THE ECOLOGY OF THE SOLDIER IN WORLD WAR II* WILUAM B. BEAN, Af.D.f One thing that I, as president ofthis Society, cannot claim in introducing my comments is that my talk took me by surprise. When, last year, there were some sly preliminary queries as to whether I would accept this office, none could say that my response waited for arm twisting. My reactions then and later may be described by an analogy with a grammarian's view oftensions and tenses. My first thought was one ofcommingled incredulity and bliss. The tense was future perfect. Then came the realization of obligations. It neutralized much ofthe pleasure. The tense becamefuture imperfect. As the novelty wore offand my need for preparing an address seemed for a while to recede, it became a simplefuture tense. Too rapidly this merged into the approaching deadline stage ofsubclinical panic which characterizes thegerundive or "to be about to be." You are all too painfully aware now, that things are tense in the present tense as my pretensions intensify . As time flows by, when mercifully this is over, my memories will hepast imperfect and then simple past. Ultimately, the halo which our conveniently selective memory puts on even the most evident collection of blunders will allow me to recall that things were pluperfect—past, that is. Bidding a captive audience "Come with me" for a little retreat into the mountains ofantiquity, I am supported by the notion that I might provide a repast, both interesting and significant. This illusion, I am afraid, has been responsible for much pompous cant. I discuss with you environment and ecology as it became known to me during World War II in field studies, laboratories, and ultimately tests in situ, right in combat. * Related in some respects to a paper delivered to the American Clinical and Climatological Association , Hot Springs, Virginia, 1967. References to the published work and Army Reports are in transactions ofthe American Clinical and Climatological Association, Vol. 79, 1067. t Department ofInternal Medicine, University ofIowa, Iowa City 52240. 675 The military medical officer, traditionally an anomaly in peace and a paradox in war, came into some slight recognition in World War II when preventive medicine held the great non-man-made plagues in check, and physiologists as well as physicians tried to adjust and adapt as well as repair and restore the soldier. To be sure, thesalvage was small for the cost inpain and fear and life. But in the earning ofthat small gain I was doubly fortunate —contributing a modicum myself and never having even a faintly paranoid feeling that I was ever put upon. Over and above the perils engendered by the usual hostile deployment of all man's devices of destruction, World War II saw new stresses and strains imposed on soldiers by their equipment and machines, in the air, on land, in, on, and under the water, in a bewildering variety ofclimates and places. The designers often forget the critical matter of the men. Clinical investigators en masse poured out oftheir ivory-towered laboratories to study normal young man, his inherent capacities and his abilities to adjust to the changes ofchanging environments. They studied how to put him into machines, and the harm done by physical agents and forces beyond his native tolerance or adaptive ability. In the summer of 1942 1joined the Armored Medical Research Laboratory1 at FortKnox, then being builtunder the direction ofColonelWillard Machle around a nucleus from the Kettering Laboratory and College of Medicine at Cincinnati. We were palpitating, worried in the urgency of the suddenly recognized calamity of our endemic unpreparedness. Here were young physicians, chemists, physiologists, engineers, and public health people with the heady stimulation ofworking on common problems viewed from many angles. Many ofthis group have since had careers of distinction in academic medicine. Mercifully we were spared much military ritual.We saluted. We never had to drill. Immediately we all learned how to drive tanks, for our first job was to find out what troubles were inherent in the equipment or, in current usage, "the hardware." My scrambling around later under barbed wire, with live fire going over, was not to make a soldier out ofme but...