The Angels of Bataan

Josie said, appalled, "Ronnie!!" It looked like she was about to administer some military discipline for Ronnie being so frank.

I blurted, "No... She's right. I was exactly what she said before this all happened. I was self-indulgent and useless. But there's nothing like having it all taken away to open your eyes. So, I'm ready to give it my best shot. I know my stuff. I just don't know how to apply it. That's where I need help."

They both reacted like they hadn't expected me to say that. Ronnie looked stunned. It was like I'd stomped all over her dearly held beliefs about guys like me. Josie said cajolingly, "Just take him under your wing for a couple of weeks, Ronnie. Then we'll find somebody else if you don't feel like he's making progress."

Ronnie looked at me sullenly. Her beautiful grey eyes were full of anger as she said, "I'll show you the ropes, Sport! But that's all, and it will stop the minute you slack or act like a spoiled little brat. I've nursed the REAL men fighting this war, guys who know what bravery, dedication, and suffering are - and you have a long way to go before you're one of them."

I thought, "So, tell me what you REALLY think about me!" But it also pissed me off. She'd issued a challenge. I was going to do whatever it took to prove this bitch wrong.

I said, "We'll see..." Then I added, "I'm here and ready to start. What do I do first?" I expected her to tell me to fetch my medical bag so I could start doctoring.

Ronnie looked at me with amusement and said, "See that big pile of cots over there. I want you to help me fill this room with them spaced exactly five feet apart with twelve feet between rows."

Then she turned to Josie and said, "If I get too far ahead of this clown, the deal is off."

That angered me. I said, trying to sound calm, "No problem, sweetie." I walked over to the approximately shoulder-height pile and grabbed the first cot. How in the world do you unfold this infernal thing?

I was struggling with the damn cot when Ronnie walked over and took it. She unfolded it and locked it in a few deft moves. Then she handed it to me. Her look of absolute contempt said it all.

She said sarcastically, "No problem, SWEETIE. You'll pick up the knack eventually. I learned that in the middle of a driving rainstorm while my patients were lined up in a muddy trench."

That was rock bottom. The old me would have thrown a hissy fit. The man I'd been turned into in this Japanese hellhole would have curled up on the floor and died from sheer despair. But there was something inexplicable going on with this woman. For an unfathomable reason, I wanted to make myself worthy of her respect, which drove me to persevere.

I said mildly, "Look, I know you think I'm worthless, and I can't change that. But the world's different now, and I'm trying to adapt as much as possible. I know I've got a long way to go, but I want to contribute as best as I can, and I think I can do it if you'd just give me a break."

For a second, her beautiful face dropped its hard-ass attitude. Then she caught herself and said, "Okay, I'll agree to be your momma for a while because we need all the help we can get. Show me what you've got, and if you're even remotely competent, we'll get along fine."

We spent the next five hours working side-by-side, unfolding, and placing cots in hundred-degree heat. I was bathed in sweat. But I had spent the past seven months taking it easy as a prisoner. Ronnie had just arrived that day from the brutal siege of Corregidor. Still, she never faltered. She needed that ward up fast, and it was clear she would drive herself until the job was done.

We eventually stood there looking at a fully functional hospital ward. Both of us were panting and drained from the heat and exertion. Ronnie's hair was soaked like she'd been swimming. Unfortunately, her blouse and skirt were plastered to her magnificent body, and the sight gave me unholy thoughts.

For the first time in my life, I suppressed them. Astonishing!! I had no desire to disrespect the heart and courage of this magnificent woman by looking at her like a sex object. Our hard day's work together had built a tentative camaraderie. So carnal thinking was out.

I said, panting, "Have you eaten?"

She shook her head and said, "I haven't had much to eat since they brought us over from Corregidor."

I said, "I have some special things that I've been able to buy through the fence if you would fancy a bite." That was a mistake.

She drew her weary self to her full five-foot-four-inch height and said, outraged, as if I'd utterly disrespected her, "I eat with the other nurses. We share our hardships. You don't know what that's like do you, Buster!!?"

I mean... I got it. She was making it clear that she thought I was a self-centered pig, even if what I'd just asked was motivated by a genuine concern for her well-being. We were a long way from understanding each other.

I said defensively, "Look -- I was just worried about you. You worked your butt off, and you can't keep going without taking care of yourself. So, eat with the nurses if that's how you do it. But don't get mad at me for being concerned."

She gave me an odd look as if I had surprised her and said, "I'm sorry. I just can't get it out of my head that you've changed." She said that as if we'd run into each other in the past.

I said, puzzled, "Have we met before?" I could sort of recall a dazzling woman in a shimmery blue evening gown. Where was it? Was it the last party at the Manila Hotel? She was with one of the B-17 pilots. His name was Kelly if I remember correctly. I wondered what'd become of that guy.

She said lightly, "We've met, but it's immaterial. This is another world now." That was true, and I'd been kind of an asshole in my Margarita Santos-Marquez days. Was that only eight months ago?

I said, "I assume I start tomorrow."

She laughed and said, "Silly boy, you start in four hours. We work four-hour shifts on a three-shift rotation, seven days a week. So, get some sleep. You're going to need it."

Then she turned and walked out of the ward. Her pantherish grace was only equaled by her forthright and resolute bearing. Veronica Chase was the kind of strong woman I'd always feared.

There was no point in going back to my little sleeping space. So, I just sacked out on one of the cots. Instead of feeling exhausted and resentful at how I'd been treated, I was formulating a plan to prove to this woman that I was a person she could accept as a peer.

It didn't seem like I'd closed my eyes for a minute when I was roused out of sleep by a female hand insistently shaking my shoulder. I said wearily, "Not now, Margarita. I need to sleep."

That's when a woman's voice said in harsh no-nonsense terms, "Hit the deck, soldier. Your shift is about to begin!!"

I pried one eye open, and an angelic face was hovering over me. Was this heaven? It took a second to register where I was, and then it hit me. The woman was named Veronica, and she was there to introduce me to the rest of my life. I almost threw up.

*****

Ronnie was the circulating nurse. So, I accompanied her on her rounds and took notes. There was no such thing as a workday at Santa Catalina. We did four-hour shifts, slept for four, and then repeated. The cycle went on every twenty-four hours. I did three shifts every day of the week.

They'd had a meeting about me. There were originally seventy-two MDs among the internees. But disease and the Japanese had whittled that number down to thirty-one. Doc Shaefer, the only Board-certified surgeon, and Maude decided that I needed to prove myself from the bottom up as an orderly and Doc Lewis was the attending who got stuck with me.

Lewis was the oldest of the bunch. He had been a GP in Quezon City. He mainly did primary care. So, he was low in the pecking order. He knew my story. And unlike the other doctors. Lewis was happy to take me under his wing.

My new boss was an incisive old coot who cut through the bullshit and accepted no excuses. We had a heart-to-heart during my first shift where he told me about his expectations. I was to follow orders and behave, or he would recommend I be given a job more appropriate to my capabilities and attitude, like being a honey dipper for the outdoor latrines. But he did it with a grandfatherly air.

It was July, and the tropical illnesses were widespread. People were getting sick in droves, and the wards started to fill up. So, they promoted me from transcribing notes to assisting Ronnie in her nursing duties. That amounted to intake diagnosis and rounds, taking patients' vitals, and supervising whatever care Lewis or one of the other doctors prescribed.

We'd had a severe dysentery outbreak just before the Angels arrived, which they began to address by cleaning up the camp, particularly the latrines. Of course, I got the assignment. They also started to enforce rules about hygiene. They formed groups to ensure that the drinking water stayed relatively sanitary. Within weeks the dysentery cases fell sharply, and people stopped dying.

That didn't mean the wards weren't overloaded. Tropical diseases are inevitable in the Philippines, and mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and dengue fever are widespread. But the Angels also delivered babies and treated people suffering from every form of accident or ailment. The latter gave me my first opportunity to earn a glimmer of respect from Ronnie.

One day, a woman who was the wife of an American merchant sailor came into the Clinic with a ten-month-old infant. The father was on a ship somewhere in the Pacific when the Japanese invaded. So, the woman was in the camp by herself, alone and scared.

Her little girl had painful blisters all over her feet. We had set up an examining space using bed sheets near the building entrance. The woman and her child sat on a stool while Ronnie sat on another facing her. This case had puzzled her.

We had a good supply of sulfa because that was the cure-all for the American military, and Ronnie had administered that. But the blisters kept spreading into a painful rash, and the mother was at the end of her rope with a crying, screaming kid.

I'd tried to be Ronnie's faithful shadow for the first few weeks - seen but not heard. But I knew what the problem was, and I knew why Ronnie hadn't recognized it.

Ronnie was a combat nurse. If the kid had the kind of problem she was used to, she would have identified and treated it. But Ronnie had only nursed Americans who ate a relatively healthy diet. She had no experience with the diseases common to Filipinos, and this mother had all the symptoms of something I recognized.

I was standing behind Ronnie, secretly admiring her shapely ass. HEY!! I'm a guy. I cleared my throat, and Ronnie turned and looked at me, irritated. She said brusquely, "I don't appreciate being interrupted when I'm with a patient."

I said, "Can I ask Mrs. Dolowitz a couple of questions?" Before Ronnie could say "no," I said to the woman, "Are you still breastfeeding the child?" She nodded. Of course!! What other nutrition did she have for her baby?

Ronnie said warningly, "Erik!!"

I persisted, "Do you have the same kind of blisters?" Ronnie had stopped bugging me and was sitting there looking pissed.

The woman said, "No, I feel weak all the time, and I can't remember things. I do have a lot of scaly skin, though."

That was it. I said, "What are you eating, ma'am?"

She said, "Mostly whatever I can scrounge. We don't have any money, so I eat what's available at the mess." That was rice gruel twice a day.

I turned to Ronnie. She looked irritated but interested now and said, "Both of them have beriberi. You see it a lot here among the Tagalogs. But it's rare among Anglos because we have a much richer and more varied diet."

I added, "It's a fatal thiamine deficiency. Mrs. Dolowitz has all the adult symptoms. Hers aren't as bad because she must have other food sources."

I turned to the mother and said, "Have you eaten anything else?"

The mother said, puzzled, "I've eaten some pigweed. We boiled it in a kettle." Weeds were a delicacy for starving people.

I said, "That's it. I've seen this a lot with the poorer Filipinos. The kid has classic symptoms of childhood beriberi. She needs a big dose of B1 right away. It's in any leafy vegetable. Pigweed counts, but there's no way the mother would feed that to her."

I added with urgency in my voice, "The mother has gotten some thiamine into her system. But it isn't getting through to her daughter in the breast milk. The poor little thing will be dead soon if we don't increase Mrs. Dolowitz's B-1 uptake a lot. She needs fruit."

Ronnie looked appalled and said, "Fruit?"

I reached into my pocket and came out with a genuine Yankee dollar. I said, "Buy some mangos from the people at the fence. Eat them, but you also need to give the juice to your daughter. If you do that, the symptoms will disappear in a couple of weeks. Just come back when you run out of money, and I'll give you more."

I knew a dollar would buy her a lot of mangos, but who knows.

The mother looked at me like I'd handed her a chest full of gold doubloons. She said, wondering, "I can't take all your money."

I laughed, "I have a little bit more socked away." If she only knew how much more. I added, "We're all in this together, and this will save your baby's life."

Ronnie looked dumbstruck. Then a faint hint of respect came into those fabulous eyes. She said, embarrassed, "I should have thought of a thiamine deficiency. I was concentrating too much on the disease aspect."

She added with a sly grin, "Maybe you're not useless after all."

I said mildly, "Look, we're all tired and underfed. I saw beriberi in the clinics at Philippine General because we had a charity ward. You're an Army nurse. There wouldn't be too many instances of that at Sternberg."

Then I added in my friendliest voice, we're all charity cases now, so we have to do the best we can with what we have. Luckily, it'll just take a few mangos to fix Mrs. Dolowitz's problem."

A hint of despair crept into Ronnie's sultry voice for the first time. She said, "They're all dying, and we don't have nearly enough of ANYTHING to save them. There's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is make their last days as easy as possible." Her beautiful eyes had tears in them.

Unbelievable!! This woman was taking personal responsibility for something she had no power over. It wasn't Ronnie's fault that we didn't have the essential medicines to treat the residents of that godforsaken place. She just cared too much, and it was rubbing off on me.

The Angels were doing the best they could, making do with nothing but makeshift medical interventions and raw dedication and courage. They didn't have access to effective medicines like quinine, which was bitterly ironic since quinine from the bark of the Cinchona tree was readily available. We grew it on Mindanao and supplied it to the world. Now, even a little of that drug would save a lot of lives.

I wanted to reach out and comfort my stalwart friend. But I knew I would lose a limb if I tried to put my arm around her. I was trying to decide what to say when the idea hit me like Saul on the road to Tarsus. I had a fortune stashed in my hut. I could get all of the quinine we needed!!

That sudden onset of altruism wasn't entirely due to Ronnie's beautiful face. My work with the Angels was beginning to teach me that helping others was a reward in and of itself. Selflessness was a somewhat alien concept for me. But I was beginning to find it appealing.

I must've blurted out the part about buying the quinine. Because Ronnie looked at me like I had finally proven that I was as stupid as she thought I was. She growled, "How can you do that? We're isolated in here."

I gave her a wink and said, "I have friends in low places. You ought to know that from seeing me in my younger days. Just put together a shopping list, and I'll try to get whatever you need."

I wasn't boasting. I'd stayed connected with my old pal Vincente. Vincente might've been a lounge lizard, just like me, but he was a native Filipino, half Tagalog, and half Spanish. He would regularly visit the fence to see if I needed anything.

He undoubtedly enjoyed flaunting his freshly pressed tropical attire as he handed me a few meager scraps of food and some soap - for a twenty-dollar gold piece, of course. In the good old days, he'd kiss my ass, and I would let him have my leftovers. So, he must've gotten a real kick from seeing the haggard skeleton I'd become.

Vincente had nothing to fear from the Japanese, partly because, being a native, he was immune from any internment orders. But more importantly, he was plugged into the Filipino guerilla network, and the Tagalogs had plenty of experience cutting the throats of foreign invaders - dating to our arrival in 1898. They simply returned to their old tricks as soon as the Japs arrived.

The Tagalog guerillas had more-or-less taken over the areas surrounding Manila. The punishment was harsh if one was discovered. Still, one Filipino is pretty much indistinguishable from another, and the Japanese found it impossible to do anything about the growing menace.

Terry Adevoso was Vincente's cousin and the leader of the Hunters ROTC. That outfit was the most dangerous organized group in the Manila area. The odd name came from the fact that it was composed of former cadets at the Philippine Military Academy. They'd just headed for the jungle when the Japanese arrived.

Hence, the next time Vincente came down to the fence, I surreptitiously passed him a note with a couple of gold double eagles rolled up inside. The message said: "The people in the Santo Tomas Camp will die if we do not get access to medicine and medical supplies, particularly quinine tablets. Please help us. We will pay in gold for any medicine you can provide from this list."

The list Ronnie had given me included quinine, ether, a wonder drug called aspirin that fought fever, and medical equipment like surgical kits and sterile dressings. Vincente nodded and said, "I'll get this to Adevoso, and he'll see what he can do."

The next day, I made my daily pilgrimage down to the fence. There was no Vincente. That wasn't very reassuring. I was searching for him among the Filipinos gathered there. That's when a kid detached himself from the group and strolled in my direction.

There was nothing special about him. He was the type of classic street urchin you saw all the time - hustling for anything he could beg or steal in the streets of Manila. He said in a far too adult voice, "My name is Ernesto, Senor. Can you give me some gold for this?" And he held up a large bottle containing what looked like quinine tablets.

I said, "How do I know it's real??"

The boy shrugged and said casually, "You need to give me four gold pieces to find out." I felt like I was wasting eighty dollars. But what option did I have?

I reached through the fence and dropped four gleaming coins in the boy's grubby paw. He handed me the bottle. Then he turned, mounted a moth-eaten burro, and clip-clopped off toward the squalid tenement area that lines the Pasig. His parting words were, "I will bring you more tomorrow for four more gold pieces."

I walked back to the Clinic, puzzled. Were these things real? It was a big bottle, and late summer in the Philippines was mosquito season. So, one ward was full of feverish, sweating people crying- and moaning in agony. The harsh light hurt their eyes and the ward was darkened so that it looked like Hieronymus Bosch's rendition of hell. Plus. it stank to high heaven.

Josie, of course, was the Angel who'd volunteered for that horrendous duty. Ronnie, who was supposedly off shift, was there too. She was mopping brows, holding bed pans as they vomited blood, and administering whatever words of encouragement she could.