AN: I was not alive during world war two so please forgive any oversights or mistakes regarding the war itself and what happened. This work of fiction takes place in 1944 and 1945, and after the war ends, as always it is fiction and I am focusing on the characters most of all. I was given a prompt with the song You Belong to Me, a nurse and a wounded soldier, so that's the focus. The relationship, not the war.
Also, I have another story called You Belong To Me, this had nothing to do with that story at all. This prompt was specific with a song and title already so I'm just going to say this is a sweet Daryl and Carol story, not the Mac free for all I wrote a few months ago with the same title.
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General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, declared Manila an open city and ordered the nurses to the island of Corregidor. MacArthur planned to hold Corregidor and the Bataan Peninsula and await supplies and reinforcement from the United States. He sent forty-five nurses from Corregidor to the Bataan Peninsula to prepare two emergency hospitals for U.S. and Filipino forces fighting on Bataan. General Hospital 1, near Limay, received casualties directly from the front lines. The hospital consisted of sixteen wooden buildings and was originally well supplied. More than 1,200 battle casualties requiring major surgery (traumatic amputations and head, chest, and abdominal wounds) were admitted to this hospital within a month. From Wikipedia, The beginning of the Army Nurse Corps in World War Two.
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Carol spent her twenty-third birthday on a plane over the Pacific ocean with a bunch of strangers and she was afraid, really afraid. As she looked out the window and saw nothing but clouds she said a silent prayer for safety, for all of them. She prayed for the pilot flying them, the girl next to her who said her name was Maggie from Georgia and for their future patients.
This was her first time away from home, her first time on a plane as well, she was a country girl who just wanted to do her part and make a difference. So far it had taken her clear across the country from her safe home in Virginia, and now even further still. That wasn't exactly what she expected, but it was what it was.
Carol had a lot in common with Maggie, they were around the same age and both from the south, she hoped they would be good friends. They would need each other as they trudged through this new life they were all thrown into.
Carol's mother and father had both cried when she joined the Army Nurse Corps and it was hard to leave them. But it was the right thing to do, she knew that deep down inside, even if she was scared sometimes. Inspired by the posters of women rallying for the cause, she signed up without telling anyone.
It was the first time she was a part of something bigger than herself, it was eye-opening for her and probably she thought for all the girls on the plane.
Soon these other women beside her would be her best friends, soon she would not be able to think of living her life without them, but today, now, she questioned herself and the choice she had made. It had overtaken her, that feeling that she had to do something and she wanted to. Sometimes a little fear was good for you, she felt alive most of all.
Carol could be home right now in her own bed, but she felt the need to help her fellow man, to do her part to help the war effort. She hadn't planned on being sent right into a war zone though, her fiance Ed was furious with her. He had not enlisted, as a child, he had a seizure, just one, when he had a high fever and with a note from his doctor was excused from military service. He didn't understand why she felt the way she did, he had no such need to serve his fellow man.
Secretly she had lost respect for Ed when he used an old illness to get out of military service. She couldn't wear the engagement ring he had given her on her assignment and secretly, she didn't want to wear it anyway. He was no hero, he wasn't the man she had thought he was.
Even though he was seething over her choice, despite that, Ed would wait for her tour to be over and then they would be married. That was what he wanted and that was what her parents wanted and so, it would be done. This little attack of conscious that she got over the soldiers and the war effort was but a mere blip on Ed's plan for her. In his mind, she was already his wife.
Carol looked around at the young men on the plane with her and the other nurses, they were all so...young; not one person on the plane was over thirty, many of them might not ever see American soil again. The South Pacific would be their last stop.
None of them knew it then, but the soldiers who protected the nurses would be like her big brothers soon, the other nurses, her sisters; they would be like a family. It would take another sixteen hours before they reached, Corregidor and then Bataan and she closed her eyes to get some sleep. She had been a nurse for exactly two months and she was a long way from home.
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Daryl had never been so scared in his whole life, the fear every day was as thick as the humid air they were all breathing. It radiated around and from everyone, he came in contact with, they were all in danger, constantly. At twenty-six Daryl had seen his share of bad times, but not like this. The bad times at home, at the hand of his father was nothing compared to this.
Yet he could not imagine himself anywhere else, this was what he was meant to do, he just knew it.
He had been stationed in the Philippines for nine months now, in the Air Force, usually a pretty calm assignment but it had started getting dicey as of late. There was fighting and bombing everywhere, and now he knew how Merle had felt that day in Pearl Harbor.
Daryl had followed his older brother into war, because he looked up to him and wanted to be like him, Merle was a hero to him and always had been. The day the US entered World War Two Merle had been right in the middle of it all. From Monterey, where Daryl was training to be a fighter pilot, he and his fellow trainees watched as their country finally went to war.
Daryl's brother had been in Hawaii on a cushy assignment until that day when the bombs dropped and the United States joined the war. Now Merle was back home in Georgia having taken a shot to the leg while helping to save two men on the Navy ship they were on. He was injured badly, and now walked with a permanent limp, that effectively ended his military career. Daryl's brother earned an honorable discharge and a purple heart for bravery; Merle was stateside now, home, courting a woman the last Daryl had heard.
Someday he wanted the chance to meet someone, to get married and have a family, but lately, it wasn't what he was thinking about, for now, it was just a dream in the back of his mind. Maybe someday...
Right now, every day it was something new to fear, the Japanese were taking prisoners and fighter pilots like Daryl were getting shot down every day. Survival was the main objective and sometimes he doubted he would make it home; so many of his friends had been killed and wounded.
The biggest fear for any soldier anywhere was being taken prisoner, there had been rumors of the things that happened to prisoners. It was better to die.
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The sky was clear that day, the sun bright and beautiful, Daryl would always remember it that way when he and Shane went up on the routine fly over the land, out into the Pacific and back to Manila, where they were stationed. Twice a week they ran this perimeter, checked the water and the land, made sure there was no action afoot. It was just like any other day if you could say that about a day in the war, but then it all changed suddenly and nothing would ever be the same again.
Out of nowhere, they were hit and it all was a blur from there. There was smoke everywhere and the plane made a nose dive that neither of them saw coming. The water was coming closer and closer as they pulled off their headgear and Daryl tried to get them closer to land. They had to get closer, they would eject and land in the water miles away from land or the nearest aircraft carrier in shark-infested waters.
He remembered a brief conversation with Shane as they prepared to parachute out of the plane, it would play over and over in his mind for days after. The responsibility he felt for the man who was his co-pilot was paramount in his mind, even before his own well being.
"Hang on Walsh, I'm gonna get us out of this!"
"I know it, Captain," Shane replied as Daryl struggled to get the plane righted and towards land.
"Alright, there's Bataan," Daryl said a few minutes later, and the sight of land almost brought tears to his eyes.
"Been nice knowing you, Captain," Shane saluted behind Daryl.
"We ain't gonna die today Walsh, we ain't." He called out as they both ejected out of the plane over the peninsula of Bataan.