German soldiers examining their uniforms for lice

The appearance of Imperial-Royal soldiers radically changed shortly after the war broke out, most of all because of the shortage of suitable raw materials and the impractical uniforms worn until then.

Experience from earlier wars has shown that deaths from epidemics tend to far exceed losses through wounds. In the First World War as well, there were significant fatalities as a result of typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, typhus, smallpox and malaria.