Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific by Mary Cronk Farrell

We all know about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, "a date that will live in infamy."  But how many know that only 9 hours later, the Japanese launched an attack on American bases in the Philippines?  The fact is that most of us don't really know as much about the Pacific front as we do the European front.

Likewise, most of us don't know that when American forces were forced to surrender and the troops who had not been killed were taken prisoner, among the POWs were approximately 100 military nurses, both Army and Naval.

Mary Cronk Farrell's Pure Grit is the story of how those nurses not only survived, but also how they continued to care for the sick and wounded with dwindling medical supplies and food.  When the women had first come to the Philippines, their workload in the base hospitals was light, only 4 hours a day because of the heat and humidity, and their spare time was filled with dancing, golfing, tennis, swimming and even a little romance for some.  Living a resort-like life, no one was expecting the war to come their way.  As one nurse, Peggy Nash, said: "I had no idea there was going to be a war...That's how naive I was." (pg 16)

When US troops retreated to Bataan, 25 nurses were sent there to care for the wounded, but they first had to set up a makeshift hospital.  In no time, the wards were overflowing.  From January 1941 until their liberation in 1945, these brave nurses continued to care for the sick and wounded under continuously deteriorating conditions, practicing what Farrell calls "Make-Do Medicine" (Chapter 6)

Over the course of those three years, the nurses lost weight because of the starvation-level rations they were given. some developed beriberi, others dengue fever and/or bouts of malaria and tuberculosis.  Even after they returned to the US, many suffered from untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, untreated because Farrell writes,  understanding of PTSD was two wars and generations away.

And sadly, it wasn't until most of the nurses had passed away that any real recognition of they had experienced and the nearly miraculous care they gave to their patients under such terrible conditions was acknowledged.

Pure Grit is a well researched and very readable history of these courageous women.  Some of their individual stories are sandwiched into the narrative of what happened in the Philippines, giving it all a very intimate feeling.  That feeling is enhanced by all the private photos, newspaper clippings, diaries, and other primary source documents Farrell included to round out the lives of those admirable nurses who served so bravely.  

Besides a history of the survival of the nurses held POW by the Japanese, there is also a useful glossary, a list of all the nurses serving when the Japanese invaded, a select timeline pertaining mostly to the events affecting the Philippines, extensive Endnotes, a nice bibliography, and websites where the curious can find more information.

War books are not always easy to read, but Pure Grit is an exception to the rule and a wonderful addition to any Women's History library.  And it will be available just in time for Women's History Month which is in March.

Full Disclosure:  I have a soft spot in my heart for women who became nurses during WWII - which is exactly what my mom did.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was an E-ARC received from NetGalley

Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific will be released February 25, 2014.

Why not take a moment to view the book trailer:

Memorial Day 2010: From the Archives #4: Cherry Ames Veterans’ Nurse by Helen Wells

Today is Veterans’ Day in the United States and Remembrance Day (le jour de Souvenir) in Canada, a day for honoring veterans of all wars. It is celebrated on November 11th every year because that is the day the armistice became effective, ending the hostilities of World War I. In fact, in the US, it used to be called Armistice Day until 1954, when it was changed to Veterans Day to include all veterans of all wars. I have chosen Cherry Ames, Veterans’ Nurse specifically for this day.

Before her long and varied career history as a civilian nurse, Cherry Ames served in the armed forces. In Army Nurse, she joined the Army Nurse Corps, went through basic training and headed out to Panama City, to nurse wounded soldiers (see Cherry Ames, Army Nurse); in Chief Nurse, she helped organize a hospital evacuation on a Pacific island; in Flight Nurse, Cherry flew into battlefields to pick up wounded soldiers and bring them to hospital.

In Veterans’ Nurse, Lieutenant Ames is stateside, still in the Army but awaiting her discharge papers. Cherry is assigned to Graham Hospital, and though she lives in Nurses’ Quarters on the grounds, she is conveniently located 30 miles from her hometown of Hilton. Graham is a VA hospital specializing in bone injuries and, as the head of nursing Colonel Brown explains “Our job is to rebuild broken men, physically and mentally.” What she didn’t say was that

…each of these young men was wounded in the defense of his country – nor that to live and work again minus hands, arms, legs, eyes, or hearing was a terrific hurdle – nor that nurses here had to mend spirits as well as bodies, had to find useful and self-sufficient futures for these brave men. (pg 20)

Yet, Cherry knew this was exactly what she meant.

Cherry is a floater for two months, which means that she will go wherever she is needed, though that seems to be on the same ward with the same men throughout the novel. She is assigned to Building 7 (there are 6,000 beds and 100 buildings at Graham), where they are awaiting the arrival of new patients – men on stretchers, litters, and crutches, many wearing Purple Hearts pinned to their pajamas. Five men are assigned to Cherry’s care, but her most difficult patient is Jim Travers. Jim has lost his right leg in the war and is severely depressed about his future. He refuses to eat, to socialize with the other men, and call his mother to tell her what has happened and where he is.

Gradually, though, Jim does begin to improve, at least physically with the help of a Reconditioning Officer to increase his overall physical fitness, Occupational Therapy, where he learns skills for future employment, making beautifully crafted items of wood, and Rehabilitation Therapy, where he learns to adjust to the new artificial leg he is fitted with. Of course, Cherry’s excellent nursing care and cheerful optimism also helps him overcome his obstacles. When he finally masters his crutches, Jim is allowed to walk into the nearby village alone. Unfortunately, this doesn’t go well, but helps to show that pity can be very callous. While waiting to cross a street, he overhears two older women discussing him: “They whispered, what a shame, and wasn’t it too bad it was hopeless, and such a young man to go through life like that.” (pg 104) This is indeed a set back for Jim, who tells Cherry “A one-legged man, unable to do his old work, is an object of pity.” (pg 105) Jim's dark mood doesn’t last long, however. Cherry takes him home with her one weekend, where he is not treated as an object of pity.

There is a parallel story besides that of the wounded veterans. Cherry is introduced to the Demarests, a wealthy young couple with a 4 year old son named Toby and who are known for their generous hospitality towards the soldiers at Graham. Toby is bed-ridden due to a mysterious disease. His body is not able to absorb nutriments from food and he is wasting away. Cherry spends time at the Demarest home whenever she is able, visiting and telling Toby stories. One day, she shows up and discovers a new healthier Toby, thanks to a mysterious medicine his doctor has given him. At the same time, however, it is discovered that some very valuable amino acid medication is missing from the hospital supply room, despite being kept under lock and key. Cherry puts two and two together, and with the help of Jim, devises a plan to catch the thief and at the same time, bolster Jim’s confidence in himself.

Once again, Helen Wells did her homework and provides the reader with accurate, informative descriptions of what goes on in a VA hospital, albeit a bit sanitized for her young readers who might not be able to understand the dark psychological effects war can have on soldiers. To her credit, she made young readers aware of some very serious issues at the time when many probably were dealing with returning soldiers themselves. Wells mixed these issues in with some lighter fare, like the requisite love interest in the form of Captain Wade Cooper of the Army Air Force, an amusing teenage crush at home, descriptions of the pranks the nurses’ play on each other and the many squirrels on the hospital grounds who demand peanuts from everyone who crosses their path. Cherry Ames is still a fun though dated series and young readers will continue to discover her. Michelle Slatalia wrote a funny article in the New York Times called “Cherry Ames, My Daughters Will See You Now” which can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/fashion/thursdaystyles/06Online.html

I hope you will all join me in honoring the men and women in the Armed Forces here and abroad. The Department of Veterans Affairs has an excellent website which includes resources for teachers and students at
http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/ Stop by and check it out, and be sure to watch the short film located there.







And as an act of indulgence, I would like to dedicate this post to the veterans in my family and yours. And to Captain James Grace, whose name I wore on a bracelet when I was still too young to understand what war was all about:

From the Archives #1: Cherry Ames, Army Nurse by Helen Wells

I was looking through my bookcases where I keep all my old books and came across some old Cherry Ames. I loved these stories when I read them. The early ones were especially meaningful to me because my mother had been a nurse and had taken care of wounded soldiers and veterans before she married – just like Cherry.

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse and Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse follows Cherry through her three years of nurses training at Spencer Hospital. In the first book, she decides to become a nurse because “she wanted to do vital work, work that the world urgently needs.” (pg 5) In Senior Nurse, an Army nurse comes to her graduation to make a plea to the graduates: “You are needed, desperately needed! If we are to save our men out there fighting for us – if we are to even win this war – you nurses must help. Are you ready to serve?” (pg 215) Naturally, Cherry, along with her entire class, is ready to sign up, thus forming the Spencer Unit.

Cherry Ames, Army Nurse begins with Cherry receiving her orders to report for active training. Soon the Spencer Unit is off to Fort Herold, NJ. Here the nurses, and the Spencer doctors who also volunteered, are placed under the command of Captain Paul Endicott. Endicott takes an immediate dislike to Cherry and her friends Dr. Lex Upham, her boyfriend, and Dr. Joeseph Fortune, an old family friend and a researcher.

At Fort Herold, the nurses perform hospital duty and receive 4 weeks basic training under the direction of Sergeant Deake. Deake is an Army loving male “who regarded all women here as intruders, nuisances and nitwits…” (pg53) So when Cherry calls him Lovey and the name sticks, he has even more reason to resent them. Of course, by the end of basic, Deake turned out to be a real old softy, despite the pranks the nurses pull on him.

During basic, Cherry also meets her corpsmen Bunce Smith. Good natured Bunce can’t do enough for Cherry and even tries to come to her rescue when she leaves bivouac during a simulated battle to help a small injured boy on a farm not far away. When she returns to camp, she finds, to her surprise, that it is gone. Bunce finds her, but so does Captain Endicott and trouble naturally ensues. Endicott doesn’t like Bunce any more than he does Cherry.

Ultimately, Spencer Unit is sent to Panama City, Central America to work in the Army hospital there. Tensions continue to grow between Lex Upham, Joe Fortune, Cherry, Bunce and Paul Endicott. Dr Fortune, who has been working on a malaria serum, is refused permission to test it out. But when Cherry and Bunce find an old Indian ill with what looks like a rare form of malaria in an old house she is exploring, she manages to get him treated with Dr. Fortune’s serum, though without proper permission.  Cherry and Bunce are put on probation, thanks to Endicott – a demotion for both of them and they must now prove themselves once again. The story, however, leads to a very dramatic conclusion..

When I started to reread Cherry Ames, Army Nurse, I expected to roll my eyes and mutter “How corny!” But I was pleasantly surprised. The book held up well after all these years. And best of all, Cherry is not perfect; she gets into trouble, breaks rules for the greater good, has doubts about her abilities as a nurse and about joining the army.  I like that.

Of course, the first 6 books in this series were patent patriotic propaganda pieces aimed at convincing girls to think about army nursing as a career.   I wonder how many girls were influenced by the Cherry Ames books to go into nursing during the war. And although there were other wartime nursing series written for girls, Cherry Ames seems to have outlasted all of them and have even been reissued recently. Perhaps they held up because Helen Wells went to a great deal of trouble researching the Cherry Ames stories so they would sound authentic to her wartime readers. In fact, almost 60,000 nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps the way Cherry and her friends did. The four week training program they went through under Deake’s supervision was authorized in July 1943 to quickly familiarize nurses with army methods and approximately 27,000 graduated from it. To compensate for the shortage of nurses this left on the home front, the Cadet Nurse Corps was formed. In Army Nurse one of Cherry's friends joins the Cadets in her junior year. (pg 31) This was a great scholarship program that trained about 124,000 young women to be nurses. In exchange for free tuition, books, uniforms, room and board plus some spending money, these young women would have to serve as military or civilian nurses until the end of the war. This is how my mom became a nurse

Two examples of recruitment posters for army and cadet nurses:

Green, Ruzzie.. You are needed now : join the Army Nurse Corps : apply at your Red Cross recruiting station.. UNT Digital Library. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc365/. Accessed September 4, 2010.

Whitcomb, Jon.. Be a cadet nurse : the girl with a future.. [Washington, D.C.]. UNT Digital Library. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc249/. Accessed September 4, 2010.

A picture of my mom, on the right, with a fellow nurse.  The young man was an injured soldier.  The picture was taken outside the hospital where she worked, not where she trained