The spring of 1942 brought a thaw and an end to the usefulness of the Ice Road. The milder days presented a new concern: disease. The piles of corpses and the mounds of human excrement, which until now had remained frozen, began to decompose as the thaw set in. Without running water or a sewage system, dysentery, smallpox and typhus quickly took hold and spread throughout the city, inflicting the already weakened population. Those who suffered from what was called ‘starvation diarrhoea’ knew that death would soon follow.
