Book-We Band of Angels

Elizabeth M. Norman writes a book about the army and navy nurses that were caught by the Japanese in WW II on the Philippines. She writes with a prose that is not glamorous, and is very straightforward. But the stories that come out of this unaffected prose carry such emotion and courage, that it fits well, and in fact, lets the nurses, with outtakes from diaries and interviews, tell the story themselves.

We Band of Angels is truly a story of courage and dedication from these nurses, the first to be caught by the enemy. They first were caught on Bataan, where they lived in the jungle with shells raining down on them and still treated thousands of sick and wounded men.

When Bataan fell, the were moved to Corregidor, and a vast tunnel system while the small island was defended with dwindling supplies and bombs raining down on the tunnel almost non-stop. And yet they still continued to nurse even as the enemy was landing and they became internees.

And their years of detainment are documented too. Near the end they were surviving on about 700 calories a day...so hungry some would fry weeds in packets of cold cream that the Red Cross had sent, just to have something to eat.

Norman then follows the nurses back home and even to the present day in her story of these women, and what they had endured and accomplished.

This is touching and deeply affecting. The moment of liberation especially was so moving. And all throughout the author stresses that these women, called the Angels of Bataan, felt that they were just doing their job, just being nurses as they were sworn to do.

This was an excellent book...an amazing story. Norman does these women proud in her real chronicle, not hiding the faults of the women, but telling the whole story. They were heroes, though they themselves would shrug off that mantel as if it did not apply to them. But that is what real heroes do, don't they?