A Pledge of Silence

by Flora J. Solomon

  “Shit, I can’t! The naval base is gone—the ships, the submarines, the docks, everything just gone. Now the Nips are dropping bombs on Manila. The port area is wrecked, and Chinatown is taking hits. It’s just a matter of time before the whole blasted city gets obliterated.”

  And us with it? Margie wondered.

  Evelyn said, “Were we blind or stupid? All those blackout drills we treated like a nuisance. Our mail was censored, and we were ordered to send our valuables home. What did we do? We merrily shrugged it off and looked for the next party.”

  “MacArthur told us Manila was safe.”

  They lit their cigarettes off one match and smoked in the dark, listening to rumbles and explosions in the distance.

  “It’s the burn cases,” Evelyn said softly. “When they bombed the ships, I saw guys jumping off burning decks into fire-filled water. They flailed around awful, Margie. I can’t get that picture out of my head. Now women burned in the bombings come here to have their babies.” Leaning back in her chair, she sighed deeply. “I’ve never felt so helpless.”

  The intercom buzzed and Margie went to the hall phone. It was Royce. “I thought you would sleep for hours,” she said.

  “Sometimes I do. Sometimes dreams jerk me awake. I missed you. I’m glad you’re back. Are you hungry?”

  “Always for you. I’m with Evelyn right now.”

  “Bring her along. We’ll go to Louie’s.”

  Evelyn declined the invitation, saying she was too tired to eat. All she wanted to do, she said, was sleep for a year.

  Royce hailed a taxi. Although Manila was under blackout restrictions, smoldering fires illuminated burned-out buildings. The taxi maneuvered around potholes and erratic chunks of concrete. Skinny dogs, eyes flashing red in the cab’s shielded headlights, slunk about feasting on uncollected garbage. Despite all the destruction, an edgy energy filled downtown.

  They found Louie’s undamaged and open for business, its nervous clientele huddled in booths, murmuring in low voices. Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow” played on the jukebox, muting the mood even further, while slow-turning ceiling fans blended odors of ginger, garlic, and cigarettes. Sliding side by side into a booth, Royce ordered drinks from the scrawny, dark-eyed waiter. Margie leaned into Royce, needing the solid feel of his embrace. “What’s going to happen to us?”

  He avoided the question and held her tighter.

  “There is no sign of relief,” she said.

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. I just need to get away from it.” The waiter brought their drinks. Royce downed his in one swallow and ordered another.

  “You’re exhausted,” she said.

  “No more than anyone else.”

  “Stay with me tonight,” she said, and then remembered she was scheduled to work. “No. Can’t. We’ve only got a couple of hours.”

  A group of officers came in, choosing the booth behind Margie and Royce. The men ordered a round of beers and quietly talked business. Margie’s curiosity was piqued when she overheard them mention Fort Stotsenburg. She leaned back, the better to eavesdrop.

  One officer said, “They’re evacuating the base. I was assigned to gut the place and haul all the supplies to Bataan.”

  She whispered to Royce, “They’ll bring the patients here. I don’t know where we’ll put them.”

  Straining to listen, they overheard—

  “. . . small expedition’s landing . . .”

  “. . . secure advanced bases . . .”

  “. . . no resistance . . .”

  “. . . main invasion force . . .”

  “. . . War Department dependent on ground forces, no air cover, no navy . . . sitting ducks.”

  Fear enveloped Margie as she realized the officers were discussing a Japanese invasion. “Imminent,” they said, and she stiffened.

  Royce tightened his arm around her. “Do you want to leave?”

  “No. You’ve got to eat,” she said, knowing she couldn’t. She thought of what happened during the occupation of Nanking. The Japanese forces were wicked, their savagery legendary. Royce and Margie clung together in sorrow and fear.

  The nightmare unfolded. Four days before Christmas, invasion forces crowded the island’s harbors, and forty-three thousand Japanese stormed the beaches. Casualties poured into Sternberg by the busload.

  Stretched out and restrained on the operating table, a soldier whipped his head from side to side as he shouted, “No fuckin’ use! Yellow buggers all over us!” He tried to sit up, but a corpsman held him down. “Duck! Duck! Fuckin’ planes!”

  “Steady, fella. Let’s get you relaxed,” Margie soothed. The corpsman held the man flat as she administered the anesthesia. “Deep breath,” she coached.

  “Gotta get the damn shit outta here!” the soldier yelled as his back arched. The gas kicked in, and his eyelids fluttered shut.

  “Couldn’t say it better myself,” the corpsman snorted. “MacArthur better the hell pull these guys back before they’re all plant food.” Removing a sling from the kid’s arm, he shook his head in dismay. “Amazing what a bullet can do, ain’t it, doc?” He doused the wound with antiseptic while the nurse helped the surgeon snap on sterile gloves.

  The door opened to reveal a pre-op area gridlocked with gurneys. Nurses and corpsmen buzzed like bees around them. A nurse popped her head in. “You wanted to be notified, doctor. Another busload just arrived.”

  “Where’re you putting them?” he growled.

  “We’re triaging on the front porch and stacking them two deep along the hallways.”

  The surgeon grunted, and as he moved into the sterile area, he said, “The army’s pulling out. Got orders this morning to begin evacuation.” He inspected the wound, palpating it with his fingers. “Scalpel,” he ordered, and the nurse slapped the knife into his hand. “They’re retreating to Bataan. Anyone heard of it?”

  The corpsman replied, “The Bataan Peninsula. I can describe it in three words—jungle, swamp, and malaria. Japs would never find us in there. Can’t see nothing from the air.”

  “Is there a hospital?” Margie asked, not liking the description of her destination.

  “One’s built, another’s getting started,” the surgeon replied while probing the wound. “There’s the bullet. It’s lodged behind the bone. Forceps,” he said, reaching out his hand, concentrating on the delicate task.

  Sternberg Hospital felt ghostly, and footsteps echoed in its empty hallways. Buses loaded with patients and trucks with supplies formed convoys that departed Manila in the dark of night. Margie packed up her anesthesia equipment and watched as it was carted away. She saw Royce in the hospital dining room and nudged him in the back with her elbow. “Hey, stranger. How’s it going?”

  He gave her a big Texas smile. Taking her arm, he led her to a table. His body drooped with fatigue, and stubble covered his face and neck.

  “Are you packed yet?” she asked. They were scheduled to leave on a bus that night for Hospital Two on Bataan. He hesitated too long, and she frowned.

  “Margie, my plans have changed. I’m staying here in Manila.”

  “No!” she cried. She knew that volunteers were being recruited to stay and care for the soldiers too shot up or cut up to be moved to safer quarters. “Please, no!” she pleaded.

  “It’s something I need to do. I can’t leave these men here.”

  “Then, I’ll volunteer—”

  “Don’t even think of it!”

  “But—”

  “You’re not staying here!”

  Tears clouded her vision.

  Royce took her hand and held it to his lips. “I’ll be right behind you. A few days to get these guys stabilized.” He kissed her fingertips, his gaze meeting hers. “You understand, don’t you?”

  She nodded, but she didn’t understand. Not at all. She wanted Royce with her on that late-night bus.

  He whispered, “My room? In an hour?”


  She nodded again, attempting to smile. Dabbing at her tears, she said, “Then it’s just us girls leaving tonight. Max left this morning on a hospital ship sailing to Australia.”

  Royce scoffed. “Hardly a hospital ship. Three hundred injured men on a dinky island steamer. Someone’s birdbrain idea.”

  “Evelyn’s worried.”

  “Me too. If they break through the Jap blockade, they face fifteen hundred miles of open ocean.” Royce glanced at his watch and stood to leave. He let his kiss linger.

  In the noisy confusion of the midnight evacuation, Margie and Royce said good-bye. They kissed fiercely as they stood on the steps of the hospital, where exhaust from idling vehicles thickened air already heavy with smoke from the burning city.

  A horn blew. “Everyone in who’s going!” the truck driver bellowed.

  “I can’t leave you here,” she cried, afraid she would never see him again.

  He smothered her in a last hug. “Hurry, the truck is pulling away.”

  “I love you!” she shouted over the commotion. Grabbing Evelyn’s hand, she jumped on the back of the moving vehicle and watched Royce’s image recede through a blur of tears.

  They bumped along in the back of the truck, feeling concussive boom, boom, booms as demolition crews ignited great stores of ammunition. Eye-dazzling fireworks lit up the sky. In the distance, Japanese bombs detonated.

  Over the din, a soldier yelled, “Be ready to dive in a ditch if they start dropping bombs or strafing! Drop and roll like you were taught!”

  Drop and roll? Taught? She had never been given a minute’s training on how to drop and roll out of a truck, or how to survive in a jungle. Facing a great unknown and a terrifying enemy, Margie grabbed Evelyn’s hand, who then grabbed Tildy’s as Tildy grabbed Gracie’s.

  CHAPTER 10

  Bataan, December 1941–February 1942

  The open-bed truck rocked one wheel at a time over the rocks and ruts in the primitive road, leaving the twenty occupants clinging to the wooden benches nauseated and bruised. Sort of like riding a mean horse, Margie thought. The only relief the passengers got from the hard seats and harder jolts were their dives onto the roadside when someone spotted Japanese planes in the early-morning sky.

  Fleeing from the advancing Japanese army, Margie and her companions traveled south through the Bataan Peninsula, their truck one of a mishmash of vehicles carrying medical personnel, supplies, and equipment from Manila to an unknown destination deep in the tropical rain forest. No one knew much except that American and Filipino troops had retreated to the peninsula, where a hospital was under construction.

  Margie rested her head on Evelyn’s shoulder.

  “Buck up, kid,” Evelyn chided. “There has to be an end to this road somewhere. Remember, we’re on an island.”

  Evelyn was right. There was an end to the road, but not the journey. The narrow road turned into a narrower path as the truck lumbered deeper into the lush forest. It stopped in a clearing, and the medical crew piled out. Margie looked around in wonder. She didn’t see any hospital, just a conglomeration of vehicles: supply trucks, troop transports, backhoes, wide-bladed bulldozers, and a whole area full of mud-splattered buses. A crude road ran through the center of the clearing, with a cluster of tents off to one side. Hordes of US soldiers and Filipinos scurried everywhere.

  An army captain greeted them. “Listen up!” he hollered over the babel of voices. “This is Field Hospital Two. In thirty-six hours, the first patients will arrive. As you see, there’s a lot of work to do.”

  “And who do you think’s going to do it?” Evelyn murmured.

  The captain paced back and forth. “There’s no time to lose. Everyone’s help is needed.” He pointed to where bulldozers bucked and roared as they cleared land. “That’s the hospital site. It will be ready for setup tomorrow. In the meantime, all medical personnel are expected to pitch in and help elsewhere. There are plenty of jobs. Working in the mess. Digging latrines. Unpacking trucks. Pitching tents. Line up to volunteer or you’ll be assigned to something.”

  Dr. Corolla, big-beaked and edgy, leaned against a truck. His arms were crossed over his chest and a cigarette smoldered between his fingers. He mumbled obscenities under his breath before shouting, “Who’s responsible for these orders?”

  The captain barked back, “We don’t question orders. Pitch in where you’re needed or take the consequences.”

  Margie joined a cluster of women in the mess, where tables and benches were assembled from scrap lumber and split oil drums served as sinks. Men chopped up bushels of vegetables, and huge pots of stew simmered on stoves. She felt comfortable in a kitchen, however crude, and was willing to do whatever was needed. A churlish-looking cook approached the volunteers, squinting at the group through a plume of cigar smoke. “Let’s get this straight,” he said in a voice raspy from too many smokes. The stogie bobbed up and down when he spoke. “I don’t want no damn girls in my kitchen.”

  Margie backed away. “What a dud.”

  “Dolt,” someone else contributed.

  “Dipstick.”

  Despite late December’s brutal humidity, army crews manhandled heavy equipment to dig out shallow-rooted, low-growing vegetation. Filipinos with bolos cleared underbrush. They left the jungle trees that grew two hundred feet straight to the sun, their branches meshing into a giant canopy that rustled and swayed in the breeze. Exotic ferns and orchids flourished high in the canopy, unexpected spots of beauty. Brightly colored toucans and parrots perched there too, screeching at the disruption. Monkeys, howling in some primitive language, swung from tree to tree on coiling vines.

  Margie emptied trucks, assembled cots, and unpacked and inspected timeworn supplies wrapped in newspapers from 1918. She cleaned obsolete surgical instruments with ether until the fumes set her head spinning. As she worked, sweat soaked her uniform, making it cling to her body. Her revealed curves evoked snickers and insulting comments from soldiers too long away from women. Needing relief from male eyes and ears, she joined other nurses at the edge of the Real River. She sat on the rocks lining the riverbank and dangled her feet in the cool water.

  Evelyn waved her hand to scatter a cloud of mosquitoes. “If this is a hospital, I’ll eat my hat.”

  Gracie said, “Wounded arrive tomorrow. Where are they going to? There’s no shelter. Supplies are in boxes. I wouldn’t know where to find a dressing or even an aspirin.”

  “How many will be here? Does anyone know?”

  “I heard someone say around a thousand.”

  “A thousand! Somebody’s lost their marbles.”

  The women were in no hurry to rejoin the men, so as the sun sank below the tree line, turning the sky an exquisite pink, they gathered driftwood and grass and built a fire. The chatter of monkeys and squawking of birds quieted, replaced by the sawing of crickets, cicadas, and grasshoppers. Gracie began to sing “Silent Night,” her voice like an angel’s, and they all joined in. For a while, they sang the Christmas carols denied them in the hectic days of the evacuation and reminisced about holidays past.

  “Bury that fire!” A male voice boomed through the dark, and the women jumped at the intrusion. “Haven’t you ever heard of a blackout?”

  Ruth Ann, tall and big-shouldered, stood. “Blackout? No one told us.”

  “That’s why you women don’t belong here. You’re nothing but a worry. We have enough to do without babysitting you. Just stay out of the way and don’t do anything else stupid like building a fire at night.” The soldier doused the blaze and led the chastened women back to camp, lighting the way with a blue-filtered kerosene lamp.

  The nurses slept in the buses. Margie burrowed into her pillow. Despite the steamy temperature, she wrapped herself in a blanket for protection against spiders. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had kissed Royce good-bye, but it had been less than a day. She whispered to Evelyn, “I wonder what the guys are doing.”

  Evelyn murmured, “Playing poker, no doubt.
Isn’t that what men do when women aren’t around?”

  Margie wanted to believe that. She tried to picture Royce chomping on a cigar, laughing and enjoying hands of poker with his doctor buddies, but the rumble of bulldozers and the crash of falling trees kept her rooted in reality. She drifted to sleep listening to noises queer to her ears.

  In the great leafy caverns, workers erected nipa huts, the largest enclosing eight surgical stations. Smaller huts held the dental clinic, records room, and housing for the officers. Generators provided power for lights over the operating tables, and a chlorinated reservoir purified water. Using oil drums for tubs, Filipinos created a laundry to boil hospital linens, with clotheslines strung along the riverbank. Craftsmen built beds, tables, stools, and shelving from the plentiful bamboo, and supply trucks arrived by the dozens. A newfangled hospital took shape while everyone worked and watched. The thirty-five nurses assigned to it were responsible for setting up the open-air wards.

  “The what?” Margie asked.

  “Open-air wards. Like under the stars. Like I’ve got a bullet in my belly, so let’s go camping and really rough it,” Evelyn said.

  “Even the records room has a roof.”

  “Well, the army has its priorities.”

  The women arranged fifteen hundred cots in the dappled light of acacia trees. They distributed wastebaskets, urinals, ashtrays, and flyswatters and stocked storage units with linens and medical provisions. Lister bags for sterilizing water hung from tree branches. Margie saw Evelyn digging a trench with a shovel. “Why are you doing that?”

  Evelyn wiped sweat from her brow. “You don’t want to know.” She pointed to the containers of morphine, quinine, and vitamins that needed burying to protect them from bombardment and the monkeys.

  “Now I’ve seen everything,” Margie said. She grabbed a shovel to help. While they worked, clouds of insects swarmed in the oppressive air. Snakes, spiders, rats, and iguanas slithered through the vines and thorny undergrowth on the edges of the clearing. Stinking of rotting vegetation, dirt from the forest floor covered their shoes with black slime. Margie turned in a circle, looking around. “I can’t even describe this place. There’s not one familiar thing here—not one sight, not one smell, not one sound, not one feeling.”