Navy Medicine March-April 1942
Jennifer Mitchum

"...I should like to tell you one or two stories about the men we have in our armed forces...," said President Franklin Roosevelt with that distinctive, patrician voice of authority most Americans had grown accustomed to. As he began another of his fireside chats on the evening of 29 April 1942, this, like all his other informal radio broadcasts, was a pep talk, beamed to a nation unaccustomed to defeat and reeling under the Japaneseonslaught in the Pacific.

That evening President Roosevelt told a story of bravery and heroism--one of LCDR Corydon M. Wassell, a Navy doctor serving in Java, who risked his life to save others. Dr. Wassell arrived in Java in late January as allied forces were putting up a last line of defense for the Dutch East Indies and trying to hold Makassar Strait from the invaders. In trying battles that followed, USS Houston (CA-30) was lost and USS Marblehead (CL-12) severely damaged. With her steering gear shattered and large holes in her side, Marblehead staggered into port at Surabaja, Dutch East Indies, carrying wounded of her own and Houston's survivors.

Dr. Wassell sorted the casualties and assigned them to several hospitals. Medical personnel later
transferred patients to a town in the hills less accessible to the Japanese. Shortly afterward, Allied forces began evacuating to Australia. ADM Thomas C. Hart, Commander in Chief of the Asiatic Fleet, ordered Dr. Wassell to evacuate "all the wounded who can stand a hard trip."(1) Hence, Dr. Wassell sorted the patients and found 10 men, one being Marblehead's executive officer, LCDR William Goggins, who were too badly injured to be transferred. Concerned about their well being, Dr. Wassell opted to stay behind with them and await capture by the Japanese.

But instead of sitting idly by waiting for the enemy, Dr. Wassell made a desperate attempt to get the men out of Java and to safety. "The way I figured it,"(2) explained LCDR Wassell, "was if I could find a way of getting those ten men out of Java while the getting was good--a way they could stand in the state they were in--there wasn't any reason on earth why I shouldn't."(3) The possibility looked dim until he met a British
colonel who was organizing a motor caravan of anti-aircraft batteries to go to Tjilatjap. The colonel agreed to take the doctor and his patients.

"A Dutch rating at the hospital helped me put fresh dressings on the burn cases,"(4) recalled Dr. Wassell about the evacuation that had to be completed within 20 minutes or they risked being left behind. "All we had to use was sulphur ointment, and not enough of that. We did the best we could to make the men fit for evacuation. The rating stole mattresses and we carried them on them to the caravan...."(5)

Dr. Wassell loaded LCDR Goggins and three other patients into a brand new Ford that he was to drive. "Most of it was driving in the dark with dimmed lights. We dared not attract Jap planes. The road was
terrible, rutted and blown into shell holes in places. The red taillight of the car ahead bobbed and swung like a
drunken man's lantern,"(6) he said.

After about a day's trip, the caravan reached Tjilatjap where a small Dutch coastal vessel was preparing to set sail. About 800 evacuees, which included Dr. Wassell and 9 of his patients, crammed into the ship accustomed to transporting about 150 passengers.(7) They sailed for the Indian Ocean without incident that night but were hit the next day and had to pull into the nearest port for repairs.

Shook up by the sudden turn of events, most of the passengers chose to stay behind and be captured than risk shipwreck trying to reach Australia. However, Dr. Wassell and his patients continued the trip even though the odds of reaching Australia were extremely slim. After a 2-week voyage, the ship docked at Perth, Australia on 15 March. There Wassell assisted medical personnel in a Freemantle warehouse acquiring
medical supplies for submarines carrying food and supplies to the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

The Battle for Bataan

Although most of the Asiatic Fleet left the Philippines in December, a small garrison remained to
support the ground forces on Bataan still holding out and prolonging what would have been an easy Japanese takeover.

However conditions steadily worsened for the defenders. Food and supplies dwindled and disease was
rampant. By March, most of the troops suffered from malaria, scurvy, beri-beri, and dysentery. Medical
personnel improvised and often went to extremes to render medical care. For example, LT Murray Glusman,
MC, USN, treated patients in foxholes and assisted with an amputation in a ditch while serving in the vicinity of the Mariveles Naval Station.

Similarly, ENS Ann A. Bernatitus, the only Navy nurse sent from Manila to Bataan, faced major
obstacles in caring for patients at field hospitals in the second line of defense. She recalled how they sterilized instruments in kerosene-operated pressure cookers and also by placing them in Lysol and later rinsing them with alcohol. "How quickly you needed the instrument determined how purely things were sterilized."(8)

During her 3-month stay on Bataan, Bernatitus moved from "one improvised hospital to another."(9) A few days before the Japanese seized the island, the hospital in which she had been working was nearly destroyed forcing them to evacuate patients in traction with some falling from their beds in agony.

Some medical personnel barely escaped capture on Bataan leaving on the last boats out. PhM2c Ernest J. Irvin, was among those who barely made it to Corregidor. He had been serving with "C" Battery of the Third Battalion Fourth Marines in a large rice paddy along the beach road between the Naval Section Base and the Quarantine Station, Mariveles. Two weeks before Bataan fell on 9 April, his unit was assigned to an Army unit, the 60th Coast Artillery. "...The outfit I was with didn't get over till the day Bataan fell. We made it on a tug--70 of us crammed in the hold like sardines,"(10) recalled PhM2c Irvin adding, "...I could scarcely breathe. Right about then someone asked if there was a doctor aboard. I jumped up and there was a Filipino with his arm off. Just before we boarded the tug our boys were blowing up everything they could on Bataan. A rock actually tore his arm off. He was going to die. I applied a tourniquet and stayed with him all night long up topside where it was cool."(11) "C" Battery arrived on Corregidor the morning of 10 April.

Corregidor's Last Stand

About 2 miles away from Bataan Corregidor, or "the Rock" as it was called, was now the only obstacle
holding up total Japanese victory in the Philippines. On the island, allied forces had set up a hospital,
communications center, and storage area in the Malinta tunnel, an underground complex dug into a hillside. PhM2c Irvin was assigned to beach defense as were most of the medical personnel.

Dr. Glusman had just made it over also. He served briefly in the Malinta tunnel as assistant battalion surgeon with the First Battalion, Fourth Marines before serving in the same capacity with the 4th Reserve Battalion, 4th Regiment, U.S. Marines. He administered emergency medical care to members of the Headquarters and Service Company and accompanied those seriously wounded back to the Malinta Tunnel hospital under increasing Japanese bombardment.

LT George T. Ferguson's team also operated under adverse conditions. Dr. Ferguson was the battalion surgeon for the First Battalion, Fourth Marines, the unit to which LT Glusman was originally assigned. He and his men had gouged a shallow tunnel in a cliff to accommodate a dozen patients, medical personnel, and
equipment. During the last 3 weeks of resistance, their sector was on the receiving end of 60 hostile batteries. With around-the-clock shelling, the Japanese later reported that they had fired 3,500 to 4,000 shells per hour. Nonetheless, Dr. Ferguson and others treated numerous cases of malaria, dysentery, food deficiency diseases, and upper respiratory infections in the field helping to preserve beds in the Malinta hospital for the most
serious cases.

Saving Lives in Manila

While medical personnel on Corregidor worked diligently to keep as many men at guns as possible, their counterparts in Manila were fighting battles of another sort as they cared for hundreds of POWs. The Japanese continued to transfer patient and personnel from Santa Scholastica College to Pasay Elementary
School about a mile and a half from the college. The captors told the hospital staff that they were being moved to a well equipped hospital where the patients could finish convalescing. On the contrary, living
conditions at the school were "extremely bad, sanitation deplorable, food almost non-existent, the place
filthy and overcrowded."(12) Meals consisted of rice and occasionally small amounts of greens. For quarters, the Japanese assigned about 20 senior medical officers to a room and between 40 to 60 enlisted men to a room. There were about 350 Filipino and American prisoners at the facility and disease and starvation
were rampant throughout.

Hospital personnel set up a small dispensary in one of the rooms. "The Japanese had permitted each group to bring along small quantities of medicines and surgical equipment, but in addition each of the doctors and corpsmen had secreted in his personal effects as much as he could hide away of the more useful
medicines, such as quinine, sulfa drugs, amebacides, aspirin, etc. And it was this hidden supply that furnished most of the medicines used for the treatment of the patients for the next two months,"(13) said CAPT L.B. Sartin, MC, who was the senior officer of a group transferred to the school on 24 April.

Occasionally a Japanese doctor brought urgently needed medicines to the school but in quantities
insufficient for the number in need. "...On one occasion he brought a few bottles of medicine as supplies for us, but the entire quantity was contained in a show box," recalled CAPT Sartin.(14)

Navy Medicine at Sea

Serving in the both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans were the Navy's two hospital ships, USS Solace (AH-5) and USS Relief (AH-1) respectively. USS Relief served at Norfolk, VA, and then sailed to Casco Bay, ME, to care for men training to man U.S. fighting ships. She arrived there on 28 April. USS Relief crew members also attended victims of naval combat action in the Atlantic.

USS Solace, which proved her worth when Pearl Harbor came under attack, set sail for the Pacific on 23 March. Sailing to Pago Pago on Tutuila Island, Funafuti in the Tuvala Islands, and Nukualofa in the Tongatapu Islands, she provided medical care for allied troops on the islands and picked up casualties from
transports. USS Solace served away from battle during this period.

Medical personnel aboard other vessels found it very difficult to provide adequate medical care because the conditions under which they served were drastically different than those on the hospital ships. Medical wards were small, overcrowded, and had insufficient personnel. Moreover, the ships ran full speed in danger zones to avoid being hit by the enemy. If hit, medical personnel had to evacuate patients using life jackets, kapok-filled mattresses, bamboo, and all other floatable wreckage. Transferring patients from one
vessel to another was also difficult. LT Joseph L. Yon, medical officer of USS Pecos (AO-6), described the difficulties his crew encountered picking up survivors of USS Langley (AV-3) from two American destroyers.
The boatswain got one of the motor launches away and made trip after trip to the destroyers, which were
lying as close alongside as was safe, bringing back a load of survivors each time. Have you ever seen a
small boat bump against a large ship in heavy weather? Then you know the job the boatswain had holding
the motor launch steady in the dark while lines were secured to Stokes stretchers and the wounded hauled
aboard.(15)

USS Pecos was hit shortly after rescuing the survivors of USS Langley. Lowered over the side of the ship with every injured man was an uninjured sailor to look after him. Survivors of USS Pecos were rescued by one of the destroyers they had evacuated earlier.

KIA

Three pharmacist mates went down with USS Pecos and seven with USS Langley. Others killed in the
vicinity of the Dutch East Indies, included a doctor and three hospital corpsmen who had been serving on USS Asheville (PG-21). In the Java Sea, one dentist and 12 hospital corpsmen went down with the famed USS
Houston (CA-30). A doctor and a corpsmen were also killed aboard both USS Pillsbury (DD-227) and USS Edsall (DD-219) also in the Java Sea. In the Atlantic Ocean, two hospital corpsmen were killed in action aboard the USS Atik (AK-101).

References

1. U.S. Navy Medical Department Administrative History 1941-1945, Vol. I: Narrative History, chap. II, p 16.

2. Oman CM. Doctors Aweigh, p 23.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., p 24.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p 25.

7. The tenth patient who originally was a part of Wassell's party in the Ford, opted to be transferred to another vehicle in hope of an easier ride. The vehicle crashed and had to stay behind for it couldn't be repaired until morning.

8. Rosenbaum MB. "A Navy Nurse Remembers." U.S. Navy Medicine. 1981, 72(6), p 22.

9. Ibid., 22.

10. Irvin E, PhM2c, HC, USN. Interview by Jan K. Herman, 25 February, 24 March, and 22 May 1986. BUMED Archives.

11. Ibid.

12. Sartin LB. Journal, p 12.

13. Sartin LB. Journal, p 15.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p 30.