Free Elizabeth M. Norman by We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan Page A

any army, was particularly difficult in the tropics. With a high water table the open-pit latrines did not drain well, and without chemicals to kill insects, these privies became breeding grounds for flies. Almost everyone suffered from diarrhea until a new sanitary officer reported to the unit and had his men build wooden latrine boxes with removable seats. He accommodated the women with their own private facility, and they were so pleased with this small convenience, they lined up in front of it to pose for a photograph.
    The most difficult task, of course, was to set up the open-air wards. After bulldozers cleared the ground of stumps and rocks, Filipino laborers swinging long bolos cleared out the underbrush. (Their crew bosses had strict orders not to remove climbing vines or tall brush that could serve as air cover.) Once the construction was done, the nurses and their assistants set up the beds and desks and medicine cabinets. One of the few available pup tents was reserved for a records room. “We had a tent over the records, but no tent over the patients,” said Sally Blaine. “I guess the army thought the patients would dry out quicker than the records.” 7
    Some of the open-air wards were square, some round, some with no identifiable shape at all, just a sprawl of old iron beds or rickety wooden cots under clumps of bamboo or acacia. Here and there between the al fresco wards, the staff hung canvas Lister bags filled with water. The medical supply depot sent over blankets, sheets, pajamas, pillows, morphine, quinine, sulfa and vitamins. (Drugs were enclosed in tins and bottles and buried in deep trenches to protect them from bombardment.)
    One of the last tasks was to number each ward with small wooden signs nailed to the trees. In the end there were seventeen wards, each with between two hundred and five hundred patients—bed after bed after bed spread out on the jungle floor in the open under a canopy of branches and vines, literally as far as the eye could see. 8
    With so many patients, each day seemed endless. And, according to one of the surgeons assigned to the hospital, the danger of the work only added to the fatigue.
Hospital No. 2 had a peculiar and uncomfortable location. It is probably the first Army hospital of such size located near installations that were constantly being bombed. It was certainly in the zone of action. When the enemy air ships approached these installations they almost invariably do so directly over the hospital. This was disconcerting for two reasons: (1) It always drew fire from our anti aircraft guns. fragments [ sic ] of shells were constantly falling in the hospital area. Fifty calibre [ sic ] bullets also fell in the hospital area. (2) We were never certain that an enemy bomb, by accident, might not fall in one of the wards. On one occasion a 50 calibre bullet went through the only empty bed in one ward. Another 50 calibre bullet went through the [h]ead of a civilian kitchen police and the foot of one of our soldiers. One of our cooks heard the anti aircraft guns begin firing, jumped from his cot and fell flat on the ground 3 feet away just in time for an unexploded 3 inch shell to go through his chest and 3 feet into the ground. [The man eventually recovered.] Various sizes of shrapnel and or shell fragments fell in every mess and ward and twice in the dental clinic in our quarters. Only the operating room escaped. Several 155 shells fell in one mess, killing 5 and injuring 12 other persons. Every ward was riddled with fox holes which men often used. This was hard on the poor bed patients who could not get out of bed. 9
    On January 2, a week or so after it began receiving patients, the hospital recorded its first death. The body was buried in a rice paddy near the south end of the complex. There were no caskets on Bataan, so they covered the deceased with a sheet and lowered him into a hole. Later, when sheets were in short supply, the dead were simply covered with a