ICY DEATH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 April 1942, Page 4

ICY DEATH

STALKS NAZIS IN RUSSIA. FRENCH PHYSICIAN DESCRIBES HORRORS. The terrible effects of intense cold were described in a 8.8. C. broadcast in French by a French physician who has had experiences of cold climates. He gave some idea of what the German soldiers are undergoing in Hitler’s Russian failure. The effects are local and general, the first affecting the extremities, the second the body in general. Nose or ears long exposed to intense cold can suffer a discoloration which will be permanent, and which if unnoticed and unattended to, as may well happen in the excitement of action, leads to spontaneous amputation; the frozen extremities falling off of themselves. The feet, too, may be easily frozen, resulting in the loss of toes or even limbs. The handling of metal at exceptionally low temperatures has the same effects as burning, blistering and removing the skin. At very low temperatures such as prevail in Russia the cold can penetrate to the lungs, bringing terrible disintegration leading to certain death. In the second category, the speaker included the wounded. A slight wound under ordinary climatic conditions can, in the cold of Russia, become an extremely serious one. The wounding is followed by a geneial shock, when for a time the powers of resistance of the body are diminished. The man who falls in the slush and snow is able to find within himself no resistance. If assistance does not reach him quickly the end is not far off. The wounded cannot keep the body in movement, and without movement, when the thermometer is well below zefo, the system fails to offer effective resistance to the cold. Intense cold for a healthy man is serious. For a wounded Nazi,unaccustomed to the climate of Russia it is almost 'always fatal.