Nov 1999 - Jan 2000
By Elizabeth Norman
(A story about our cousin Grace Hallman Matassarin)
This month Enduring Echoes welcomes Elizabeth Norman PhD, RN, FAAN, as guest editor to present the experiences of four Georgia nurses in World War II. Norman spent eight years collecting information on one group of military nurses who were in the Philippines in 1942. She used interviews, archival material, newspaper clippings, and memoirs to put together a book, We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Women Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese (1999), Random House [1999 Random House NY USA - ISBN: 0375502459.] What follows is a summary of their extraordinary ordeal.
On December 8, 1941, the same day the Japanese Imperial Navy launched its surprise attack across the International Dateline on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, it also struck American bases in the Far East, chief among them, the Philippines. That raid led to the first major land battle for America in World War II and, in the end, to the largest defeat and surrender of American forces. Caught up in all of this were ninety-nine Army and Navy nurses, including four Army nurses from Georgia: Mary Moultrie from Woodling, Grace Hallman from Thomaston, Mildred "Millie" Dalton from Jefferson, and Frances Nash from Washington. They were part of the first unit of American nurses sent into the battlefields in World War II.
The women volunteered for overseas peacetime duty in the Philippines where the locale was exotic, the workday only four hours long, and the opportunities for a busy social life numerous. Within a few short hours on December 8th, the nurses lost their wonderful paradise. They found themselves adapting their practices from routine surgical care to combat triage. As Japanese planes, and soon ground troops, overwhelmed the Allied forces, nothing in their nursing experience prepared them for the daily wanton slaughter of war, the sights, sounds and smells that make the heart race, leave the mouth dry, buckle the knees. Although none of the nurses had any formal military preparation for wartime work, they remained at their positions and tended the wounded and dying while the bombs fell around them. With each drone of an enemy airplane engine, the nurses looked skyward to see enemy bombers flying in large "V" formations, like the wings of a giant bird of prey. In a sense the soldiers had an easier time controlling their terror and dread; at least they could shoot back. The nurses, however, were left to manage the damage and loss; the awful inventory that battle always leaves.
The Japanese controlled the sky and sea and the Allies had neither the men nor the material to save Manila. By the end of December, the Army was retreating to the nearby Bataan jungle and the island fortress of Corregidor in an attempt to hold off the enemy until reinforcements would arrive. What few Americans knew was that the recent disaster at Pearl Harbor would preclude any help to the Philippines. The nurses and other Americans were on their own, to hold off the enemy as long as possible.
As they worked in the open jungle hospitals with patients under the trees, the nurses adapted standard practices to meet the needs of war. They bathed patients with river water, washed and reused bandages, and looked for new ways to manage postoperative pain. The nurses also gave up a garment that had long been the symbol of their profession - starched white uniforms for standard olive-drab Air Corps coveralls. They became the first American military women to wear fatigues, as field uniforms were called, on duty. These angels in white had learned to dress for the dirty business of war.
After four months of intense fighting, the Allied Forces, who did not have enough medicines, food, supplies, and equipment, faced defeat. All the nurses left Bataan the night of the surrender, April 8, 1942, for Corregidor. However, the beleaguered troops on this island were surrounded and could only hold out for a few weeks. In an effort to get as many nurses off Corregidor before the final surrender, military commanders succeeded in evacuating 22 women to Australia. Most of these nurses were sick or older women unlikely to survive the rigor of prison camp. Included in this group were two of the Georgia nurses, Grace Hallman and Mary Moultrie. Millie Dalton and Frances Nash were not as lucky. They remained behind and surrendered on Corregidor, May 6, 1942, becoming part of the largest group of American women in our country's history to be captured and imprisoned by an enemy.
Dalton and Nash, both graduates of the Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Atlanta and respected by their peers, were a study of contrasts. Millie Dalton was quiet, while Frances Nash had a reputation for "colorful language" in the operating room. From May 1942 until February 1945 they remained POWs, primarily in Santo Tomas Internment Camp, working four-hour shifts in the prison hospital and trying to keep, as Frances Nash said, "body and soul together."
In February 1945, all seventy-seven nurses were liberated from POW camps where hundreds had died. Their survival is a testament to their strong leaders and to the support they gave one another. Many of them also give credit to their ability to keep nursing and say it provided them with a motive to keep going, to feel needed, to put their personal problems in perspective.
Millie Dalton and Frances Nash arrived at Chandler Field as heroines. As an Atlanta Constitution reporter wrote on March 5, 1945, "At 1:28 a.m. yesterday, they came back, far more than three years older, wiser in ways unfamiliar to many." Both returned to their families and spent many months recuperating from the effects of malnutrition. Millie Dalton married and raised a family. Now a widow, she lives in New Jersey near her son, and may be the only surviving member of the four Georgia nurses. Frances Nash, who also married, died in 1979. 1 was unable to locate other postwar information about Nash, Mary Moultier or Grace Hallman. Millie Dalton and I remain in close touch and see each other regularly.
Their story, the story of all ninety-nine nurses, is a tale of endurance, professionalism and raw pluck. As the noted historian, Steven Ambrose wrote, "[this is a] war story in which the main characters never kill one of the enemy, or even shoot at him, but are nevertheless heroes. . . They were the bravest of the brave, who endured unspeakable pain and torture. Americans today should thank God we had such women."
Elizabeth Norman is an associate professor and director of the doctoral program at New York University Division of Nursing. We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese is available from Random House, 1999 at all bookstores. For more information visit the website
Copyright Georgia Nurses Association Nov 1999 - Jan 2000.
Reference:Georgia Nursing: Enduring echoes, “... Grace Hallman from Thomaston, Mildred "Millie" Dalton from Jefferson, ... Included in this group were two of the Georgia nurses, Grace Hallman and Mary...,” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3925/is_200202/ai_n9077797
