The Cherry Ames Page: War Nurse, page 7

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Cherry Ames, War Nurse
Fiction Meets Reality, page 7

In this section

Noble Soldiers, Ignoble Enemies

Noble Soldiers

Ignoble Enemies

Noble Soldiers, Ignoble Enemies

Noble Soldiers

Almost without exception, the American soldiers whom Cherry Ames encounters possess the most sterling qualities of bravery, selflessness, unswerving devotion to duty, and devout love of country. They are an endless source of inspiration to Cherry and the other nurses:

This month of work, though hard, was inspired because of Cherry's soldier patients. Little by little, she was coming to know them ... the boy who was as much homesick and frightened as physically ill ... the middle-aged man who knew he was dying of cancer and begged to be allowed to die fighting, rather than go home ... the boy from a backwoods Panama base who had not seen an American girl for a year and followed Cherry with his eyes, "because you kind of remind me of home." (Army Nurse, p. 149-50)

When an enemy submarine torpedoes a transport off the coast of Panama, Cherry and the other nurses and doctors must suddenly treat three hundred new cases. The wounded men are heroic; they do not complain, they tell Cherry: "I'm not so badly off ... take care of my buddy first" (Army Nurse, p. 191). Later, when Cherry is tending patients in the Pacific jungle, although their faces show strain and exhaustion, "the soldiers were stoically silent. Not one complained" (Chief Nurse, p. 25). And again: "Their irrepressible high spirits and their uncomplaining fortitude made them the most lovable and heroic patients Cherry had ever seen" (Chief Nurse, p. 66).

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Although a few American soldier patients are slightly unpleasant--an oilily flirtatious patient at Fort Herold, a bully who refuses to swallow his medicine at the evacuation hospital--no American military patient is ever cowardly or mean. They are heroic, brave, self-sacrificing: our boys.

She had seen another example of unselfish courage when she delivered Dr. Joe's new serum to his research colleagues working here. Six privates had volunteered to expose themselves to fever, for the sake of research and saving other lives. (Chief Nurse, p. 14)

And later, when wounded soldiers are being loaded onto Cherry's plane for air evacuation, she sees a poignant example of the courage and spirit of the Americans:

"I want you to take these two walking wounded," the doctor called to her.

Cherry turned. She saw one of the bravest and most pathetic sights she had yet seen in war. Limping, stumbling, leaning against each other, came two dazed boys, one with his arm flung about the other's neck. Their heads drooped under their heavy metal helmets, their breeches were split to the knee and bandages showed through. One boy all but fainted in Bunce's arms. The other boy protested:

"I only got a scratch! I don't want to go to the hospital! Let me go back to my outfit! I'm not quittin'! I have to get back to my outfit."

Cherry saw that the back of his leather jacket was blood-soaked. They lifted him in, still protesting. (Flight Nurse, p. 106)

In another incident, after a Japanese bombing attack, a young flier, already wounded and still not completely recovered, leaves the evacuation hospital to participate in the air battle, going up repeatedly despite taking enemy fire. "Do you think I'd stay behind when I'm needed?" he asks Cherry, who is deeply moved by his courage (Chief Nurse, p. 190).

The only American military man who is not depicted as deeply honorable, and who causes real difficulty for Cherry, is Captain Paul Endicott--not a fighting man, but a paper pusher who does liaison work between Cherry's unit and the regular army. Though Cherry does clash with her superior officer Colonel Pillsbee--who thinks she is too frivolous--when she serves as chief nurse, his bravery and devotion to his men are made clear.

Ignoble Enemies

In stark contrast to the poignant, brief portraits of the noble American soldiers, which give them personality and humanity, the enemy never has a human face.

Cherry never meets the foreign enemy as individuals with lives, dreams, hopes--those on the other side of the war are always referred to collectively: Japs, Nazis, the enemy. Neither Cherry nor the other nurses ever encounter a wounded or dead enemy soldier. The enemy are faceless, nameless, bodiless--nonhuman, and inhuman.

The enemy fly overhead in deadly planes and drop bombs on hospitals clearly marked with a red cross, they strafe boats filled with helpless wounded, they fire torpedoes from the safety of their hidden submarines, they unleash deadly robot bombs on civilian populations. They strike from a distance, under cover of darkness: stealthy, evil, unseen, unknowable. "It's the usual Jap sneak tricks" (Chief Nurse, p. 192), a major comments after a bombing.

As Cherry watches, "A great pillar of flame lifted from where Ward 2 had been. Cherry's fear turned to fury. The beasts, inhuman killers! Bombing a hospital. Bombing the helpless wounded!" (Chief Nurse, p. 176).

Jap strafing planes again! They were covering the thirty miles between the fighting island and the hospital island, and as their shells flared into unearthly light, Cherry saw they were aiming for the boatloads of wounded! They came closer to Island 14 now, and one boat dodged and veered out in the black water. The Jap planes roared closer and Cherry and Major Pierce and the others on the beach fled to the slit trenches.

Major Pierce, shaking his fist toward the sky, yelled, "The pigs! The pigs! I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it! Strafing boats full of wounded!" (Chief Nurse, p. 183)

The German enemy likewise lack any shred of common human decency. When Cherry becomes a flight nurse in England, German robot bombs wantonly injure civilian noncombatants: women, children, the elderly, who stream into the hospital where Cherry administers treatment. While wounded soldiers at a holding station are being loaded into her plane for evacuation to an army hospital:

German planes came swooping down, their guns firing, spitting hot steel; their shells whistling, bursting, crashing, making an inferno all around the planeful of wounded. ... The wounded were cowering, some crying from sheer excess of horror. Whistling bullets ripped into the mud all about the C-47, clipping one wing. Something up forward was on fire. ...

Cherry stared around at the suffering men and shook with fury. To do this to helpless wounded! What an abomination that they had to suffer more terror before their initial agony could be relieved! (Flight Nurse, pp. 164-65)

During the war, both the Japanese and the Germans did in fact drop bombs on medical facilities that were clearly marked as such, in violation of the Hague Convention. For example, a Japanese kamikaze plane bombed the USS Comfort, a hospital ship, in April 1945, killing six army nurses and wounding four others, and the German Luftwaffe bombed British hospital ships during the Anzio invasion, also killing six army nurses.

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