by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
Author Walter Macdougall of Milo had only to look to the neighboring town of Brownville to find Alice Zwicker, born in 1916, the subject of his new book “Angel of Bataan: The Life of a World War II Army Nurse in the War Zone and At Home.” Zwicker was the only woman from Maine who endured internment as a prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II.
Zwicker grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a large family whose parents wanted their children to be educated and to know how to make themselves useful. One of the jobs that Zwicker had as a youngster, along with her brother, Ken, was delivering the Bangor Daily News, a paper route that was four miles long. Yet, there was always time in the family for singing and dancing, and making their own fun — sledding parties, swimming, berrying and taffy pulls, as well as church and school programs.
Times were hard and would get harder as the Great Depression settled over the United States and Maine, but the Zwicker children attended elementary and high school. Their parents instilled in them a desire to further their education.
Alice Zwicker was attracted from an early age to the nursing profession and after she graduated from high school, she went off to Bangor to become a student in the Eastern Maine General Hospital nurse’s training program, where she specialized in surgical nursing. That decision led her, after earning her cap in 1937 and holding several nursing jobs over the next four years, to enlist in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in March 1941. Zwicker wanted to travel to warmer climes, to see something of the world, to live an adventurous life. She requested assignment to the Philippines. At that time, with World War II looming, there were fewer than 1,000 nurses in the Army Nurse Corps, Macdougall writes.
By December 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the United States was at war with Japan. The Philippines was about to become the focus of Japanese conquest as the United States and its allies threw the weight of its military strength at Europe, leaving the Pacific with fewer resources for its defense.
Thus, Zwicker would spend the majority of her World War II service under siege from Japan at hospitals in the peninsula of Bataan, in the Malinta Tunnel on the island of Corregidor and on the campus of a former school, Santo Tomas, in Manila.
With deft prose that sometimes shades into poetic expression, and always keeps the story moving and well laced with facts that fleshes out the narrative, Macdougall places Zwicker’s experiences against the broader history of a world war and the self-contained community of Brownville where Zwicker’s family and the entire town waited for news, not knowing how Zwicker fared after the Philippines fell to Japan.
“Angel of Bataan” provides insight into how one woman, in particular, and a group of medical personnel, in general, endured the hardships of internment that included ever diminishing quantities of food and supplies. It draws a sharp image of how Zwicker and approximately 60 U.S. Army nurses struggled to save soldiers’ lives and care for casualties that numbered, at times, more than 4,000. Their efforts earned them the well deserved nickname, Angels of Bataan.
From the little village of Brownville and its surrounding countryside, Macdougall writes, 261 young people had gone off to war; 13 would not return; and none would come home unchanged.
“Angel of Bataan” is an absorbing read, giving the reader a deeper understanding of how one Maine woman endured the unendurable and lived to tell the story.
For information about the book, inquire at your local bookstore or library, or visit rowman.com.