Wartime drama of U.S. Army nurses in the Philippines: So Proudly We Hail! (1943)

So Proudly We Hail! (1943) 

It is May 1942.  Less than six months have passed since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Allied forces in the Pacific have endured defeat upon crushing defeat.  From Burma, Java, Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Rabaul and the Philippine Islands, the flag of the Rising Sun has replaced the Union Jack, the Dutch flag and the Stars and Stripes. 

In Melbourne, Australia, a U.S. transport plane arrives with a group of recently-evacuated Army doctors, medics and  nurses aboard.  As they deplane, Lt. Janet Davidson (Claudette Colbert) is carried on a stretcher due to  her mental and physical exhaustion. 

The nurses are then shipped Stateside aboard a Navy transport and given what amounts to first class treatment.  Most of them respond well to the care they receive, but “Davy” remains withdrawn and wheelchair-bound, perhaps haunted by her experiences during the sieges of Bataan and Corregidor. 

Determined to help his patient recover, her attending physician (John Litel) interviews her fellow evacuees to find some way to break through Davy’s mental fog and rekindle her will to live. 

The nurses comply, and we flash back to early December 1941.  In the last few days before the Pacific boils over, a group of nurses, including Davy and Lt. Joan O’Daul (Paulette Goddard), boards a ship in San Francisco bound for the American territory of Hawaii.  However, all hell breaks loose on Dec. 7, 1941 and the lone ship joins a convoy that is going to the Philippines, a U.S. commonwealth in the path of the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia. 

After a harrowing transpacific crossing in which the convoy suffers losses to Japanese submarine attacks, the doctors and nurses – including one which joins the unit after her ship is sunk –  land on Luzon just ahead of the enemy landings in Lingayen Gulf.  The U.S.-Filipino forces under Gen. MacArthur, deprived of air cover and under constant Japanese attack, are forced to withdraw to the Bataan Peninsula. There they plan to hold out until reinforcements arrive from the U.S., not knowing that America lacks the assets to rescue them this early in the war. 

For the next five months, the “angels of Bataan” will endure constant enemy bombardment, harsh jungle environment, stress and the threat of capture by the advancing Japanese.  Through it all, they treat wounded and shell-shocked soldiers with determination, courage and even self-sacrifice in the face of the enemy. 

The nurses not only tell Dr. Harrison about their professional experiences; they also share some of their stories of love and romance.  Some of the women tell him about the “boys back home” (in the case of Goddard’s character, this is literally true; she accepted two guys’ proposals before leaving for Hawaii) and their prewar relationships. 
  
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: Stop prying into things that don't concern you. 
Lt. Janet 'Davy' Davidson: Maybe it does concern me. It concerns me that the morale of this group remains high. Until you joined up, it was. You're just a troublemaker. I-I don't really care what's bothering you at all. I don't like you any more than the rest of the girls do. 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: I'm supposed to be a nurse and that's all? 
Lt. Janet 'Davy' Davidson: No. There's more than that now that we're at war. Maybe you don't know what's up. Maybe you don't know what we're doing here. 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: You think I don't know. All right, I'll tell you. I know what I'm doing, I know why I'm here. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to kill Japs. 
[stands up] 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: Every blood-stained one I can get my hands on! 
Lt. Janet 'Davy' Davidson: [hushed] Olivia! 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: That doesn't sound nice coming from a nurse, does it? We're supposed to be angels of mercy, 're supposed to tend to the wounded and take care of the sick. We're supposed to be kind and tender and serve humanity in the name of humanity. What humanity? Dead humanity? 
Lt. Janet 'Davy' Davidson: Olivia, be quiet! 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: No, you asked me, you wanted to know, you pried into things that didn't concern you.You wanted to know that this is - look! Look at this! 
[opens a locket Davidson was asking about] 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: Do you know what it is? I'll tell you, it's a boy. 
[door opens, two other girls look in] 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: Come in, both of you, you wanted to know too. Today is Christmas, isn't it? The time for cheer and good fellowship, and for peace. Well, today's my wedding day. 
[holds out locket] 
Lt. Olivia D'Arcy: You see that? He and I were to be married today, in Saint Louis. And why weren't we? Because he's dead. He died that first morning. They killed him. I saw him. He was running across the field to his plane and they killed him. Sixty bullets - sixty! By the time I got to him he was dead. His face was gone - I couldn't see him any more. Just blood - blood all over! 
  
Other stories, especially the rescued-from-the-sea Lt. D’Arcy’s tragic tale of how her fighter pilot fiancée was killed during the Japanese air strikes against Army Air Corps bases on Oahu, are dark and reflect the mood of the period.

D’Arcy’s loss has hardened her psyche. She hates the Japanese and thirsts for retribution against them. She also turns into a remote and icy woman who shuns (initially, anyway) anyone who offers friendship or plain camaraderie.

Meanwhile, Davy befriends Lt. John Summers (George “Superman” Reeves), an Army officer who survived the sinking of his ship by the submarine attack on the Philippines-bound convoy and was rescued by the ship Davy was on.  Though Davy is initially resistant to Summers’ charm and optimism, love blooms between them. This relationship and Lt. O’Daul’s romance with a young soldier nicknamed Kansas (Sonny Tufts) are marked by separation and anxiety as the tides of war shift against the Americans on Luzon. 

For more of this review, please see So Proudly We Hail: Wartime drama focuses on Angels of Bataan 

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