenches were not in straight lines, but zigzagged every 15 yards or so, six foot deep with about a foot of mud in the bottom, every 10 sections there would be pit with a tub in it, that was the platoon toilet, you went into the trenches for 4 or more days at a time, taking with you iron rations and water, food and water was supposed to be brought up from the rear twice a day if you were lucky, there were more rats than men in the trenches. Meal time, food delivered in big covered tins, shell lands on platoon toilet, some of your first meal of the day gets splashed with sh1t, do you eat it or refuse, not knowing when the next meal will come through.
Just made a brew with your mates in a tommy cooker & another shell lands, blood and other stuff lands in it, what do you do.
Its a wonder any survived the diseases, dysentry was rife in the trenches, along with trench foot, standing in water all day, trench fever caused by the same conditions.

Up to here in muck and bullets is a mild expression.
Especially when all your mates keep getting killed or wounded, and you'd got belly ache from the last meal.
Next you've got the nearest field hospital, your the 25th man to require emergency wound treatment on the table that day, operating table swilled off, instruments still covered in blood from the last patient, stitched up, bandaged and carted away to Casualty Clearing Stations, then transported by road or rail to Calais and shipped to England, to get proper treatment, if you have'nt died in the meantime.
Retlaw.