A CUP OF CHRISTMAS FEAR

No one was surprised to see that Angelo had managed to get assigned to drive the bus transporting the nurses to the bigger hospital in Manila. He was a man with many surprising talents, including assignments to work with the nurses. He greeted them with his usual positive attitude. Only a few days had passed since he had been injured during the bombing of Clark Field, but Sally knew Angelo was determined to keep his passengers in the spirit of the Christmas season.

“Hellooooooooo, Ladies!” he squeaked into the microphone. “I have for you sheets of American Christmas carols, and we sing them together, no?” He began passing out a sheet of song lyrics, making sure each nurse took one as he walked the aisle to the back of the bus.

“But, Angelo,” one nurse asked, “no one is here to accompany us! There are no instruments on the bus that I can see.”

“Ah, have faith, please, Miss Nurse! I have been practicing in my spare time and I will sing with you while I drive you. I will have my microphone on in the front.” He grinned as he took his seat at the wheel of the bus. “We start with ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem,’ first tune.”

And with that he began to sing in a rich tenor voice so compelling that the nurses soon all joined in.

As they drove through the gates of the beleaguered Clark Field, many signs pointed towards a wartime atmosphere. The gates were heavily guarded now, with many guards with bigger guns. A banner across the gate still wished those entering a “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,” but every nurse on the bus wondered what state the Philippine Islands would be in by Christmas. The sacred day was less than two weeks away, and some nurses had brought bags of wrapped gifts with them. Sally wondered if they would ever see anyone opening them.

After “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” they sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” while passing through the quiet countryside, followed by “Joy to the World” as they rode through a small town. The civilian community looked perfectly normal. Holiday decorations were everywhere. The people were going about their lives and getting ready for Christmas celebrations as if the American military installations had never been bombed. It seemed the people didn’t know the island nation had been invaded, or perhaps they thought the American troops had beaten back the Japanese forces. Or they were just holding their breath until they couldn’t deny what was happening any more.

Next was a familiar song, and Sally knew most of the words.

God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan’s pow’r…

Suddenly she stopped singing. Those words, Save us all from Satan’s pow’r… Sally felt a darkness descending over her. As much as she appreciated Angelo’s efforts to keep the nurses’ spirits high, Sally knew the signs were all around them: the Japanese had invaded the country, they had destroyed a great many US aircraft and buildings, and now they had forced the hospital to close. She thought of Statsenburg Hospital and what might become of that building. The nurses had left most of their belongings in the barracks, all Sally’s pretty dresses and jewelry for each outfit. She managed to pack some of her belongings—including her precious cosmetic kit—in a duffel bag. But things she had collected since her arrival here were mostly gone now. She knew they would never return to retrieve them. They were only told to bring their starched white nurses’ uniforms, white nylon stockings and white shoes, and of course, their nurses’ white hats.

Sally shuttered at their situation. To Save Us All From Satan’s Power? Satan seemed alive and determined to make life very, very difficult. Difficult indeed.

***

The abyss didn’t hiss. It didn’t growl. It cast a dark net of fear over the bus full of nurses. They thought the roaring in their ears was 0dd. They didn’t suspect that Pure Evil was coming for each one of them.

Meg Blaine Corrigan is the author of four books: Then I Am Strong: Moving From My Mother’s Daughter to God’s Child, a memoir about growing up in an alcoholic home; Saints With Slingshots: Daily Devotions For The Slightly Tarnished But Perpetually Forgiven Christian, Books One and Two; and Perils of a Polynesian Percussionist, a novel depicting Meg’s time playing drums in a Hawaiian Road Show. Her latest project is to tell the story of her Aunt Ethel “Sally” Blaine Millett, who was an American Army nurse in the Philippines when WWII began. “Sally” joined about a hundred other nurses and 50-some doctors in transporting about two thousand patients from Statsenburg Hospital north of Manila to the jungle on the Bataan Peninsula. They hid the patients from the Japanese for about four months until they were all captured and placed in POW camps for over three years before being liberated by American forces. This blog contains excerpts from the book in real time as Meg is writing and posting a blog once weekly. The book’s title is MERCY MORE THAN LIFE: Sally Blaine Millett, WWII Army Nurse. The anticipated date of publication is spring 2023.Meg’s website is www.MegCorrigan.com . She lives in Little Canada, Minnesota.

SAYING GOODBYE TO CLARK

The first time Clark Field was bombed by the Japanese, everyone on duty knew the plan. At the hospital, the patients were to be moved to the basement of the building where they had the best chance of not being injured. Several storage rooms had been cleared of furniture, scrubbed clean, and made ready for the patients. The bombs kept falling, but not one hit the hospital. The Japanese kept up a continuous barrage every day for almost three weeks. And each time, everyone had to take cover. This lasted from December 8^th until the 24^th, Christmas Eve. The day before, Sally and a new nurse named Ann were off duty. Ann had been moved from Stermmer Hospital to help out. They decided to go swimming, and both being Midwest girls, they thought donning their bathing suits in December was crazy.  They had a grand time. It was good they didn’t get caught because the head nurse would not have thought it was cute at all.

The next day, things began to change rapidly. The bombs were getting closer and closer to the hospital, and the powers that be decided the patients and the medical staff had to be evacuated. The patients were loaded onto trains, and the medical staff came on board to make sure IVs were still inserted and bandages had not slipped. A small number of doctors and nurses stayed on the train and rode with the patients to Manila. The others were getting ready to board a bus when the air raid siren went off. They all had to take cover and there was a great scramble to get someplace safe. Sally saw a culvert and thought that was a terrific place to take cover. She crawled into a drainage pipe so small, she could not use her arms to move forward; she had to shimmy in. She took a deep breath and then realized there was an iguana not much smaller than her staring face to face at her. She tried to shimmy right back out of the culvert, but she was wearing riding boots, and one got stuck. The iguana did not look happy. Sally couldn’t move. It was a wartime standoff between woman and lizard. Sally shimmied harder and finally got her foot unstuck. She nearly bolted out of the culvert and came face to face with the cook from the nurses’ barracks.

“Oh, Missy Blaine, Missy Blaine, Missy Blaine!” he said, wringing his hands. “I want to help you but I could not do so!”

“I’m okay now,” Sally said, “and the bombs seem to have quit for the moment. Let’s make a run for the buses.”

HEY, EVERYONE! I’m pleased to announce that we have a winner of the Name The Book Contest! My friend Michele Hein submitted the winning title: MERCY MORE THAN LIFE: SALLY BLAINE MILLETT, WWII NURSE. For having the winning title, Michele will receive an autographed and personalized copy of the book when it is published, and she will be included in the acknowledgments page as the person who chose the title. CONGRATULATIONS, MICHELE!

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Sally and some of her nurse friends had been gone the whole weekend of December 6^th to the 8^th. A group of them had ridden the train to Manila from Statsenburg Hospital. The girls rented a hotel room, ate their meals out and went to some of the well-known dance clubs on Friday and Saturday evenings. You might say they painted the town red, but they paid the price riding the train back north to Clark Air Base overnight. They arrived back at the barracks at about 6:00 a.m. Some of the nurses went right to the hospital to work the early shift, but Sally didn’t have to work until the next day. She was asleep before she hit the pillow. Soon, an older nurse named Wila, who out ranked Sally, began shaking her.

“Wake up!” said Wila. “Pearl Harbor’s been bombed!”

Well, Sally thought that sounded bad, but in her tired brain, she reasoned that Pearl Harbor was a long way away, so that didn’t affect the Americans stationed in Manila. And anyway, Wila didn’t say who bombed Pearl Harbor. Sally expected it was the Japanese, but she didn’t think about the fact that the Philippines were a lot closer to Japan than Hawaii.

Wila was having none of this nonsense. She came back shortly later and almost tore Sally’s mosquito net off her bed.

“You get up right now,” she said to Sally. “Get up out of that bed, because Camp John Hay has been bombed now.”

Now that was only a little over sixty miles north of Clark Field and Statsenburg Hospital, so that got Sally’s attention. She got up and got dressed and everyone who wasn’t at the hospital went down to dinner.

And nothing happened. It was so quiet, no one knew what to make of the situation. When the news came that John Hay had been bombed, some of the pilots jumped in their planes and taken off to go see what was happening at the other facility. They came back quickly because whoever was doing the bombing had now disappeared. And it was true, no one was certain at first exactly who had bombed the Camp on the Philippines’ biggest island, Luzon.

The next day, still no sight of the planes doing the bombing. Sally was to go to work at 3:00 that day, so after lunch, she went upstairs to put on her nurse’s uniform. She put her foot up on a footstool to tie her shoelace, and she felt a kind of shudder. Even the barracks building shook a bit. She turned to look out the window, and saw a huge flash of light, past the hospital where the planes landed and took off. Finally, she heard a deafening noise that made her block her ears. And then black smoke. Billows and billows of black smoke. The air raid sirens screamed in protest. Sally knew instinctively that this meant the war had finally come to their very doorstep.

She slowly walked to the top of the stairs, as if in a bad dream. She could feel her heart racing and she could already smell the acrid odor of all that black smoke. Her commanding officer was at the bottom of the stairs looking up as Sally. Other nurses had begun to gather around their superior to hear orders of what to do next. Sally had a fleeting thought about the chief nurse telling her not to be talking about an escape plan. Wasn’t that just a few days ago? And now, here they were, unprepared for what was to come.

Sally spoke to the chief nurse from the top of the stairs.

“This is it, isn’t it?”

The chief nurse looked up at Sally and said, “I suppose it is.”

Meg Blaine Corrigan is the author of four books: Then I Am Strong: Moving From My Mother’s Daughter to God’s Child, a memoir about growing up in an alcoholic home; Saints With Slingshots: Daily Devotions For The Slightly Tarnished But Perpetually Forgiven Christian, Books One and Two; and Perils of a Polynesian Percussionist, a novel depicting Meg’s time playing drums in a Hawaiian Road Show. Her latest project is to tell the story of her Aunt Ethel “Sally” Blaine Millett, who was an American Army nurse in the Philippines when WWII began. “Sally” joined about a hundred other nurses and 50-some doctors in transporting about two thousand patients from Stotsenburg Hospital north of Manila to the jungle on the Bataan Peninsula. They hid the patients from the Japanese for about four months until they were all captured and placed in POW camps for over three years before being liberated by American forces. This blog contains excerpts from the book in real time as Meg is writing and posting a blog once weekly. Meg’s website is www.MegCorrigan.com . She lives in Little Canada, Minnesota with her live plants and a robotic vacuum cleaner named Mabel.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Why were the generals so insistent that we engage in this war? I do not believe it is right, but they keep telling me this is a golden opportunity that cannot be allowed to pass by! I try talking to them, but they insult me with their ‘knowledge and experience.’ They treat me like a child, as if I don’t know right from wrong. How dare they say these things behind my back? I hear from others what is being said. But Japanese emperors are divine, and they know that. I do not wish to be forced into signing onto something I do not believe in nor stand for. I know what is right: we should not be persuaded to enter this unholy allegiance with the others who believe they will rule the world. Mussolini and Hitler think they are some sort of gods, but they are not like our Japanese rulers. Japan should have normal relations with other nations, and not bludgeon their societies into oblivion because we think we are stronger! And if we don’t prevail in this horrid war they are proposing, what happens then? Do we lose our way of life and suffer untold death and destruction in our own land? What then have we proven? Nothing! The French philosopher Voltaire said, “To the living we owe respect but to the dead we owe only the truth.” I will meet with these war mongers and tell them I do not approve of this aggression towards other nations, I will make them understand!

Hirohito paced the floor as his thoughts consumed him.

But Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and the stubborn generals bullied the young emperor to the point where he turned a blind eye to their plans to bomb Pearl Harbor, Clark Field, and many other targets. The genie was out of the bottle now, and there was simply no way to put it back inside. This time the abyss did not hiss.

The abyss growled.