A Pledge of Silence (12 page)

“Holy shit!”

“Christ!”

“What the fuck?”

“God help us.”

Massive fires engulfed Clark Airfield. Skeletal remains of dozens of aircraft lay strewn over acres of bombed-out land. Propellers littered the road, tires hung in trees, and holes the size of swimming pools gaped all around the land ripped open by multiple strafing runs. Pop-eyed, the passengers stared in horror. Hearing a wailing noise in the distance, Margie shivered.

As the bus approached Fort Stotsenberg, the source of the cries became evident. Bodies in all states of distress littered the grounds. Once inside the fort’s hospital, Margie saw injured people lying on gurneys, on tables, and on the blood-splattered floor. A few exhausted medical staff tended the wounded.

Light-headed, Margie’s vision dimmed, and the room began to spin—the dark chaos, evil smells, the eerie flickering of the fires, and pleas for help coming from every direction overwhelmed her. Squatting down, she tucked her head between her knees and tried to breathe slowly and deeply.

“Move it!” she heard and felt a thump on her back. Shaking off her dizziness, she was brusquely introduced to the grim reality of trauma and triage, war’s urgent and scanty medicine.

In a makeshift surgery cobbled together in a tent, Margie administered anesthesia to men riddled with bullets and torn by shrapnel. Wounds of the abdomen, head, and chest that in normal times warranted serious consideration, were assessed hastily, and patched, or not. Next? She lost count. At dawn, she slogged to an improvised mess for breakfast.

“I was setting up my first surgery when the bombing started,” a dark-haired nurse exclaimed. “A bomb fell so close that my bones rattled. I dove under the table and almost broke my neck!”

Tildy leaned on her elbows. “At least you had a—” She covered her bloodshot eyes with her hands.

“Then the strafing started,” the nurse continued. “I swore those bullets were coming right through the roof. I was sure I was going to meet my maker.”

Tildy spit, “Well, you’re still alive. What’s your problem?”

The nurse shot Tildy a withering glance. “You weren’t here when the bombs hit!” Her quivering voice rose. “Do you know how it feels to think you’re going to die?”

“I know how it feels to pump morphine into one dying kid after another, and that’s close enough for me.” Choking, Tildy ran from the table with her hands covering her mouth.

Margie forced herself to swallow food that stuck in her throat. A siren blasted. “Air raid!” someone shouted, and everyone dove under tables. Curling into a ball, every muscle taut, she wrapped her head with her arms. Whistling bombs searched for targets, and the ground thundered from the impacts, pounding once, then again, and again, and a hundred times more.

Then, a strange quiet fell except for a distant buzz. The sound grew to a roar, and, through the tent flap, Margie saw Japanese Zeros circling and diving, their guns hammering everything in sight. The ground vibrated under her, and she scrunched herself into tighter ball, now knowing that other nurse’s fear of impending death.

When the drone of the last plane died away, the survivors crawled from under the tables to wobble outside and assess the damage. A gray haze hung in the air. In every direction charred skeletons of burned-out buildings and smoldering piles of rubble confronted them. Fires that had died overnight flared again, spewing black smoke that reeked of rubber and hot steel. The injured cried in fear and pain, “Help! Over here, help me!” Margie hurried back to the surgery while her sisters in the field sprayed burns with tannic acid and administered sedatives and morphine.

She worked endless days, anesthetizing patients while doctors and nurses stitched and patched. She slept in one tent and ate in another. She bathed and did laundry in her combat helmet filled with cold water. She wore heavy boots, dog tags, and size 44 army-issue coveralls, joking that one size fit all together. Feeling like a zombie, she figured she looked like one too. When asked to accompany an ambulance-bus back to Manila, she jumped at the chance. Dressed in the rumpled, white uniform she had arrived in, she hugged her friends goodbye and boarded the bus.

Eight sedated orthopedic patients lay restrained on cots by a multiplicity of plaster casts, appliances, ropes, and pulleys on arms, legs, backs, and necks. Slated for additional surgery, their destination was Sternberg. The passengers rested quietly as the bus pulled onto the main road. Margie checked each man’s color, respiration, and dressings, then took a seat. When the road smoothed out, the gentle rocking motion made her sleepy. She couldn’t doze during this important assignment, so she checked each patient again before moving up front to chat with the bus driver. He said he was 19 and had enlisted in the army two years ago. In the Philippines for six months now, he’d been stationed in outposts where the troops lived in tents. Being transferred to Fort Stotsenberg with barracks, running water, and good food seemed great until the bombing started. A shout came from the back of the bus, and Margie went to investigate.

Just a kid, the soldier who’d cried out had one leg in a cast, the other was a wrapped stump.

“Hey, Tiger. What can I do for you?”

His eyes brimmed with terror. “I hear them coming! You’ve got to get me out of here!” He tried to sit up, but the cast extended over his hip, restricting his movement. “Get me out of here right now!” he insisted through his drug-induced haze.

“I don’t hear anything, Johnny,” she told him as she glanced out the window. “I can’t see anything either. Nothing’s out there.”

“It’s the Zeros! I hear them! Get me out of this coffin! Do you hear me? Get me out of here!” His loud, panicky voice woke the men around him.

Margie hastened to assure the groggy men that things were okay, but when she looked out the window again, what she saw terrified her. Overhead flew dozens of Japanese Zeros, and two broke away to target the bus. Spotting the enemy bearing down, the driver jerked the bus onto a densely treed logging trail. Veering sharply into a small opening, he crunched the bus as far down the overgrown path as he could. They could do nothing else but wait.

Covering his head with a pillow, Johnny resigned himself to his fate. However, the men he’d awakened demanded they be released from their restraints. They clutched at Margie as she walked past them. “Jesus Christ, we’re going to die in a stinking bus!” one of them yelled as the roar of the planes swelled. She grabbed the hand of the soldier nearest her, braced her body against his traction’s out-rigging, and mumbled a prayer. The Zeros zoomed overhead and their gunfire rattled the windows, but their bullets were off target. The buzz of aircraft engines faded to a drone. The soldiers quieted as they listened for the devil’s return. Once sure the danger had passed, the driver eased the bus back onto the road.

They drove through a small village where Filipino families warily emerged from their huts. Seeing the bus, they waved and flashed the two-fingered victory sign.

When it neared Manila, the bus slowed to a crawl in heavy traffic. A hodgepodge of vehicles blocked both north and southbound lanes as city people fled to the countryside, and country folk sought safety in the city. The travelers had lashed as much of their household inventories as they could manage—including squealing pigs, chattering chickens, and barking dogs—onto trucks, carts, bicycles and the backs of oxen. The bus joined this motley convoy. Despite everything they had been through, the mood of Margie’s charges was surprisingly good. “Are we there yet, Mom?” one young man whined. “How much longer, huh, Mom?” another teased.

As they crept closer to the city, darkness descended early, heavy smoke covering the sun.

“It’s from Cavite,” the driver said. “Dirty Nips have been bombing it all week. It’s where those Zeros we met on the road were headed, I’m sure.”

Margie worried about Evelyn at the naval base. Suppressing her feelings, she focused on her charges, preparing them for the move into Sternberg. Pushing her hair back, she refreshed her lipstick.

“Do it again?” Johnny asked.

“What?”

“Your lipstick. I like to watch.”

Sadness squeezed her heart as she studied the broken boy. Brushing his hair with her fingers, she kissed his cheek, leaving a smidgen of red.

During her absence, Manila had mutated into a city Margie hardly recognized. Camouflage-clad, big-booted soldiers, carrying rifles over their shoulders, marched through the streets and assembled in parks where anti-aircraft guns pointed upward. Trenches snaked through ornamental greenery, sandbags lined sidewalks and blocked padlocked doorways, and strips of tape made a mosaic of black-curtained windows. Air raid sirens wailed though nobody took cover. The bus carrying Margie and her wounded charges crawled along streets teeming with high-wheeled wooden carts and bicycles, now joined by jeeps filled with soldiers, and vehicles armed with machine guns. Ambulance sirens blared, and fire truck horns bleated. When the bus pulled up to the entrance of Sternberg, Margie sighed with relief. Inside the hospital, however, the chaos looked sadly familiar.

Patients lay haphazardly on makeshift beds that lined hallways and filled the dining room, the porches, and the gardens out back. Frightened young women with squalling babies, wizened old people, the sick and crippled, waited for help. Gray-faced, dirty, and wrapped with bloody rags or bandages, no one escaped the carnage. The hospital staff wore the same beleaguered look as Margie’s friends at Clark.

“Hey kid, what’s happening?” she heard. Behind her, Evelyn stood with her arms full of linens.

Margie cried in surprise and relief. “Boy! Am I glad to see you!” She wanted to hug her friend, but the linens were in the way. “How’d you get here?”

“Canacao got bombed. I have stories to tell, but can’t talk now. I’m in OB and don’t know when I can get away.” A corpsman handed Evelyn a chart for another new admission. “They just keep coming,” she said, glancing at the chart. Her brow furrowed. “Christ, another burn case. Those are the worst. I have to go, Margie. See you later.”

As she started to leave the room, Margie heard a small voice say, “Help me, please?” A young woman with a bloodied child lay on a cot. “I need to go to the bathroom. Will you watch my baby?”

When the woman returned, Margie tried to leave again, but a toothless old man grabbed her white skirt. “I need something for this pain.” His eyes were bright with fever, and she guessed from the odor that his wounds were infected.

“Nurse, please,” patients called. “Help,” they pleaded, and she responded again and again before managing to escape to the nurses’ residence. Relieved, she entered her room, breathing in its welcome familiarity. Stripping off her soiled uniform, she put on a robe and slippers and brushed out her hair. From phone in the hall, she paged Royce. The nurse on the surgical unit answered the page.

“He’s asleep in the doctor’s lounge. Do you want me to wake him?”

“No, don’t do that. When he wakes up, just tell him I’m here.”

The nurse heaved a tired sigh. “We’re swamped. Could you possibly work tonight? Come in at 11 o’clock?”

“Sure,” Margie responded, feeling disheartened. Dirty, hungry, exhausted, she needed a night off. After a shower and a meal, she crawled into bed. Some while later, a knock on the door roused her.

Evelyn nudged the door open with her hip and put two whiskeys on the bamboo side table. Removing her surgical cap, she flung it aside and fluffed her hair. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s okay,” Margie said, climbing out from under the mosquito netting. When they embraced, she couldn’t stop tears from flowing. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

Evelyn patted her back and let her cry. “Come on, kid. This is our chance to be noble.”

Margie sniffed. “I don’t know why I’m crying now. I’ve seen more horrible things than I expected to see in ten lifetimes. I’ve been bombed and strafed, all without a whimper. You come into my room, and I fall apart.”

“So you’re human. We’re all due for a good cry. Here, have a drink.”

Margie dabbed at her tears and accepted the drink. They sat in chairs by the window. “You been here long?”

“A week, almost. There’s not much left of Canacao.”

“Did everyone get out?”

“I doubt it. The sky was black with Nip bombers. I hid with my patients behind sandbags underneath the hospital. The noise was so loud my ears are still ringing. Guess how many of our planes defended us? None!”

Margie said, “The airfields up north are gone. You can’t imagine the destruction.”

“Shit, I can’t! The naval base is gone, the ships, the submarines, the docks, everything just gone. Now, the Nips are dropping bombs on Manila. The port area is wrecked, and Chinatown is taking hits. It’s just a matter of time before the whole blasted city gets obliterated.”

And us with it?
Margie wondered.

Evelyn said, “Were we blind or stupid? All those blackout drills we treated like a nuisance. Our mail was censored, for Pete’s sake, and we were ordered to send our valuables home. What did we do? We merrily shrugged it off and looked for the next party.”

“They told us Manila was safe.”

They lit their cigarettes off one match and smoked in the dark, listening to rumbles and explosions in the distance.

“It’s the burn cases,” Evelyn softly said. “When they bombed the ships, I saw guys jumping off burning decks into fire-filled water. They flailed around awful, Margie. I can’t get that picture out of my head. Now, women burned in the bombings come here to have their babies.” Leaning back in her chair, she sighed deeply.

The intercom buzzed and Margie went to the hall phone. It was Royce. “I thought you would sleep for hours,” she said.

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes dreams jerk me awake. I missed you. I’m glad you’re back. Are you hungry?”

“Always for you. I’m with Evelyn right now.”

“Bring her along. We’ll go to Louie’s.”

Evelyn declined the invitation, saying she was too tired to eat. All she wanted to do, she said, was sleep for a year.