Last Days in Agoo (68)

Cub ambulance service in Agoo

     The fight for Baguio continued.  According to an A.P. newspaper article, the Japanese were determined to hold on.  "A civilian who came thru the lines reported the American bombing of the area was so intense that on one occasion explosions kept up for five hours with only one twenty-minute break."  With such intense fighting, the 92nd Evac and all of the other nearby hospitals were kept very busy trying to patch up the casualties.  Some of the casualties were brought in by private aircraft.  Animals were also occasionally treated at the 92nd.

K-9 Corps member who had been brought in for an x-ray of a jaw
fractured by a Japanese grenade

Then abruptly, the tide turned.

April 27, 1945  Our first light night.  I went to bed at 10:30.  We amputated a thigh for gas gangrene but the fellow died on the table.

April 28, 1945  Another quiet night!  We'll probably move to Baguio in a few days.  A lot of hosp. outfits have been angling for that spot!

28 April '45
Dear Jack [the son of Beth's sister, Mary X]
     A change in censorship regulations now permits me to send you these cancelled stamps.  Providing I make no comments.  I will say, however, that you should notice the inked-out portion of the old stamps.  Evidently the Japs continued the use of the original U.S. stamps, with the only change being the removal of the "United States".  Practical people, these Nips!
      But our side is being just as practical in that we are repairing captured Jap artillery and using captured shells, to shoot them with.  After all, why waste our ammo when theirs will kill them just as dead!  I was taking some pictures yesterday at an ordnance outfit here in out town, where they were repairing some of the Jap guns.  I saw one huge brass shell casing for a 12" gun [the diameter of the shell is 12"].  Is it ever a whopper!  Men who have heard the projectile from such a gun going overhead say it really makes a roar.
     Love, Gene

April 29, 1945  If that isn't the damnedest injustice!  MacArthur announced that the 33rd Div. took Baguio.  Actually it was the 37th! [This is the first instance Gene used "damn" instead of "darn" in his diary, and he used it because "his" men were not given proper credit.]    

Baguio, April 29 - (A.P.) - Yanks observed Japanese Emperor Hirohito's birthday by raising the American and Philippines flags over captured Baguio yesterday and by launching a new offensive northward from this summer capital.
     Contrary to Tokyo broadcasts, no Japanese counterattack was launched and the flags went up in an unmolested ceremony.
     Civilians in rags, some gaunt and sick, watched amid the war's ravages and the heavy odor of death as the American flag, which city custodian Juan Arenella hid from Japanese three years, was hoisted aloft.
     The Philippine flag followed and then both were lowered to half staff in honor of the late President Roosevelt.

May 1, 1945  We did 547 cases in surgery during April and had 17 deaths [about 3%].

May 2, 1945  Getting ready to move to Baguio tomorrow.  I'm on the forward echelon.