This article appeared in the September/October 2021 issue of Discover magazine as "Frontline Fatigue." Become a subscriber for unlimited access to our archive.
In February 1945, U.S. Navy nurse Dorothy Still was a prisoner of war in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. Along with 11 other Navy nurses, Nurse Still provided care for civilian inmates in a prison camp where food was scarce and guards were brutal. Few inmates weighed more than 100 pounds, and most were dying from malnutrition.
On the night of Feb. 22, Nurse Still and the other inmates watched as their captors set up guns around the perimeter of the camp and turned the barrels inward. Other guards dug shallow graves. The inmates had long suspected the camp commander planned to massacre them all, and it seemed the rumors were coming true. Yet Nurse Still and another Navy nurse reported to the infirmary for the night shift. They had little medicine or food to offer their patients; comfort and kindness were all they had left to give.
