by Helen Wells
There was another terrific crash, screams, and Cherry inanely noticed that the white-gleaming radium hands on her wrist watch had stopped under the shattering explosion. As she entered the first ward, she heard the mighty roar of answering American anti-aircraft fire.
The ward was in good order. She hastened through the other wards and found that they were in good order, too. The nurses were tense and white-faced, but calm, and working fast to evacuate their patients. The soldier-patients, most of whom already had tasted enemy fire, lay stoically tight-lipped, as corpsmen lifted them from cots onto litters on the floor, ready to be taken out should it be necessary. From Ward 2, where the fire was almost extinguished, corpsmen were carrying out litters. A spare tent was rapidly going up near by to house these bombed-out patients. Anti-aircraft on Island 14 thundered, then lulled, repeatedly, and in the lulls it was possible to hear voices again. “Everything all right?” Cherry anxiously asked over and over again. And each brave nurse replied, “My ward is all right, Cherry!” Then Cherry saw to it that the nurses received supplies, and she started some of the corpsmen to taking records of the new admissions.
In this nightmare Cherry lost all track of time. It must have been an hour, or an hour and a half later, when Major Pierce called her. She went out of Mai Lee’s tent and found him standing with one hand on his medical kit, the other on his pistol holster. He still wore a soiled operating coat, with kit and pistol strapped over it. He looked at Cherry with hard eyes.
“Captain Wilson—the young mess officer—he——”
Cherry did not want to ask. “He was hit?”
“He’s dead.”
Cherry’s throat constricted. That nice, tall young Texan. He’d been so generous and friendly with everybody—he’d helped make their party a success. The Japs had killed him. Young Captain Wilson, with his friendly grin, dead.
Major Pierce kicked the broken earth with his foot. “There were three more killed. An anti-aircraft man down on the beach. An infantry messenger. And a corpsman. The corpsman—Max, you remember Max?—he ran out in the thick of it to save a patient. Nineteen years old, he was.” Cherry saw then that tears ran down Major Pierce’s face and he was not even aware of them. He said sharply:
“And this isn’t the end. It is merely the beginning. Look there.” He took her arm and led her down near the Operating hut, and pointed to the beach.
The night was quiet again, except for the clamor from the forward islands, and out of this scene of moonlight and hibiscus and lapping water came Higgins boats. They pushed up on the beach and dropped open their doors, to reveal litters of wounded men lying on the boat floor. Cherry and Major Pierce ran down on the sand. The men’s spotted jungle suits were half torn off them, rough bandages bound heads and arms and legs. Their faces, in the half-dark, were dirty and sad and exhausted.
Nurses were needed to help here, but she dared not rob any of the wards. She flew into action. She opened her medical kit and uncapped her canteen. As fast as she could, she went from one prone man to another, examining him with quick eyes and hands. Every dazed, stricken face begged for help. But not one of the men complained or cried out. The wounded just lay silent and staring, only asking for water. One wounded boy with a bandage over his eyes said, “Gosh, an American nurse! I can tell by your voice—that sounds good.” She tagged each man, to indicate what was wrong with him. To the most seriously hurt, she gave a shot of morphine to deaden the pain; threw blankets over those in shock; and directed the litter-bearers where to place the next wounded.
She smiled and encouraged as she worked, to cheer these suffering young men. They smiled back trustfully or even joked in faint voices. Some of them murmured that Cherry was the first American girl they had seen in a long, long time. Some of the boys were too shaken and shocked to talk. To them, Cherry murmured soothingly and gave sedatives. Some of them wanted to talk about what they had just seen and done, but Cherry would not let them waste their ebbing strength.
Doctors came running down to the barges just as another boat loaded with wounded scraped up on the sand. They, and Cherry too, gave the patients TAT, toxin and antitoxin to prevent infections, and MS, morphine sulphate, a sedative, and marked symbols on their foreheads with lipstick to show what had been given and what immediate treatment must be given. Corpsmen helped walking casualties to the wards. A truck cautiously backed down on the beach, amid the strewn men, and the litters were lifted in, to be driven to the wards.
Major Pierce plucked Cherry’s sleeve. “Get extra beds ready,” he said briefly. “Get blood plasma. Hot food. Shock tents. We’ll be operating.” He stayed there and helped to remove the wounded men from the boats, while Cherry ran to make preparations. She made two hasty stops on the way. She dropped in at Nurses’ Quarters to strap on her musette bag, water canteen, and her web belt. Luckily she already had on her leggings over her slacks and heavy G.I. shoes.
Then she flew to Gene’s tent. It was empty. Gene had gone! His shoulder was healed now and he had been kept on at the hospital solely to build up his weight and general resistance. But even so, he should not have gone before he was medically discharged!
No time to think about the flier! The new wounded on their litters were ranged in rows outside the ward tents, so many that Cherry wondered where to put them all. And Major Pierce had said this was only the beginning! Well, an evacuation hospital could take a thousand—and from the sound of forward guns, and still another barge of wounded pulling in, it looked as if they would have a thousand before this terrible night was over!
Corpsmen ran back and forth bringing blood plasma. Cherry saw haggard men revive as the life-giving blood was pumped into them. The stacks of empty yellow tin cans and paper containers grew larger and larger, and Cherry prayed that the plasma supply would hold out.
The casualties included almost every type of injury, with many head wounds from machine-gun and rifle bullets, shrapnel wounds, broken limbs, severe burns, and shock. Most of the wounded had had sulfa and morphine, given by heroic medical corpsmen under fire. And their speedy removal to the evacuation hospital would lessen their danger.
Within the next hour, Cherry put Ann and Gwen in charge of a hastily arranged shock tent, saw that the heavy influx of new wounded from battle were taken care of on the wards, sent Bessie and several other nurses over to Operating Room.
The nurses were working like demons—what with one nurse and three corpsmen to a ward of fifty or sixty patients. The nurses assisted the doctors and treated the soldiers. Cherry noticed gratefully that each nurse showed interest in each boy individually, asking or guessing where he was from, finding something comforting and encouraging to say. The first fright had gone and no one was paying any more attention to the forward firing than to thunder and lightning. They shared a warm feeling of comradeship in the face of danger. They joked and laughed as they worked and even some of the wounded joined in. One of the casualties said, “Want to hear what our orders were? It’s this: ‘Every Jap has been told that it is his duty to die for the Emperor. It is your duty to see that he does.’ Pretty good order, huh? But there’s a lot of Japs up forward we’ve got to plough through yet.”
At Major Pierce’s order, Cherry organized four surgical teams of doctors, nurses and corpsmen, a shock team, and a gas team, to go from ward to ward, to the men lying waiting outside the tents, and right down to the barges, to give immediate relief to the wounded. Cherry dared hope now that things were under control, for she noticed gratefully that the steady stream of newly wounded had stopped. But another part of her mind wondered frantically, “The Japs attacked the forward islands when they bombed us—how is the battle going? Are we winning or—or losing? Where’s Charlie? Where’s Gene?”
It was almost as if Major Pierce had heard her thoughts. He sent a corpsman for her, on the run, and she hurried down to the beach to join him.
“Look!” the unit director shouted, pointing to the black sky. Cherry did not see anything at first, then the sound told her. J
ap strafing planes again! They were covering the thirty miles between the fighting island and the hospital island, and as their shells flared into unearthly light, Cherry saw they were aiming for the boatloads of wounded! They came closer to Island 14 now, and one boat dodged and veered out in the black water. The Jap planes roared closer and Cherry and Major Pierce and the others on the beach fled to the slit trenches.
Major Pierce, shaking his fist toward the sky, yelled, “The pigs! The pigs! I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it! Strafing boats full of wounded!”
Cherry shouted back to the Major, “At least we got all the wounded off the beach!”
The earsplitting explosions of their own anti-aircraft left Cherry shaking. She peered around for fires but only one deserted supply shack was blazing. On the bare beach, shells rained down like a hailstorm. And then she saw a familiar figure, out there alone in the midst of the inferno.
It was Colonel Pillsbee, bareheaded, striding around with a map in his hand, directing the anti-aircraft fire, completely oblivious of the surrounding danger. Apparently he was directing other operations, too, for he was talking into the mouthpiece of a walkie-talkie strapped on his back.
After what seemed an eternity, the enemy planes were driven off and back went the hospital people to tow in the foundering Higgins boats. Miraculously, they had evaded the strafers. Cherry found she had lost track of time, as corpsmen ran up to unload the boats and she again made her pitiful sorting-out of the wounded. Someone told her it was half-past two. She could hardly believe that the night was so far gone. When she had tagged the last man and given him a drink of water, her thoughts turned to the nurses. She must get back to the wards and arrange to relieve her nurses! She could relieve at least a few at a time by staggering them. They had been on duty since three o’clock this afternoon—twelve hours—a few of them, who had extra emergency duty, since eight o’clock in the morning! The girls would drop with exhaustion!
Back on the wards, Cherry found everything going on as busily in the blacked-out, ripped-up camp as if it were normal, broad daylight. Wounded were still lying outside the Operating hut and the wards were overflowing with new patients. But every single one of Cherry’s nurses, though pale and drawn, was calmly and cheerfully meeting the emergency!
Cherry darted into the various tents. The sight of Bertha working away, as unruffled as ever, steadied her. Cherry went on to have a look in at Operating hut. Extra tables were set up, so that rows of surgeons operated simultaneously.
“How’s it going?” she whispered anxiously to Mrs. Flanders.
“All right.” The older woman’s hands moved rapidly getting out scissors, swabs, and cotton, for perhaps her twentieth operation that night. “We’re using intravenous anaesthetic. Faster.”
It was the same anaesthetic Cherry’s Dr. Joe had invented! And they were using Dr. Joseph Fortune’s discovery in jungle surgery!
Cherry figured out how to “stagger” nurses on duty, so they could all take turns at having meals and rest periods. But when she went onto the wards to tell the girls they could go off duty, the nurses refused to leave their patients.
“I’m not tired,” Gwen insisted. “Honestly. Scram and let me work.”
“Just wait till I help give six more transfusions,” Mai Lee pleaded in her ward. “Then I’ll go off for an hour—maybe.”
“But how can I leave?” Vivian protested. “You know there aren’t enough of us!”
“This is rough,” Marie Swift admitted. “We’ve never worked with men brought straight from battle like this. They’ve always been cleaned up before we saw them. Go off duty? I should say not!”
Cherry gave up. She had hot food sent to them from the cook tent, which was working all night, and that was all the nurses would take time out for. Their humor and good health were carrying them through.
Cherry was exhausted, ready to drop. But she would not give in. She sensibly went to get herself some hot soup. In the cook tent she found Colonel Pillsbee and Major Pierce. The Colonel was flushed and soaking with feverish perspiration. Apparently the unit director was urging him to submit to medical care, for he was protesting, in his usual formal, measured way:
“It is an absurd suggestion. I simply have not the time to report myself in sick. By the way, Major, didn’t I hear you ask for C type blood? Mine is C type, and I should be exceedingly glad——”
“Oh, no, sir, you can’t!” Major Pierce exclaimed. “You’re a sick man!”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” the Colonel replied gruffly and stalked out, a bit unsteadily, toward the Operating hut.
“He’s amazing!” said Cherry.
Major Pierce shrugged. “What can you do with a man like that? Say, that soup is a good idea. Give me a cup too, Cook, will you? We’re going to need this.” With a cup of steaming soup in his hand, he said to Cherry, “Come on out here, Lieutenant Ames.”
Cherry followed the surgeon outside in the dark. They found a toppled palm tree and sat down on it wearily.
“Now what, sir? I hope things are going a little better up front.”
“Better! They’re worse!” Major Pierce snorted. “Hasn’t it struck you as strange that, although we can hear that the fighting is going right on, we aren’t getting any more wounded here? We know there must be more wounded! Haven’t you wondered, for the last hour, what’s happening to those wounded over on that forward island? I’ll tell you. We can’t get them over here, and there they lie!”
“Oh, how horrible, Major! Can we do something?” Cherry cried.
Major Pierce plunged his hands deep into his pockets and took a long, deep breath. “Yes, Lieutenant, we can and we will! We’ll go over to that forward island.”
“Yes, sir!” said Cherry. “At once—please!” she pleaded.
“Right, Lieutenant, at once!” Then lowering his voice, he rapidly explained, “The fighting has shifted. Colonel Pillsbee just told me that the Japs are succeeding in establishing their beachheads. Our shore installations can’t prevent them from landing. We haven’t enough air support. So, with the Japs on and around the beaches, it’s a physical impossibility to sail boats of wounded out of there. Now, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” Major Pierce’s anger had turned to steely resolve. We’re going to fly up forward to the wounded and get them out and fly them back to the hospital!”
“Have you arranged for a plane?” Cherry asked doubtfully.
“No—couldn’t reach the Flight Surgeon on the field telephone—we’ll just drive over to the airport and tell them they have to give us a plane and a pilot. We have Colonel Pillsbee’s permission.”
They left their empty cups in the cook tent and hurried to the Medical Headquarters tent. There was a gaping hole in its roof now, a burned smell, and a pit in the ground where a splinter of shell was buried.
Dr. Willard came in then, too. Major Pierce packed all sorts of medical instruments and concentrated medicines into a big black leather field kit. The three of them gathered up blood plasma containers and tubing, and blankets, and hurried to the Major’s jeep.
“Maybe I’ll see Gene,” Cherry thought as they drove along in the fiery dark. “Oh, Lord, I hope Charlie is safe wherever he is! That could have been a short hop they sent him on—or a long hop—or he might be over Island 20 right this minute! Charlie, Charlie, wherever you are, good luck to you!”
This, her first taste of fire, was what Charlie had been through so many times. That thought made her proud, and steadied her.
Next thing she knew, the three of them were standing on the beach at the airport, while Major Pierce argued and pleaded for a plane. She looked around hoping she would get a glimpse of Charlie. Perhaps he might have returned. Impossible to find anyone on this dark, plane-crammed beach, in this milling but orderly crowd of men, with planes taking off so close that her black curls were blown back and her ears rang with the noise of the motors. The field and the sky overhead were thick with our planes. Out of dark distances—coming, C
herry realized, from the nearest airdromes—fighting planes of all descriptions were flying in to join the fight. Some of them must have flown very long distances.
A passing figure looked vaguely familiar to Cherry, and she seized the soldier’s sleeve. It was a signalman she knew. She asked him if, by any chance, he knew where Lieutenant Charles Ames was. “I’m his sister,” she explained. “I knew he was sent out but I have no idea where and I’m anxious for news of him!”
He smiled at Cherry and quickly set her mind at rest, “I don’t know exactly where he’s gone or where he is, but I do know he’s not in this battle.”
“Thanks for telling me. Is Gene, the pilot and gun expert, down here? The one from Captain Keller’s crew who was wounded?”
“I wouldn’t know, Lieutenant.” The signalman was gone in the shadows.
Cherry took a backward glance at Major Pierce. He was still negotiating with the AAF men for plane and pilot. She had a few minutes to look for Gene. She suspected he must have come here. But where to find him? Ask at the hangar. She did that.
The grease-covered sergeant told her, “Yes, he’s here. He’s already been out once. Went out in a P–38 and came back in a sieve.”
It took Cherry a few seconds to decipher this and understand that Gene had flown over the battle area, his plane had been shot up, but he had got back safely. He was here now! And he was probably going right out again!
Just then a tall figure in a leather flying jacket strode hurriedly by and the ground crewman grasped Cherry’s arm. “There he goes, Lieutenant. On his way out again and in an awful hurry!” Cherry, dashing quickly after him, caught up with him.