War History Network members are familiar many War II tales but one that is frequently overlooked is told in We Band Of Angels.  It contains the story of 99 American nurses trapped on Bataan and Corregidor during the Japanese conquest of 1942.

Theirs is a fairy tale gone bad.  Some were young women, others matronly veterans.  Dreaming of moonlit beaches, dinner and dancing with officers in a tropical paradise, they volunteered for service in the Philippines.  Their world was shattered on December 8, 1941 when Japanese airplanes attacked American bases in the islands.  Suddenly they were awakened from their dreams and thrust into a burning inferno of incinerated planes, wounded men and destroyed facilities.

The nurses responded to the crisis.  Providing first aid and assistance during surgeries, they staffed what was perhaps the first open air American military hospital since the Civil War and cared for their patients in the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor.  Ditching their nursing whites for more practical (although sized for the men) khakis, the morphed from caregivers on semi-holiday to caring warriors.  Cut off from resupply, they made do with what they had.

Surrender turned the nurses into Prisoners of War.  Apparently befuddled by women in uniform, their Japanese captors treated them better than the men, but still their lives were horrendous.  Though continuing their nursing work for the sick and injured, they lived among vermin and wildlife, starved on the rations provided and longed for liberation.

Many, along with thousand of others, were interred at Santo Tomas, a college turned into a detainees’ camp.  Though able to maintain some cohesiveness as a unit they, like the other, thinned and endured until the day that an airplane with American stars tipped its wings.  When a tank broke through the front gate they anxiously waited until the top popped open and a GI emerged with the greeting “Hello folks!”  “God Bless America” broke out, rations were distributed, General MacArthur visited and all 99 “girls” began their trips home.  It is an amazing statistic that none died in captivity.

After the war some stayed in the service, others returned to civilian life.  Some married, others did not.  Denied some of the recognition and decorations granted to servicemen, they maintained some cohesion during the rest of their lives. 

Author Elizabeth M. Norman, a nurse herself, has brought this Band’s story to print.  After a hearing a causal mention of them, she determined that forty-eight were still alive.  Three refused to talk but she was able to interview twenty and befriended a few.  The maps place the theatre in geographic context while the pictures put faces to names.  The Angels are all gone now, but thanks to the author, their saga lives on.

In my mind I tend to differentiate between what I call “big history”, the leaders, the headlines and the trends, and “little history”, the individual tales as they were lived, “history through the gunsights” in a military context.  In We Band of Angels Prof. Norman has skillfully crafted an engaging “little history” that reflects the “big history”.  Readers meet her characters and want to know what happened to them.  We are introduced to their world with all its hardships as lives lived, not as a horror movie.  Errors of American brass are mentioned as facts, not to excuse or condemn.  If you are looking for an out-of-the mainstream World War II book, this is an excellent choice.  If you seek a tome about heroic women, you will find it here.   I appreciate it mostly for the insight into how the Philippines were defended and occupied.  I have read the “big histories”:  The Airforce was destroyed, the Japanese landed, the Americans and Filipinos withdrew to Bataan and Corregidor, some supplies came in and a few people, most prominently the MacArthur family, were evacuated, Wainwright surrendered and many died on the Death March.  This work reveals the conditions under which soldiers fought, nurses treated and warriors and captives lived.