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ABRAMS BOOKS - Mary Cronk Farrell

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272 pages

English

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In the early 1940s, young women enlisted for peacetime duty as U.S. Army nurses. But when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 blasted the United States into World War II, 101 American Army and Navy nurses serving in the Philippines were suddenly treating wounded and dying soldiers while bombs exploded all around them. The women served in jerry-rigged jungle hospitals on the Bataan Peninsula and in underground tunnels on Corregidor Island. Later, when most of them were captured by the Japanese as prisoners of war, they suffered disease and near-starvation for three years. Pure Grit is a story of sisterhood and suffering, of tragedy and betrayal, of death and life. The women cared for one another, maintained discipline, and honored their vocation to nurse anyone in needall 101 coming home alive.The book is illustrated with archival photographs and includes an index, glossary, and timeline.Praise for Pure GritSTARRED REVIEWDetails of many nurses' individual trials combine to form a memorable portrayal of their shared experience, one which will emotionally impact readers.--Booklist, starred reviewPrimary source materials, especially the movingly matter-of-fact recollections of several of the nurses and personal snapshots, bring the story to life.--Kirkus ReviewsFarrell doesn't spare her young readers any grim details . . . She includes the challenges these women faced and the joy they felt on returning home. As awful as history can be, now might be the right time to introduce the next generation to this important period.--The Washington PostIn addition to photographs and helpful maps, the page layouts include facsimiles of the nurses' letters and diaries. Young readers who enjoyed Tanya Lee Stone's Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream will also appreciate this story of courageous women whose story was nearly forgotten.--School Library Journal

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	25 février 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781613126370
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	13 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1038€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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FOR GABE DORAN AND CHERYL, A WOMAN WITH PURE GRIT
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farrell, Mary Cronk. Pure grit : how American World War II nurses survived battle and prison camp in the Pacific / by Mary Cronk Farrell. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4197-1028-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Nurses-United States-History-20th century. 2. Military nursing-United States-History-Juvenile literature. 3. World War, 1939-1945-Medical care-United States. 4. World War, 1939-1945-Prisoners and prisons, Japanese- Juvenile literature. 5. World War, 1939-1945-Campaigns-Philippines-Juvenile literature. 6. Prisoners of war- United States-Juvenile literature. 7. Prisoners of war-Philippines-Juvenile literature. I. Title. D807.U6F37 2014 940.54 7573-dc23 2013017134
Text copyright 2014 Mary Cronk Farrell Foreword copyright 2014 Diane Carlson Evans For image credits, see this page . Maps on this page and this page copyright 2014 Laura Condouris Book design by Maria T. Middleton
Published in 2014 by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Abrams Books for Young Readers are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
115 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011 www.abramsbooks.com
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE
Chapter 2 SURPRISE ATTACK
Chapter 3 NO TIME FOR FEAR
Chapter 4 NURSES UNDER FIRE
Chapter 5 RETREAT TO THE JUNGLE
Chapter 6 MAKE-DO MEDICINE
Chapter 7 BOXED IN ON BATAAN
Chapter 8 RETREAT TO THE ROCK
Chapter 9 HOLING UP ON CORREGIDOR ISLAND
Chapter 10 RESCUED!
Chapter 11 SURRENDER TO THE ENEMY
Chapter 12 HELD INCOMMUNICADO
Chapter 13 SANTO TOMAS INTERNMENT CAMP
Chapter 14 FOOD? GROW YOUR OWN
Chapter 15 HOPE AT LAST
Chapter 16 WALKING SKELETONS
Chapter 17 LIBERATION!
Chapter 18 HOMECOMING
Chapter 19 FORGOTTEN
Chapter 20 MOVING ON
Chapter 21 RECOGNITION AT LAST
Glossary
List of Nurses
Select Timeline
Endnotes
Bibliography
Web Sites for More Information
Acknowledgments
Image Credits
Index of Searchable Terms
About the Author
FOREWORD
WHILE SERVING AS AN ARMY NURSE IN THE RICE paddies and jungles of Vietnam in 1968 and 69, I didn t consider the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war. I was twenty-two years old, and my high school and college education had starkly omitted the stories of the Army and Navy nurses held prisoner during World War II in a camp in the Philippines. Nor did I know that during that war, over five hundred American women died in the line of duty, more than two hundred of them Army and Navy nurses. I remember studying Florence Nightingale, who founded modern nursing during the Crimean War, and learning of Clara Barton s heroic role in the Civil War while founding the American Red Cross. But more recent role models and examples were not offered.
War is hell for men. We ve always known that. As you read this book, you will discover that war is hell for women, too. When World War II broke out, tens of thousands of women seized the opportunity to serve their country in the military. No law has ever been passed for the conscripting, or drafting, of women into the armed forces. Women were not forced into the ordeal of war, yet they wanted to do the right thing and, without regard for personal safety, volunteered for duty. This book wonderfully conveys the contribution of women who faced the heartbreak of war by nursing the wounded and dying. These were daring women, shining beacons for those of us who came after them.
During the Vietnam War, unlike any other war in our history, journalists were given unparalleled access. I knew my parents would be watching the 6:00 news showing body bags or dead or bleeding civilians, helicopters crashing into the jungle, napalm and white phosphorus burning villages, and Vietnamese men, women, and children running from the flames. But what they did not see were the nurses in helmets and flak jackets running to the hospitals and treating the men whose torsos and limbs had been ripped open by high-velocity weapons. They did not hear the sound of mortar thuds and rockets piercing our billets and hospital roofs and walls or see us throwing mattresses on top of patients to protect them from shrapnel. They did not see us hanging blood bags, suctioning tracheotomies, and frantically evacuating patients from the hospital to allow more room for mass casualties. In following the footsteps of all military nurses before us, we did the best we could on the battlefield, sharing the tragedy of the spilled blood of our brother soldiers. Reading the heroic stories in this book of the Army and Navy nurses working in the Philippines brought back painful shared memories-of my own time on the battlefield and how much we cared, how we moved beyond our own suffering, and how skilled we became in our work to save lives.
The grim realities of women s service in military nursing, with its hardships and perils, have been underrepresented or lost in the annals of history. Too often eclipsed from the public memory of war and hidden behind cameras, behind male images of war, invisible to our nation at large, are the military women. This gap in our knowledge can be filled, but not so easily now that thousands of the veterans have already passed on, their stories buried with them.
With two memorials in Washington, D.C., now honoring military women-the Vietnam Women s Memorial at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Women in Military Service to America Memorial, which honors all military women, past, present, and future-their service is now honored and their visibility heightened.
Wars have a face, and until now, with our modern integrated military, that face was masculine. War stories favored those men on the front lines or behind the scenes who were directing the war. In any war, however, the distinction between combatants and noncombatants is meaningless, for both groups are rocketed, machine-gunned, bombed, taken prisoner, and killed. Since women by tradition were not supposed to be in those dangerous situations while in service to their country, historians had largely ignored or purified the experience of military women in the Nurse Corps.
You are about to read an unpurified war story of shared sacrifice among ordinary women caught up in the horrors of close-quarters combat, while doing their best to perform their duty of caring for the wounded. With vivid detail, Mary Cronk Farrell puts a feminine face on warfare. I loved reading about these ordinary women who became extraordinary from the stark terror of the ravages of war. These women were not called warriors or soldiers. But in today s definition, they were warriors and soldiers in every sense.
These women have all passed now. We will never fully know their personal agonies of perpetual fear and living under the hateful eyes of the enemy without comforts of any kind. They endured the trauma of watching young men perish and left a lasting impression on all those thousands of souls they touched. They themselves tried to forget the worst of it.
Reading their stories enriched my life, and I hope it will do the same for you. This book comes close to telling it all. It honors these courageous women and memorializes their mercy, kindness, compassion, and strength of spirit. It captures the pure grit of the finest soldier and the best of humanity.
FIRST LIEUTENANT DIANE CARLSON EVANS, RN, CPT, USA
Army Nurse Corps, 1966-1972
Vietnam, 1968-1969
Founder and President, Vietnam Women s Memorial Foundation
INTRODUCTION
THE SEEDS OF THIS STORY LAY DORMANT FOR six months in my in-box-one of those e-mails I never found time to read. How was I to know that a paper my cousin wrote for nursing school would change my life forever?
The paper mentioned seventy-nine American military nurses captured by the Japanese in World War II. Astounding! Why hadn t I learned about these women in school? I started research on the prisoner-of-war (POW) nurses that very day.
American women today routinely shipped out to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Army and Navy nurses in the Philippines in 1941 never expected to see battle. They learned nursing under fire when the Japanese attacked the Philippines shortly after bombing Pearl Harbor. They treated thousands of wounded soldiers and civilians in jury-rigged jungle hospitals. When forced to surrender, they stuck together and continued to nurse the sick, the wounded, and the dying. The courage and strength of these women kept them alive through three years of isolation, disease, and starvation. How did they do it? This question impelled my research. The answers became this book.
When I started writing this story, only one of the POW nurses remained alive, Mildred Dalton Manning. Interviewing Millie, along with the sons and daughters of a number of other nurses, brought this story alive for me in a way that the facts and photos could not. The week I polished the final draft, I was greatly saddened to receive the news that Millie had died. She was ninety-nine. The pure grit of Millie and her sister POW nurses has inspired me to act with more courage and resilience in my own life.
American nurses were deployed to the Philippines in the 1930s and 40s to staff hospitals at American Army forts, airfields, and a Navy base. The U.S. military established a presence there at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, when the Philippines became a U.S. territory. The islands provi