When We Had Wings

Bataan Peninsula, January 1942

As their convoy evacuates its current position, Lita and the other nurses stare in shock at rows of white crosses indicating the American military dead. Japanese forces have breached the Allies’ defenses and are at the neck of the Bataan Peninsula. On the convoy, Helen Cassiani (known as Cassie) leads the nurses in a singalong. It reminds Lita of her family, and she envisions her sisters in New York City, “where war would exist only in newspapers and on the airwaves” (45).

The new Hospital One location is called “Little Baguio” because it resembles a cool, lush mountain retreat of the same name. However, this far inland, the nurses battle malaria from mosquitoes and malnutrition from a dwindling food supply in addition to battlefield casualties. As Lita goes to get water for a feverish soldier, Dr. Thomson stops her, scolding her for failing to put Vaseline under the gauze of a soldier’s arm bandage; he assigns Reyna Delos Santos, Lita’s nemesis from nursing school, to correct the error. Shamed, Lita forces herself to continue working but learns that the soldier she was treating went into shock and died. Lita goes outside to weep in the dark.