The systematic routine of nursing, in which Nancy and her fellow workers had been so carefully trained, had to be forgotten in the trying days that followed. Although the nurses went on duty at stated intervals, theoretically to work for eight hours, few ever stopped before reaching the point of exhaustion. Even with their large and well-balanced unit there were not half enough to meet the need.
“If the nurses back home could fly out here for one night—just to see how badly we need help,” said Nancy, “they couldn’t get into the ANC fast enough.”
“Don’t you worry—I’m going to tell ’em a few things in my next letters home,” Mabel assured her.
Mabel was beginning to look something like a guinea egg, for the hot sun and constant glare had peppered her fair face with freckles. She wore her hair pinned up tightly under her kerchief, as most of the others did. Wind blew almost constantly across the island, and without some protection hair would always be in their faces.
Nancy had burned badly on their last sea voyage, and was now beginning to peel. “There’s one consolation,” she remarked to Mabel. “Everybody looks about as bad as everybody else.”
“And who gives a hang?” Mabel wanted to know. “There’re really more important things to think about. It’s what you can do and hold up under that counts these days.”
It took some time for Nancy to condition herself to that constant rumble of artillery. At first each reverberation that shook their tent poles set her aquiver. She knew that every blast only increased the number of dead and wounded.
Life on Koshu was as complicated as a three-ring circus. Besides the continual rumble of artillery, as the Americans pushed north across the island, there was the constant drone of planes overhead. At first Nancy had the impulse to run out and look up to discover whether they were Japs or Americans, but she soon learned to trust their sirens to give her warning of danger. She had her job to do. If she was to keep fit for it she must concentrate on her own part of the great task.
By the third day the hospital was full to overflowing. Nancy and her quartette offered their private tent to give shelter to more wounded. Other nurses followed their example. The negro camp helpers built the nurses a long shelter, roofed with palm fronds. Some of the island natives, dubbed “Fuzzy Wuzzies” because of their bushy heads, directed the construction. The nurses called their new quarters the fresh-air dormitory. Though there was plenty of fresh air there was certainly little privacy.
“Who has time for privacy these days?” Nancy wanted to know.