They called themselves the Battling Belles of Bataan, but to the GIs fighting a desperate and doomed battle for the Philippines in 1941 and 1942, and later to their fellow civilian internees, they were, simply, angels. The Angels of Bataan and Corregidor, as they’re best known, were a group of 88 Army nurses and 12 Navy nurses stationed in the Philippines in early December 1941. “They were trailblazers for women in the military, for the Army Nurse Corps,” said nurse and ANC historian Lt. Col. Nancy Cantrell. “They set the example for the rest of the services. Their story told the world … that women are tough, they can serve in combat and they can survive.” The nurses hadn’t received any military or survival training and only held relative rank. Most were the equivalent of second lieutenants, albeit with far lower pay, and were universally addressed as “Miss.” The majority had volunteered for the assignment, according to Elizabeth M. Norman, a professor of nursing history at New York University and author of “We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese.” Manila was considered the “pearl of the Orient,” and they expected to meet men and have fun. Duty was light and they sunbathed, played golf and tennis, watched polo matches and danced under the stars. As late as November 18, 1941, newly arrived 2nd Lt. Marcia Gates wrote her mother that she had already bought two new evening gowns and was growing spoiled because local Filipinos took care of all the laundry, cooking and housework. (Gates’ niece, author Melissa Bowerstock, compiled her family’s letters from this period in a book about her aunt.) Less than three weeks later, on Dec. 8 (Dec. 7, Hawaii time), the nurses awoke to the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and they were stunned. Fearing the Philippines would be the next Japanese target, commanders issued the nurses steel helmets and gas masks. At 8:19 a.m., Japanese bombs began to fall. The attack was devastating, destroying all but one of the U.S. airplanes in the Philippines and leaving thousands dead or wounded. “The hospital was bedlam – amputations, dressings, intravenouses (sic), blood transfusions, shock, death,” 2nd Lt. Ruth Straub wrote in her diary (as excerpted by Norman). She “worked all night, hopped over banisters and slid under the hospital during raids.” Her fiancé, she would learn a week later, was killed in the attack. General Douglas MacArthur ordered a retreat to the inhospitable jungles of the Bataan Peninsula and the supposedly impregnable island of Corregidor at its tip. There, they would make a stand and wait for reinforcements. The reinforcements never arrived. A makeshift hospital ship, manned by one of the Army nurses, managed sneak out, but the most gravely wounded couldn’t be moved and were left behind in Manila with 11 Navy nurses. Meanwhile, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the Army nurses crossed the bay under heavy fire, becoming, Norman wrote, “the first group of American military nurses sent onto the battlefield for duty.” They were already the first women to wear fatigues and combat boots in U.S. military history. Hospital 1 on Bataan initially consisted of 29 bamboo and grass sheds, and doctors and nurses could barely keep up with the casualties from the unrelenting air raids and fierce, often hand-to-hand, combat, performing 187 major surgeries in one 24-hour period, Jan. 16, 1942, according to Norman. Hospital 2 was farther inland, and in the open air. There was no protection from the mosquitos, so malaria and dengue fever were endemic, affecting everyone from the wounded to healthy Soldiers to the nurses themselves, while ever-present flies contaminated food and water with dysentery and other parasites. Food, contaminated or not, was scarce. Infantrymen were fighting on 1,000 calories a day by late February – a quarter of the nutrition they needed to stay in fighting shape. They ate the cavalry horses, water buffalo, even monkeys, while the sick and exhausted nurses forced themselves to work. One senior nurse, bedridden from malaria, even set up a cot in the middle of her ward and continued directing her staff, Norman wrote. Two of the nurses were injured with shrapnel when the Japanese bombed Hospital 1 for the second time, and quickly went back to work. Watching women endure the same danger and hunger seemed to inspire the troops to continue the fight, Norman wrote, but by April, the enemy was only miles from the hospitals. On April 8, 1942, Lt. Gen. Jonathan “Skinny” Wainwright, new commander of the U.S. Army in the Philippines, ordered the nurses to the relative safety of Corregidor.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 23:00:17 +0000
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