** The Shitai’s medical department, such as it was, had issued a set of orders to ‘high ranking medical officers’ aptly titled, ‘Matters pertaining to health during period of waiting’. It was singularly unhelpful. Defecation ‘in the open’ and drinking unboiled water ‘after eating biscuits’ were forbidden. There was the peculiar rule, ‘even during an action, troops are forbidden to relieve themselves in the vicinity of roads’. There were no roads, of course; these orders were drawn from a standard text. Stream water should be divided into water for drinking, cooking and cleaning, it instructed, sensibly. Wooden floorboards should be placed on tent floors, and any draughts blocked with vegetation. Malaria sufferers were to receive ‘internal medicine’, and those who had not contracted the disease should be wary of the anopheles mosquito, which ‘is found in the valley areas’. Many of the Shitai’s ‘health tips’ revealed the gross ignorance of the medical department. A similar disregard for biological truth coloured their advice on leeches. The harmless, if ubiquitous, bloodsuckers were ‘the most terrible things. There is no method of avoiding them…their bite is not usually fatal to human beings’ (ATIS Enemy Publications No. 38).