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Historically, cold injury, hypothermia, and frostbite have been severe problems for military units on the battlefield. Kenneth D. Orr and David C. Fainer captured these difficulties in their book, Cold Injuries in Korea During Winter of 1950-51, still cited in military medical readiness training. While not common in modern conflicts, the potential exists for large numbers of these casualties in war and during training.

This study seeks to investigate the incidence of psychiatric casualties in 1 Commonwealth Division during the Korean War. It had been hypothesized that these casualties were unusually low compared with earlier conflicts. Casualty returns and psychiatric reports were analyzed and showed that the war fell into two phases determined by the intensity of combat, which, in turn, influenced the nature of the psychiatric disorders encountered. Rates of acute combat stress were closely correlated with battle casualties, although not with total psychiatric admissions or nonbattle injuries. The limitations imposed on the psychiatric liaison service by the medical organization suggested that the incidence of psychosomatic cases, including cold injury, may have been unintentionally underreported.

The surface toe temperature of 10 subjects was monitored in the field in Arctic Norway (minimum air temperature -27 degrees C). The lowest skin temperature recorded was 1.9 degrees C. The mean estimated time for the toe temperature to cool from 25 degrees C to 5 degrees C was 109 minutes (SD, 10.2) at an ambient temperature of -21 degrees C. One subject experienced a toe temperature below 5 degrees C for 2.9 hours during a 27-hour period. Surprisingly none of the subjects demonstrated clinical signs of cold injury, but this does not mean that this exposure was without risk. Cold sensitization could have occurred.