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“We had a good hospital”
November 14th
As stories are told about World War II one group is sometimes forgotten, but according to many veterans, they were the real heroes of the war: the medical units. Doctors, surgeons, dentists, nurses, all risked their own lives to save the lives of others. The survival rate during World War I was about 8%; during World War II it dropped to 4%; and one unit did even better - the 21st Evacuation Hospital from the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. Daniel Pearson was one of those doctors, having graduated from the University of Oklahoma Medical School in June, 1941. I met Dr. Pearson on August 24, 2007 at his office in south Dallas. Pearson told me that he had always planned on joining the Army if the U.S. went into war, but his draft board said they were going to take him as soon as he got through his internship (because of his low draft number), so he joined the 21st Evacuation Hospital.
“The Army had asked most medical schools to organize an affiliated hospital that could serve in the war and treat casualties,” said Dr. Pearson, ” so Oklahoma organized their’s as the 21st Evac Hospital. It probably started out with a dozen or more doctors from Oklahoma City, then it gradually grew from there.”
Dr. Pearson trained in the desert of California, expecting to go to North Africa, where General George Patton and his tank corps were operating, but the 21st was sent to the South Pacific, instead. Dr. Pearson set up a medical unit at Guadalcanal, several months after the invasion. “We took care of casualties that came in from the field,” said the soft-spoken Pearson. “About 2,000-3,000 patients. We were there (Guadalcanal) about 40 days. By that time we had finally pretty well filled up our quota and I think we rose to 46 doctors and about 60 administrators.”
Despite their training, the members of the 21st were not totally prepared for what they saw. “Everything we saw was trauma. Gunshots wounds and fragment wounds. In civilian life you don’t see too many casualties like that. When we got to Bougainville, especially, we had more destructive trauma.”
The 21st worked in tents, with 3 general surgical teams of 3 men to a team. In Bougainville, they worked on 12 tables, doing surgery underground to stay out of the line of fire. The operating room wasn’t actually dug into the ground, but was built up with walls, logs laid across and covered up with soil to make an “underground” room.
Dr. Pearson describes the conditions at Bougainville with one word: wet. “At Bougainville, on the side of the island where we were, average rainfall was 274 inches a year, so it rained every day. It would get up to 90, but not bad. We would sweat a lot, humid, and there were mosquitoes, lots of them, so we slept under nets,” Pearson said.
The unit was only 200-400 yards from the front lines at Bougainville, so the 21st got fresh battle casualties. Pearson remembers that the casualties came in so heavy that the surgical teams worked day and night for about three weeks, operating on all 12 tables.
After a little more than a year, the 21st went to Luzon, in the Phillipines. Once in the Phillipines, Pearson was sent to a small town named San Carlos, about 15 miles inland. There, he set up a hospital in a Catholic cathedral that was built in 1585, but not before giving the cathedral a thorough cleaning. “It was in good condition, and it looked like people had been kneeling on a ground floor, but actually it was bat manure (on the floor). There were bats all over the ceiling, live bats, so we drove about 7 vehicles, trucks and other vehicles, in there and left them running until they burned out all of their gas, hoping the fumes would drive the bats out. We scooped up the bat manure, raked it up and put in the trucks. We got seven truck tons of that bat manure out and hauled it off. Under the manure we found a beautiful tile floor,” Pearson said.
In San Carlos, there were about 400 cots in the cathedral and another 400-500 beds outside in tents. The 21st stayed in San Carlos for about 40 days before heading to the New Bilibid Prison, where they cared for survivors of Bataan. Pearson figures if he hadn’t joined the 21st he would have been among the Army soldiers sent to Bataan. He says many in his advanced officer training class at OU wound up there. “Close call. Yeah, close call,” Pearson told me.
Pearson stayed in touch with his family through mail and pictures. He left one daughter (Maureen) and his wife behind when he left for the South Pacific. Another daughter (Diana) was born while he was gone. He didn’t see her until she was nearly 3 years old.
Pearson says those sacrifices were just part of the job. “You have to accept it - just like life. You may not like it, but there is nothing you can do about it, so you just have to accept it. It’s an adjustment you make in your life.”
After the war, Pearson went into general practice in Perryton, Texas and later began practicing psychiatry, with an office in Dallas. Now, at the age of 93, Dr. Pearson still practices psychiatry 3 days a week. He says the worst part of war was being away from home for three years. The best part was taking care of people. “The best part,” Pearson recalled, “was that we could be a doctor.”
(above) Dr. Daniel B. Pearson with three of his children in his Dallas, Texas office. (l-r) Maureen, Daniel, Diana.
Thanks to Judy Kelley of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Editor of OU Medicine for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of the story of Dr. Pearson and the “Fighting 21st.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Dr. Daniel B. Pearson was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on November 14, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
“It’s the most difficult period of your life”
November 7th
Pendleton Woods remembers that he was in his dormitory at the University of Arkansas when somebody rushed down the hall and said that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. “We didn’t know what Pearl Harbor was,” he recalled, “and then we began listening to the radio, and that’s when it really hit us.”
Within hours the United States was entering World War II and by 1942 Woods had signed up for the Army Reserve. He remained stateside for about two years, but wound up in Germany, on the Belgian front, by October, 1944. Woods was there just in time for the Battle of the Bulge, but he missed most of the fighting.
On December 10, 1944, while on patrol behind German lines, Woods and seven others were cut off and surrounded by a German unit. Their squad leader was killed, another person was wounded, and the group of Americans was captured. So began Pen Woods’ 5-month ordeal as a prisoner of war.
The captives did what they could to stay warm, sharing one blanket to keep their feet warm, and huddling together in a boxcar on the way to a German prison camp. Woods spent 8 days on the boxcar, where he “celebrated” his 21st birthday. He spent Christmas of 1944 inside the walls of a German prison camp before being transported to a labor camp, where conditions were somewhat better.
Woods remembers that a soldier who had served time in a Pennsylvania penitentiary, Red Martin, taught him how to steal. “Red Martin and I had honest faces,” said Woods, “and when we’d steal stuff we’d blouse our trousers into our combat boots and put food there. The armpit is also good. You’d be surprised at how much food you can put under your armpit and get away with it.”
Martin gave Woods a nickname, “Steal ‘Em Blind Woods.” According to Woods, the name was a real compliment. “Don’t laugh,” he told me, “because that would be like Babe Ruth or Joe Louis calling you slugger, or in academic circles, it would be like an honorary degree. The nickname I got I got from a professional.”
(above) Corporal Pendleton Woods during World War II.
Woods finally escaped on Hitler’s birthday, April 20th, during Russian artillery fire that had the Germans pre-occupied. After five days, Woods and the others linked up with American soldiers near the Elbe River. Ironically, Woods’ prison bunkmate was Clarence Deal, who lives in Jones, Oklahoma. “Every day on April 20th, for some 60-odd years now,” said Woods, “I will call my prison bunkmate, or he will call me, wishing each other “Happy Hitler’s Birthday,” because that’s the day we got away from that prison camp.”
Woods believes that Germany’s biggest problem in the war was attacking Russia, because it forced the Nazis into a multi-front war. The Germans and Russians hated each other, he recalls, and Russian prisoners were treated ten times worse than Americans were treated in the prisoner-of-war camps.
Woods doesn’t watch many movies, but he has watched the famous prisoner-of-war movie, Stalag 17. “I thought it was phony,” Woods told me. “In Stalag 17 they made the Germans look stupid, but they weren’t stupid, they were smart. Stalag 17 was not real at all. If they do it real it doesn’t make much of a movie. It’s the most difficult period of your life.”
After the war, Woods returned to the University of Arkansas and got his degree in journalism. He became Public Information Officer for the 45th Infantry Division and served in that capacity during the Korean War. He achieved the rank of Colonel in the National Guard and worked for many years as Public Relations Specialist for OG&E. Woods was chosen the nation’s outstanding ex-POW of 2005.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(above) Pen Woods with OETA’s Dick Pryor.
(Pen Woods was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on November 7, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.”)