> so those posted to the frontier may have been significantly affected (the CWGC's criteria for commemoration rightly include those falling to "disease contracted or commencing while on active service" alongside combat-related deaths.

Also on this point, worth remembering that throughout history, disease has caused more war time casualties than combat all the way up to at least WWI, possibly WWII?

A big development to change that (besides the mere luck of avoiding major world pandemics I suppose) was modern medicine recognizing the impact of disease and taking a deliberate approach to controlling it.

Even down to a very simple example: when you see recruits in military boot camp, they get hygiene inspections nightly, they get in trouble (at very least yelled at, maybe worse) for things like touching/picking at their face. (You so much as rub your eyes and a DI sees it, you were getting aggressively corrected.)

Only later did I realize, oh. duh.

They are breaking you of disease spreading habits (don't touch your face), and also conditioning you to disease preventative habits (change your socks/clothes, wash up at night. You wouldn't think washing and changing clothes should have to be reinforced, but its not the doing it, that they're conditioning. Its the never not do it no matter how tired you are. 19 hour day and you just hiked 20 miles, all you want to do is climb in the bag and sleep? Heck no nasty, you still clean your weapon and take care of your personal hygiene first.)