The Perseverance of Lieutenant Nash

Naval History Magazine ^ | April 2023 | Naval History Magazine

[Retain Mike]

Overcrowding at Santo Tomas caused the Japanese to establish another civilian internment camp at Los Baños, some 25 miles southeast of Manila, in May 1943. The Japanese sent 800 young men, internees from Santo Tomas, to make the 40-acre site of the abandoned agricultural college habitable. Nash recalled the five-hour train ride in overcrowded, stifling boxcars: “As we stopped at different stations, they [the Japanese guards] would open the doors to let just a little air in. It was suffocating and maliciously unhuman.”

On arrival at Los Baños, the internees found primitive conditions; almost everything that could be carried away had been taken. Nash and the nurses established a 25-bed hospital with an operating room and a dispensary; Nash was in charge of the latter. Because so much standard medical equipment was unavailable, she used a hot plate to sterilize surgical instruments. When an Australian unexpectedly showed up with a sterilizer, she asked where he had gotten it. “Peggy, don’t ask,” he said, and she never did again. This same Australian later responded to Nash’s need for a dressing carriage to carry her supplies from bed to bed. He made one for her with the unauthorized use of the wheels from the camp commandant’s bicycle.

The internee population at Los Baños grew; Nash and the other ten nurses took care of everyone. The clinic would see as many as 200 patients per day. Jungle rot was common, and like everyone else in the camp, Nash contracted it.

The internees rarely had meat or protein, and Nash attributed this lack to the prevalence of beriberi in the camp. Beriberi almost killed her in September 1944; her arms and legs swelled and her temperature rose to 106 degrees. The medical staff concocted a crude typhoid vaccine that saved her life.

[Retain Mike]

She represents probably millions of stories like hers that we will never hear.

[M Kehoe]

Bttt.

5.56mm

[spankalib]

In a post-rescue photo of Nash and her sister nurses, a white wear line runs horizontally across the front of the denim dress I saw in 1997. The line was worn into the fabric as Nash stood for thousands of hours at her dressing carriage, caring for the sick. For me this plain garment holds as much significance as a tattered battle flag, because it represents the courage, suffering, and spirit of American service women and men as they fought and won a great war for freedom.

Beautiful. Humbling.

[Rinnwald]

The posted excerpt is from the middle of Lieutenant Commander Nash’s story. Everyone should read the complete story at the Naval History site.

She was engaged to a naval ensign from USS Penguin, with the wedding date unfortunately set for Feb 1942. It never happened. The story doesn’t follow up on her fiance.

I was able to find records that USS Penguin was damaged and scuttled at Guam. Ensign Edwin A. Wood Jr. survived and was repatriated from captivity. That’s all I could find. I don’t know if Nash and Wood ever met again.

[spankalib]

See, we often becry the lack of imagination of the hollywood storytellers - boy, would this make a great movie!