A Pledge of Silence

by Flora J. Solomon

  That night, a convoy of Red Cross ambulances delivered the first wave of patients. Margie held the IV as medics eased a gurney from the ambulance. The occupant moaned, and she took his hand. “Welcome to Walter Reed East, soldier. You’re our first customer, so you get the best bed.”

  Miss Clio Kermit arrived with the convoy to take charge of her staff. She inspected the open-air wards, the buses housing the nurses, the mess, and the supply huts. She talked to the women and conferred with the doctors. She ordered permanent quarters built adjacent to the river, fenced and private, with a latrine and bathing area.

  Margie and Evelyn dragged their belongings from the bus to the tent they would share with Gracie and Ruth Ann. In the cramped space, their four cots took up most of the floor. Just a few hours earlier, Filipino girls had stuffed the mattresses with rice straw. Gracie lay on hers. “Try the bed. It isn’t bad.”

  Ruth Ann fashioned a clothesline from vines. Margie hung their one luxury, a small mirror, and Evelyn pulled out a fifth of gin. “To home, be it ever so humble,” she said, toasting the crude abode and passing the bottle around.

  Japanese troops relentlessly pounded the front line with artillery fire. Wounded men arrived in droves, over a hundred of them the first night, with chests ripped open, head trauma, abdomens half blown away, and limbs pierced with shrapnel. They came in buses, on trucks, in horse-drawn carts, and on the backs of mules, all of them stinking of blood, grime, and sweat. Moans, screams, and questions from still-lucid soldiers competed with a cacophony of sirens, transports, barked orders, and clanking instruments.

  “Take a deep breath,” Margie instructed, covering a soldier’s nose with ether-soaked cotton. His body went limp. Margie monitored his heartbeat and blood pressure while the surgeon and nurse assistant probed deep in the young man’s gut, searching for bleeders or holes in the delicate viscera.

  “I need a clamp here,” Dr. Corolla called out.

  The medic searched in the Lysol-filled bucket of instruments that all the surgical tables shared.

  “Too late! We’ve got a gusher! Get me suction!” the doctor bellowed.

  The nurse suctioned inside the wound until the doctor found the damaged blood vessel and clamped it off. Following the trajectory of the bullet, he checked through the abdominal cavity, looking for nicks in the bowel. “We’re good here. How is he doing, Margie?”

  “His vital signs are stable.”

  “All right. Nurse, close him up. Who’s next?”

  “It’s a chest case,” the nurse said. “Ready on table six.”

  “How many more are out there?”

  “Fifty-four, and there’s another bus coming.”

  Margie prepared another young man for surgery, removing field dressings from his left ear and eye. Talkative and loopy from morphine, he told her of a fanatical enemy as she cleaned mud off his face and painted it with antiseptic.

  “They live by the Code of Bushido. Death in battle’s the highest honor. Suicide’s nobler than being captured. Nothing stops them.” He winced when she got too close to the wound.

  “Sorry.”

  “S’okay.” He continued, “Once I saw them charge into an electrified fence. The troops behind just climbed over the dead bodies. I’ve seen a lot. That’s no way even close to human. Think I’ll lose my eye?”

  Wounded soldiers kept coming. Margie’s adrenaline-charged body kept going, whether in the heat of the day when sweat rolled down her legs and into her shoes, or at night when blackout blinds trapped rank air in the surgical hut, making breathing difficult.

  When the onslaught abated, she slept like a drugged person, waking with a headache each oven-hot morning. Disoriented, she tried to count the number of days she’d been here, but they all melted together.

  Snatching her towel off a vine, she trod the short path to the river to bathe. Leaving her clothes at the water’s edge, she immersed her body in the tepid water, enjoying the feeling of it sloshing over her. She washed with a bar of soap she found on a rock and scrubbed her scalp, her hair dry and brittle from lack of care. Margie slipped out of her underwear and washed that too. Wrapped in her towel, she sat on the riverbank to dry in the sun.

  “Hey, Boots,” she said to a woman nicknamed after her red patent leathers. She wore her black hair in an attractive blunt cut, compliments of the unit’s talented barber.

  “How’re you doing, Margie?”

  “I’ve been so busy, I don’t even know. What day is it?”

  “Friday, I think. They all blur together.”

  “I may have slept through a day, but I’m not sure. It’s a weird feeling.”

  “You didn’t miss anything. The surgery’s been quiet.” Boots lay back on her towel. “The wards are crazy, though. They opened Ward Eight yesterday.”

  “Eight? I thought there were six wards.”

  “You need to get out of the surgery more, kid.”

  “That would be two thousand four hundred wounded men! Are you sure?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “Who’s staffing them?”

  “Medics mostly, and some nurses transferred in from the hospital on that island south of us, Corregidor.”

  “I hadn’t heard,” Margie said, wondering what other news she had missed. “Has anyone arrived from Sternberg?”

  Boots spoke languidly. “Gosh, no. I hope you’re not expecting someone.”

  A prickle of anxiety stirred. Royce had said he would be just a few days behind her, but more time than that had passed.

  Boots sat up. “Is Royce still at Sternberg?”

  “As far as I know. Why?” She didn’t like Boots’s tone.

  “You need to talk to Dr. Corolla, Margie.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just talk to Dr. Corolla. I saw him going out to Ward Six.”

  Margie tightened her towel, picked up her soiled clothes, and hurried back to the tent. She dressed quickly, then hitched a ride on a jeep going to the wards. Speeding along the bumpy path, the driver pointed upward. Margie saw a limp body caught in the tree branches. The driver shouted, “A Nip sniper! Some get behind our front line. Watch out for them.”

  As far as she could see, a hodgepodge of cots stretched out under the trees, their lower branches laden with boots, rucksacks, helmets, gas masks, ponchos, and pajamas. Skinny men mending from an assortment of corporal abuse or sick with jungle-rot diseases slept deeply or fitfully, read numbly, paced nervously, played games with homemade cards or dice, or just sat, staring dully into space. Some of those diagnosed with battle fatigue cried as they lay in fetal position, while others howled strings of obscenities. Birds squawked loudly and continuously, and monkeys looking down offered their opinions.

  Nurses quietly moved from man to man, washing off grime and sweat with water from the Real River, cleaning open wounds with green soap, and treating them with sulfa powder. They changed soiled linens, plumped pillows, and watched their charges for fever, rashes, sores, pallor, pain, or mental confusion. They offered water for thirst, food for hunger, medicine for pain, and comfort to the frightened in this primitive setting. They worked like dogs. The men called them angels.

  Margie found Evelyn and Dr. Corolla at the nurses’ station. Kicking a small lizard off the toe of her shoe, Evelyn greeted her with a grin. “What are you doing out here in the boonies?”

  “Slumming. It looks like I came to the right place.”

  “I know. It’s bad. These guys deserve better than they’re getting.”

  Margie noted dark circles under Evelyn’s blue eyes, her skin sallow and bug-bitten. “You’re doing the best you can.”

  “Tell that to the guy who’s lying in a pool of blood or fecal drainage.” She nudged Dr. Corolla aside with her hip, opened a bamboo cabinet, and selected a twenty-cc syringe and a large needle. She carefully ran the needle over her finger to check it for barbs before sharpening it on a rock. Dropping twenty morphine tablets into the syringe with twenty milliliters of water, she tilted
the syringe gently to mix the solution. “I’m making rounds to change dressings. You want to come with me?”

  “Not this time. I’m here to talk to Dr. Corolla.”

  He looked up from his daily log. “What can I do for you, Margie?” A cigarette dangled from his lips. His hair, thin on top, had grown shaggy over his ears and down the back of his neck.

  Margie hesitated. “Do you know Royce Sherman? He’s a surgeon.”

  Dr. Corolla inhaled, and the end of the cigarette glowed red. “Of course I know Royce. Are you the pretty nurse he talks about all the time?”

  Growing warm, Margie figured she was blushing. “He talks about me?”

  “Incessantly. The boy is smitten,” he said through an exhalation of smoke.

  Margie retrieved a cigarette from her pocket, and Dr. Corolla provided a light. She liked the idea of Royce being smitten. “I expected him to be here by now. Do you know where he is?”

  Dr. Corolla regarded her. “You’ve been so busy in the surgery, you haven’t heard.”

  She sensed trouble and steeled herself for bad news.

  In a gentle voice, he said, “General Homma marched his troops into Manila three days ago. Before we could get the medical staff out, they’d blocked the roads. Twenty-seven physicians surrendered to the Japanese.”

  Not taking it in, she said, “The Japanese surrendered?”

  He took her arm, lowered her to a stool, and squatted beside her. “My dear, Royce was captured by the Japanese.”

  “No! Not captured! It can’t be! Is he all right?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” She choked back a sob. “Someone must know something!”

  “I’m sorry, Margie, but there’s nothing more I can tell you.”

  She didn’t remember the jeep ride back to the nurses’ quarters. She paced in front of her tent, willing herself not to dwell on the stories of Japanese atrocities that wanted to crowd out any other thoughts. Royce is a surgeon, she reasoned. He has rare and valuable skills. The Japanese would recognize that, and he would be safe. She prayed to a higher power, “Please, Lord, keep him safe!”

  As the Japanese infantry pounded the front line, the spate of injured resumed, this time with the more intimate wounds of hand-to-hand combat. Margie administered anesthesia to the sliced and diced men, while surgeons and nurses stitched gashes from bayonets and swords.

  Japanese warships blockaded every harbor. Medicine, food, and other provisions depleted alarmingly. Rationing decreased meals to two per day.

  At breakfast one morning, Margie stirred the rice in her bowl, looking for weevils and wondering if the grayish meat was monkey or horse. Spitting out a tough chunk, she saw a spot of blood. She said to those with her, “We’re not getting the right vitamins from this diet. My gums are bleeding.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Gracie said, patting the underside of her newly revealed chin. “I’ve wanted to lose this baby fat for years. Now it’s melting away.”

  “It’s not a healthy weight loss, Gracie.”

  Margie ate the gray stuff in her bowl and every grain of rice, but what she craved was an orange. She would give anything for an orange, a cold, juice-dripping-down-your-chin orange! Her mouth watered.

  Ruth Ann said, “The guys aren’t getting enough calories to heal. I’ve noticed an increase in beriberi and scurvy. Half have dysentery.”

  “The other half have malaria.”

  “What they need are oranges.”

  “What they need is quinine.”

  “What we need is a God who knows we’re here,” Gracie said, then covered her face with her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’ll never get into heaven.”

  Tildy scoffed. “Look around you, Gracie. You think God is interested in your every thought and word? A bit arrogant of you, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll pray for your salvation, Tildy, as well as my own.”

  Tildy rose to leave. “Save your prayers for the guys. I’ll take care of my own salvation, whatever that is.”

  Margie had no wise words. This hideous environment where so much pain and death surrounded her tested her own faith. A just God wouldn’t allow this carnage, would he? Or did he have no power over evil? Was he all-seeing? If so, did he not care? Did the benevolent God she prayed to even exist?

  Antiaircraft fire exploded, interrupting her deliberations. The women dove into a foxhole and hunkered under a rain of dirt.

  Gracie said, “I hate these foxholes. They fill up with water.”

  “And snakes,” Ruth Ann added.

  Margie said, “We should bring a shovel with us.”

  The ack-ack stopped. Hearing no incoming planes, they climbed out and brushed the dirt off their clothes and out of their hair. Looking up, Margie saw nothing but a dense canopy of trees.

  Evelyn said, “Shrapnel went through a bed yesterday. It left a hole as big as a basketball. Luckily, no one was in it.”

  “Luckily,” Margie said. Bone-weary, she wobbled on her feet. “I have to get to the surgery.”

  Evelyn said, “I heard the gloves are gone. What’re you doing?”

  “Repairing as many as we can. Sometimes the docs go in bare-handed. Pentothal and ether are low too. We’re using more locals.”

  Gracie added, “We’re dispensing quinine on an as-needed basis. That’s just criminal! What happened to those supply ships MacArthur promised?”

  Evelyn scoffed. “Promises, promises. That was just a tease.”

  “Some tease,” Ruth Ann said, pulling up her pant leg to reveal an ugly abrasion. “That’s from shimmying up a tree to watch for those damn ghost ships.”

  “Where did you get the energy to do that?”

  “It was a while ago. Back when I still had some.”

  Spending as much time as she did in the confines of the surgical hut spared Margie from some harsher aspects of patient care. Her patients arrived drowsy from drugs and with the worst grit of battle scraped off. When they left, they were asleep and swaddled in clean surgical dressings. She seldom visited the wards, where men, too weak to heal, lingered on cots under mosquito-laden trees.

  She hurried to the soldier lying on the surgical table. Tildy prepared a tray of sterile instruments. Careful not to contaminate the field, Margie began her presurgical routine. Finding the soldier’s blood pressure low, his pulse fast, and respirations shallow, she consulted with the doctor before adjusting the drip on his IV and starting the anesthesia. “He looks a little yellow.”

  Tildy said, “Poor guy. He crawled through the jungle for two days before someone found him.”

  Dr. Corolla inspected the wound on the soldier’s thigh, swollen and oozing bloody fluid. He mumbled it didn’t look good and ordered the medic to ready an amputation tray, just in case. “Is he under, Margie?”

  She checked the sedated soldier’s responses. “Yes, all set.”

  Tildy slapped a scalpel into his outstretched hand and stood ready with sponges and suction.

  Dr. Corolla quickly removed necrotic tissue and shredded muscle. When he probed deeper to search for shrapnel, an overpowering stink exploded. “God!” he shouted. Bubbles oozed from the wound.

  “Gas!” Tildy gagged.

  The medic whipped the curtain around the surgical station in a futile attempt to contain gangrenous spores.

  Margie choked, then deepened the soldier’s sedation.

  Dr. Corolla applied a tourniquet, then located and ligated major arteries, veins, and nerves. He amputated the beyond-repair limb in hopes of controlling the spread of the gangrene. He passed the severed leg to the medic, who took it to the dump to be burned along with the bloody dressings.

  A sickly-sweet stench hung in the air as Dr. Corolla finished the surgery. When done, the surgical hut had to close for scouring, all instruments gathered up for resterilization. As the nurses and medics started the dreary cleaning task, Margie accompanied the patient to the gangrene ward.

  Gracie was there, th
e only nurse who willingly worked on this fetid ward. Row after row of men lay on cots, most with stumps of arms and legs wrapped in mummy-like dressings. The odor forced Margie to breathe through her mouth. She handed Gracie the soldier’s chart. “He’s had a rough go.”

  Gracie glanced through the chart, then adjusted the drip on the IV and checked his vital signs. “I’ll keep a close eye on him. What’s his name?” She looked at his wristband and then jiggled his shoulder. “Arnie, can you wake up? Your surgery’s over. You’re in recovery now. Can you open your eyes?”

  “It might take a while. He’s under pretty deep,” Margie said. She nodded to a group of men lying in the sun with their grotesquely swollen and putrid-smelling limbs exposed. “What’s going on with them?”

  “It’s a new treatment. It’s amazing. We debride the wounds, then douse them with hydrogen peroxide. They’re tented with mosquito netting and left open to the air and the sun. Some of them heal up real nice.”

  Real nice? Margie had her doubts. As she left the ward, she heard a delirious soldier pleading, “Just get the leg off me, doc! Take it off! I want it off!”

  CHAPTER 11

  Bataan, February–April 1942

  Mid-February brought a reprieve. While the Japanese reprovisioned their forces, the numbers of wounded soldiers delivered to the field hospital decreased to a trickle. Medical care fell into a routine of patient baths in the river or sponge baths in the bed; meals, though never enough to eat; medications, when available; cigarettes for comfort; gossip for boredom; and chitchat to chase away the blues. Proliferating rumors raised hopes or festered fears. Everyone battled rats that ate their clothes, monkeys that stole their food, and iguanas that crawled into their beds. For the first time in a long while, the medical staff had some free time.

  So they slept. After restoring their tired bodies, they searched for diversions. In Miss Kermit’s shack, the nurses listened to the Voice of Freedom, which broadcast radio programs three times a day from Corregidor, or news broadcasts from KEGI in San Francisco, or programs on random frequencies picked up by their receiver depending on the weather. They heard how superbly the Philippine Islands were holding up against the Japanese.