The pep talk did little to soothe our shattered nerves when German planes appeared overhead with American fighter planes in pursuit. The planes dived and swooped with guns blazing. Puffs of black smoke filled the sky and the rat-a-tat-tat of antiaircraft guns sent up a deafening roar.
“Get him! Get him!” we shouted, even though the gunners could not hear us.
We saw an American plane spiral downward, leaving a trail of smoke. “Oh! That Jerry got our plane!” we cried in anguish. The pilot ejected and slowly drifted to earth. We ducked the dirt and flames that shot skyward when the plane plummeted to earth two hundred yards away. A German plane fell across the road from where we were standing at about the same time. The other German planes disappeared into the morning sunshine. . . .
Even though Colonel Blesse told us foxholes were unnecessary, many of the officers and men started to dig anyway. . . . The bank of the ditch [that bordered the camp] soon resembled a prairie dog village. Nurses could not find the time or did not have enough strength to dig a hole. We always wore a steel helmet. Those without one received a twenty-five dollar fine. The order was enforced easily.
Air raids continued for the next two days. The big railroad gun that the Germans pulled from a tunnel in the mountains shelled all night. We learned that the gun fired one-quarter-ton missiles that made a bone-chilling whistle when they traveled overhead. We soon referred to it as the “Anzio Express.” The gun terrorized us and caused much loss of life and valuable equipment during the seventy-six days we were on the beachhead. . . .
In our first thirty-six hours, the hospital admitted 1,129 battle casualties. The 750-bed hospital expanded to 1,200 by adding more tents. . . . Despite being on duty for thirty-six hours, I felt quite well physically. I again went to bed fully clothed and slept despite two air raids and the shells, too numerous to count, that screamed overhead.
[More hospitals arrive on the beachhead, including the 93rd Evacuation Hospital, the 33rd Field Hospital, and the 95th Evacuation Hospital. The hospitals are set up in a group to enable the Germans to identify them more easily as off-limits.]
The Germans shelled the 33rd Field Hospital just after they arrived. The compound was between the harbor and the Alban Hills behind us occupied by the Germans. It soon became known as “Hell’s Half Acre” because it was one of the most feared places on the beachhead.
Ammunition dumps, motor vehicle pools, fuel dumps, and artillery surrounded the hospital compound. The navy trained their guns on the German lines and the Germans shelled the harbor. Shells and bombs fell short a few times and landed in the hospital, but they did not injure anyone. Most managed to carry on without a great deal of panic and fear despite shattered nerves and sleepless nights. Less seriously wounded patients continued to plead for a discharge to the front because they felt safer in their foxholes there. . . .
One of the first mornings, after a night of duty, I went outside for a breath of fresh air before I found my tent for some much-needed sleep. . . . I again thought about the 95th Evac in the same area and wanted to look for [my friend] Gertrude.
[Eventually Schorer returns to her tent and falls asleep. The date is February 7, 1944.]
I had been asleep for several hours when I heard planes overhead and gunfire close by—or was I dreaming? I slid deeper into the sleeping bag and covered my head. I shifted and turned, trying to block out the noise.
Mary burst into the tent. “Thank God, Avis! You’re all right!”
“What was all that noise? I could hardly sleep.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right,” cried Mary, her words spilling out hysterically. “It’s so terrible—the 95th was bombed. We don’t know how many are killed. We’re working on the wounded and surgery is swamped.”
“Was anyone we know killed?” I asked, afraid to hear her answer.
“The chief nurse and a Red Cross worker were killed instantly. Most of the patients in the post-op ward were killed. Your friend, Gertrude, is critically wounded. The doctors don’t think she’ll survive. She’s in surgery now.” . . .
I lay on my cot for an hour and stared at the top of the dark tent. I fought choking emotions of grief, fright, and anger. I was angry at Hitler, the Germans, and the war that put us here. My heart ached and it was hard to breathe. I realized any breath could be my last.
I learned later that the carnage happened when German planes flew over the beachhead. Allied planes were in hot pursuit. Jerry, trying to lighten his load and escape, jettisoned his anti-personnel bombs. The bombs landed on the hospital, killing twenty-six and wounding sixty-eight. The bombs killed or wounded everyone in the pre-op area, including many already wounded while fighting on the front. The Allies shot down the plane when it tried to get away. . . . I was sleeping about 150 yards from where the bombs fell. . . .
A tap, tap on the tent brought me to my feet. It was Jon.
“I just wanted to see if you’re all right,” said Jon.
“How is Gertrude Morrow?” I asked anxiously.
“She died.”
I wanted to cry, but the hurt was so deep, tears would not come. I was numb and did not want to believe what I heard.
“Couldn’t they do anything to save her?” I cried.
“The bomb blew her leg off at the hip,” said Jon. “She also lost her kidneys. Her life wouldn’t have been worth living.”
I found little comfort in his words.
[Jon helps Schorer dig a shallow foxhole in the sand, which makes her feel safer. She notes that medical personnel do not spend much time in the mess hall because mealtime is a favorite time for German attacks.]
The Germans unleashed their heaviest raid after dark on February 12. I was outside my tent when the red alert sounded. . . . I ran to the air-raid shelter and was just inside when planes dropped flares over the hospital. They lighted the whole area brighter than day. Planes made pass after pass over the hospital, unleashing a deadly load of antipersonnel bombs. Jagged fragments of metal tore into the flesh of anyone near the explosions.
Bombs screamed earthward and landed with a thud. Above the chaos and bedlam, someone shouted, “They’re falling on the nurses’ tents!”
A soldier ran to the air-raid shelter shouting hysterically, “Is there a doctor in there? We need a doctor!” Before anyone could answer, he said, “Ellen’s been hit!”
Ignoring the falling bombs, two soldiers ran out, found a litter, and carried Ellen [Ainsworth] to the pre-op ward. [A piece of shrapnel about the size of a quarter had pierced her chest and she had a sucking chest wound.] Bomb fragments riddled my tent, which was about six feet from Ellen’s. I found a jagged hole in my metal sewing box that was deep inside my barracks bag. We learned later that the Germans flew about two hundred planes in the raid.
The wound in Ellen’s chest appeared small. The white hot metal passed through the lung into her abdomen and internal injuries were massive. Stomach contents spread through her lungs and abdomen, which made her condition grave. . . . She detected my alarm when I approached her bed.
“Don’t worry, Avis,” she said. “I’m tougher than anything Jerry can throw at us.” . . .
Ellen lost ground each day. She was aroused only when the percussion of a shell was near or the red alert sounded. I believed much of her lethargy was due to heavy narcotics we gave her regularly. Her abdomen was distended and we gave her oxygen through a mask. She remained so mentally alert that I could not dismiss her fighting spirit. I refused to think she would not recover.
We attached the chain with her dog tags, rabbit’s foot, four-leaf clover, lucky-seven dice, and St. Christopher medal to her medical record. Captain Sloan, the ward officer, and I were at the desk when he picked up the chain loaded with charms. He said, “She might as well throw this away.” I then realized how grave her condition had become.
On February 16, her breathing was shallow and her pale skin ashen. I tried to moisten her parched lips. She waved me away weakly. I could see her life slipping away. At [10 a.m.] s
he reached to remove the oxygen mask.
“Ellen, we’d better leave the mask on,” I whispered. She rolled her eyes back and took her last breath. . . .
Shocked and numb, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. Tears did not come. . . . Why couldn’t I cry when it hurt so much? . . . Why hadn’t I insisted she go to the air-raid shelter with me?
[Schorer goes on to describe dressing Ainsworth for her funeral service; she is buried in the cemetery at Anzio. Schorer also describes gathering Ainsworth’s personal effects to be sent home to her family.]
While shells from the Anzio Express screamed overhead, I went to bed and prayed I would see another day.
Maude Denson “Denny” Williams
(1907–1997)
U.S. Army Nurse Corps
Williams was one of sixty-six Army and eleven Navy nurses taken captive by the Japanese in the Philippines and held as prisoners of war in a civilian prison camp for three years. The Japanese did not permit them to care for military patients, but the nurses continued to care for interned civilians in the camp hospital throughout their imprisonment. Because of shortages, the Japanese rationed the prisoners’ food and finally suspended rations altogether in December 1944. From that time until they were rescued by soldiers of the First Cavalry Divison of the Sixth Army in February 1945, the prisoners subsisted on about five hundred calories a day. The nurses lost an average of more than forty pounds each and nearly died of starvation. In 1985 Williams published her memoir To the Angels, from which the following excerpts are taken.
I went to the Main Tunnel just before the surrender. The dirty, hungry, and exhausted men filled the passageway. Some asked for water, some for food, and the pity was that we had very little of either. Some of them were swearing, some were staring into space. A Filipino had shot his brains out. I tried not to show any emotion; I hurried back to our lateral to be alone. Such a sad, sad day—the Japanese were everywhere on the island, except in the tunnel.
Late in the afternoon they came.
Our officers conducted their officers with swords hanging from their waists, and their soldiers who had guns with bare bayonets and camouflage netting strung with leaves on their helmets, into the tunnel.
Standing in uniform, my face to the wall as instructed, I glanced sideways as they peered into the lateral. Arrogant little men puffed and strutted in their moment of victory. They did not harm me, they didn’t speak to me, they didn’t even come close to me. But now the enemy had a face, a body, an evil intention toward me.
In my anguish I remembered God’s telephone number—Jer. 33:3. “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
Frequently I had used the Episcopal prayer book. If ever I needed God’s phone number it was now.
“O merciful and compassionate God! You’re ever ready to hear the prayers of those who put their trust in you, help us in our need. I humbly ask, in your goodness to comfort and help all prisoners. Look on us with mercy.”
At this time a Japanese guard shuffled into the nurses’ quarters. I bowed and turned again to talk to God.
• • •
In the presence of any member of the Japanese Imperial Army, you will bow from the waist. The first rule handed down from our military captors and the one we hated most.
Immediately after the surrender, innumerable groups of the enemy prowled through the Hospital Tunnel, talking loudly and coming close to be sure we bowed from the waist. I obeyed, and if we had to bow from the waist, at least the enemy couldn’t dictate what we thought.
Following the first inspection tour, the Japanese Tunnel Commander ordered the hospital to function as usual. Back on duty, we shared with our eight hundred patients bits and pieces of food squirreled away in the diet kitchen and mess, plus a supply of cracked wheat, destined early in the war for China until General MacArthur had commandeered it six months ago.
All able-bodied men not needed in the hospital were marched out of the tunnels at bayonet point late on the afternoon of surrender, and our doctors were ordered to discharge all patients as quickly as possible for work outside. Almost at once signs went up announcing that everything was the property of the Japanese Imperial Government and nothing was to be removed. We were not permitted outside, and we were forbidden to talk with our patients except on medical matters—a rule we broke whenever our soldiers came in under guard to remove the dead, and when new patients arrived. In broken sentences and muttered phrases, we learned that in two days they had buried three or four Japanese to every one of ours; and for three days they had been held in the sun without food or water or even shelter. Enemy soldiers had robbed them of all their possessions, even eyeglasses; and for the first two weeks they were considered hostages rather than prisoners of war, since U.S. Forces elsewhere had not yet surrendered. Gaunt, unshaven, dirty, and risking a beating to whisper to us, these men stubbornly maintained their dignity and self-discipline in the face of defeat and brutal treatment. I thought them all heroes, and asked God to bless them. . . .
The enemy surgeon in charge told Colonel Cooper that sanitation and our basic human needs were matters of indifference since Japan’s standards were lower than ours. Repeated pleas for us to leave the tunnels were refused for two or three weeks; and when finally we were permitted out into the sunshine, we had to stay within twenty-five yards of the tunnel entrance.
While I desperately craved fresh air, I didn’t go often because groups of chattering captors clustered around us to stare and whisper and take pictures.
• • •
Colonel Menzie and his wife Mary, a nurse, occupied the back room [in one of the lateral tunnels off the main tunnel] until the surrender, at which time Colonel Menzie was taken out of the tunnel with all the other men. After he had gone, Mary asked another nurse, whom I shall call Kate Clark, to join her, while two other nurses occupied the adjoining room. . . .
One night late in May a Japanese officer entered the end room where Mary and Kate were sleeping. In the semi-darkness, Mary was aware of a presence. Half asleep and confused she made out the faint outline of a Japanese officer looming over her. Then she glimpsed the dagger in his hand above her. At this she came wide awake. Terror-struck at what she saw, she screamed like a banshee and sat up in bed. Her voice had a wailing, piercing shriek. The Japanese drew back in surprise, and in this instant she scrambled to her feet, giving him a hard push in the stomach with her elbow. She used these precious seconds to hoist herself over the partition. Once in the adjoining room she ran through into the nurses’ lateral, screaming hysterically.
Kate had been sleeping soundly across the aisle from Mary; she awakened and watched frozen in terror as Mary climbed the partition. She knew that she could never escape that way, for her legs were shorter than Mary’s and she was farther away from the partition.
The Japanese officer turned toward her brandishing his dagger and indicating that she would do instead of Mary. He forced her back down on the bed from which she was attempting to rise and despite her cries, he held her while lowering himself over her. She struggled and tried to kick him in the groin, moving her face from side to side to avoid his seeking lips. He was bigger than she was, and strong. Enraged and thwarted, he almost flattened her and hissed in Japanese; she could not understand but the tone further alarmed her. Unable to break his hold and helpless under his weight, she felt him tearing at her pajamas. A faint tearing sound and she felt his hand on her naked flesh. Her skin cringed, and she struggled more. A desperate heave shook him partially off her; she freed herself with phenomenal strength to roll away slightly from him. The Japanese was panting and sweating: his odor was revolting to her. She felt his bare thigh against her. Waves of disgust almost impaired her thinking. At last she remembered the Kotex pad. Thank God, she thought, maybe this will save me. As the Japanese once again fumbled toward her in the semi-darkness, she took his hand—already a bare inch or so from her legs— and moved it toward the Kotex. She felt him
hesitate, then examine what it was he was feeling. His fingers moved over the Kotex, over her legs. A few tentative movements over her stomach and then nothing. Kate lay perfectly still, praying, “Lord Jesus help me, don’t abandon me.”
After what seemed hours, but in reality was only minutes, he grunted something in Japanese and removed his hand and rolled away from her. Kate lay perfectly still, afraid to breathe. How long she lay, she did not know. At long last, exhausted and drained, she quit sobbing; she pulled herself together and got out of bed. She stumbled to her feet. Unaware of her appearance, and like a zombie, she staggered out of the room and into the nurses’ lateral.
We had heard all the screaming, and knew too well what was probably happening. Afraid to act, and filled with horror, we stood in the center of the room, unsure of what to do. “Kate, what in heaven’s name, what happened to you? Are you hurt?” Someone rushed toward her, and led her quietly to a bunk. Dazed, Kate allowed herself to be set down. Her hair was wild in disarray, her pajamas ripped on top, the trousers hung in shreds. Her legs were bleeding. Her breasts and stomach which were mostly uncovered were bruised and scratched.
The next day the Japanese command interviewed those living in this lateral and intimated that perhaps the man was an American or a Filipino and not a Japanese.
Looking at a bespectacled Kate, who registered a cool and calm appearance, I said, “Kate, this situation really burns me up. Not only are we prisoners; because they got their feathers ruffled about the embargo, they starve us, beat our men, and try to rape us!”
“Yes. I feel like I’d been bitten by a venomous snake. . . . I have clammy skin, a dry mouth, faintness, tremors, heart palpitation and sometimes nausea. I’m sure the horrible creature’s Wasserman was higher than his IQ.”
“I admire you, Kate. You’ve managed to regain your composure and you haven’t lost your sense of humor. I guess we’ll keep on keeping our guard up; whatever that includes.”
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