...The Army nurses directed to serve in Hospital #2 left Manila on a small harbor vessel, the McHyde, on Christmas night 1941. When they arrived on 27 December 1941, they found the site of their makeshift hospital in a dense jungle with bamboo thickets adjacent to the Real River. The bamboo and river water would prove to be valuable resources. Lieutenant Hortense McKay spoke of the bamboo's "versatility" and described how the nurses used the fast growing plant as infrastructure: "it was used along with vines for bed frames, benches, clothes lines, tables in the mess hall, mats, drinking cups, cigarette holders and for shelters. Another unusual use for bamboo was the construction of frames to fit over the latrine holes in the ground. These frames were built in a rectangular shape. One bamboo bar was used as the seat and another bar was used for the person's legs. Jungle conditions had made everyone of us unusually resourceful." McKay regarded the Real River as a real "lifesaver . . . to relax and refresh us!" She recalled that the nurses used the water "for bathing and washing clothes." They used the river water to recycle supplies as well. Due to conditions of "dire need, most soiled bandages were washed and used over again."
      A dearth of food and kitchen equipment soon became alarming. McKay wrote:
      I was in charge of feeding 90 people from a 12 quart bucket. The contents were a strange mixture, a kind of "Bataan stew," with maybe some mule or horsemeat, carabao, even monkey, perhaps fish, rice and occasionally a few green weeds or maybe vegetables. Someone had jokingly put up a sign: NO SECONDS. The food bucket, with a piece of bamboo through the handle, had to be carried by two persons. We always put netting over the food because the flies were everywhere. It was difficult to keep the food clean. We did the best we could. Salmonella, fecal streptococci and other pathogens of intestinal origin could be deadly to many already weak from too little food. . . .
      Only a few months previous to this starvation diet, I remember the Chief Nurse, Florence MacDonald, saying "It's a sin to overeat and it's a sin to waste food, but I don't know which sin is worse." Starving people I thought must be without that sin. They didn't have either choice to make. (A History of the U. S. Army Nurse Corps, Mary T. Samecky; University of Pennsylvania Press: 1999; p. 189)

Hortense McKay
      She was born July 16, 1910, in Harmony, Minn. She died Jan. 15, 1988, at 77.
      McKay was a graduate of Brainerd High School, St. Cloud Teacher's College and University of Minnesota School of Nursing in 1933. She taught school in a township and worked in the Deerwood TB Sanitarium. And for a short time, she did public health work in Louisville. In 1939, she transferred to U.S. Army Nurse Corps. She was an honorary member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II and was the subject of the book, Angel of Bataan [sic] [Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered].
      She received the Bronze Star from the U.S. Army for her efforts with the sick and wounded soldiers in the Philippine Islands during World War II. She taught school to earn enough money for nursing school. She was sent to the Philippines in February 1941 and stationed at Fort Stotsenburg, next to Clark Field. She was one of 71 nurses there overwhelmed with casualties after the first bombing attack by the Japanese. Evacuated to Corregidor, she cared for wounded in the Malinta railroad tunnel hospital. And within four weeks was transferred to a primitive hospital at Bataan.
      The book, Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered, was co-authored by friend and biographer Maxine Russell. McKay served overseas for three more years in New Guinea and the Philippines. She was evacuated from the Philippines to Australia by submarine. In 1945, she helped reorganize the Army Nurse Corps.
      She was chief nurse and head of nursing services in several hospitals until her retirement in 1960. (Brainerd Dispatch, 18 May 1999)

      A 1927 BHS graduate, Hortense McKay earned her nursing degree in 1933. She joined the Army in 1936 and eventually was sent to the Philippines. She survived the heavy bombing of Clark Field and heroically served the wounded on Corregidor and later at a primitive hospital in Bataan.
      Although she did not take part in the infamous Death March, she is said to be one of the last nurses to leave the wounded. She voluntarily served three more years in New Guinea and the Philippines. Her name is included on a monument in the Philippines as one of the 104 "Angels of Bataan." She earned the Bronze Star and was the subject of an historical work, Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered.
      She retired in 1960 as a Lieutenant Colonel after three posts as chief nurse in overseas and domestic Army hospitals. The woman who was born at home in 1910 died in surgery at the University of Minnesota Hospitals in 1988. (Brainerd Dispatch, 04 May 2002)

              Hortense Eleanor McKay
Brainerd High School Distinguished Citizen Hall of Fame
      1927 Graduate Brainerd High School,
                   Brainerd, Minnesota

      The quote accompanying Hortense McKay's graduation photo in the 1927 Brainonian couldn't have been closer to the truth in characterizing her life's work and contribution: "All can see in me an emblem of true purity."
      Following graduation in 1927, McKay attended the Saint Cloud Teacher's College then worked for one year in a rural Crow Wing County school before attending nursing school, where she earned her nursing degree in 1933.
      After joining the Army in 1936, she was eventually sent to the Philippines and survived the heavy bombing of Clark Field, and heroically served the wounded on Corregidor and later at a primitive hospital in Bataan. Although she did not take part in the infamous march, she is said to be one of the last nurses to leave the wounded.
      Evacuated by submarine to Australia, McKay voluntarily served three more years in New Guinea and the Philippines. Her name is included on a monument in the Philippines as one of the 104 "Angels of Bataan." She earned the Bronze Star and is the subject of a historical work Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered.
      In 1949, McKay earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing from the
University of Minnesota and continued her Army nursing career, rising to the rank of Lt. Colonel, and retiring in 1960 after three posts as Chief Nurse in overseas and domestic Army hospitals.

          Local World War II Hero to be Honored Next Tuesday

      State Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes invites the public to Scotland Cemetery at the Richland Prairie Church in rural Harmony on July 13 at 6:30 p.m. for a graveside ceremony honoring Lieutenant Colonel Hortense McKay.
      McKay was born July 16, 1910, in a farmhouse in Amherst Township. A book about her life, Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered, by Maxine Russell details the life of this extraordinary Army leader from southeastern Minnesota.
      As a courageous Army nurse who served in the steamy jungles of the Philippines after the Pearl Harbor attack, McKay is highly lauded by the Minnesota Military Historical Society and the Minnesota Military Museum.
      After a long, distinguished Army career around the world, Lt. Col. Hortense McKay was buried near Harmony after her death in 1988.
      Her name is listed on the Altar of Valor monument that says, in part: "The valiant American military women provided care and comfort to the gallant defenders of Bataan and Corregidor. They lived on a starvation diet, shared the bombing, strafing, sniping, sickness and disease while working endless hours of heartbreaking duty. These nurses always had a smile, a tender touch and a kind word for their patients. They truly earned the name - the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor."
      "Please join me, Mayor Steve Donney, local veterans and scouts to honor our hometown hero, a jungle angel, named Hortense McKay," said Sen. Ropes.
      Look in the July 26 issue of the Bluff Country Reader for a complete story on this ceremony and a complete biography of Hortense McKay. (Mabel-Harmony News-Record, Harmony, MN, 08 July 2010)

      WW II Army Nurse Remembered as 'Angel of Bataan'
            By Gretchen Mensink Lovejoy

      "Well, we took turns with the chores. Mabel and I made ourselves little white paper caps like nurses wore in pictures we'd seen. First, we helped care for Mother, then Dad, then our two younger brothers, Peter and George, and even Inga, our hired girl. Wallace wasn't born until later after we had moved to Brainerd. One after another, they all came down with the flu. Finally, Mabel and I were stricken, too. I guess that's the first time I ever thought much about sickness...for a while after that, everybody and everything looked sick to me. My little pony, the wild birds in the trees, and the little frogs in the creek, even. I imagined all of them had the flu and they depended on me to take care of them. Even the carved wooden lions on the old chair in our living room needed me to nurse them back to health. Now, for the first time, I began to think about becoming a nurse, not just playing that I was one," recalled Hortense McKay about her childhood and the 1918 influenza epidemic.
      The above quote was recorded in Maxine Russell's book Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered, an account of McKay's grueling experiences as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War II in the Philippines.
      McKay was remembered, recently, with a special memorial service on what would have been her 100th birthday. A special ceremony was held at the Richland Prairie Church in rural Harmony, where she is buried. Attending were local dignitaries, the military color guard and members of the McKay families. Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes and her staff organized the event after hearing about McKay's tremendous contributions to her country.
      Hortense Eleanor McKay was born on a farm northeast of Harmony on July 16, 1910, to farmers George and Lydia (Hahn) McKay, who later moved the family to Brainerd, Minn. She attended the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, then served at the Louisville, Ky., Public Health Service, after which she was transferred to Galveston, Texas.
      When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, she was sent to the U.S. Army Nurse Corps at Fort Benning, Ga., where she worked at a hospital that weathered yet another epidemic of influenza and pneumonia.
      She chose to join the Army because, as she said in the book, "The need for nurses was great and the opportunity for advancement was obvious...of course, I believed in human justice, and within a few years, I was sent overseas."
      McKay arrived on the USAT Grant at Manila, the Philippines, on Feb. 20, 1941, bringing with her her "faithful Chevy coupe" which was purchased at Bigalk's Chev-Olds in Harmony. She was assigned to the army hospital at Fort Stotsenburg, closely adjoining Clark Field, about 60 miles north of Manila.
      As Pearl Harbor was yet to be bombed, the nurses were only prepared as a precaution for the imminent war dangers. "I had previous limited experience in the treatment of some of the tropical diseases, such as malaria, typhoid, dysentery, beriberi, hookworm and other related illnesses generally prevalent in warm climates," she had stated.
      Supplies and weapons were scarce due to distance and distribution to other parts of the Pacific, so the nurses made due at Fort Stotsenburg, caring for patients as best they could.
      "As I awakened the morning of Dec. 8, 1941, I suddenly heard over my radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Over and over again, this message was reported continuously. Everyone was stunned. We felt that we would be next," she remembered.
      Fears were not unfounded, as McKay recalled, "It was about noon when the first bomb fell...Clark Field had its own 'Pearl Harbor'."
      The hospital filled with wounded and dying soldiers, many who could not be saved.
      "One soldier called me 'Hortense' by name, but his face was so badly burned that I didn't recognize him," she remembered.
      Increasing air raid attacks by the Japanese on the Philippines continued, until, finally, on Dec. 24, they had to evacuate the hospital. It was "something which we greatly feared, our big move to evacuate Fort Stotsenburg, happened...we received our orders to pack up at once...the entire post, with troops, hospital, everything, was to be moved immediately to Manila...the Japanese advance attack was on the way."
      That's when her Chevy coupe became a "casualty of war," according to her younger brother, Wallace, who was present at the memorial service held for her and her surviving family at the Richland Prairie Church earlier this month.
      McKay's account in the book continued, "At dawn the next day, we arrived at Corregidor, the large fortress on 'The Rock' where General Douglas MacArthur was in command...it was the largest of the islands at the entrance to Manila Bay, and it was three and a half miles long and one and a half miles across at its widest part."
      The brigade of nurses carried supplies down into the Malinta Tunnel Hospital, an underground sanctuary where "for many years, supplies had been secreted away" to ready the island for the event of war.
      "What a strange anomaly it was for me, a nurse, to work in a 1,000-bed hospital under 400 feet of solid rock, with bombing and a war going on outside!" McKay remembered.
      She worked at the Malinta hospital in Corregidor for nearly a month, until she was sent to Bataan in 1942 on a "very small rowboat, the kind that had an outboard motor attached."
      She was stationed at Hospital Two, "which was completely out-of-doors, unprotected from the elements and of lower elevation" than Hospital One, located at Little Baguio.
      "In the daytime, most of the patients were out in the sweltering sun, except for some very limited shade...but had one big advantage...it was near a little stream for bathing and washing clothes."
      There, McKay tended patients with shell-shock, but as the war continued, the hospital's perimeters grew and its charges were in need of greater care as they arrived with gashes and missing limbs.
      "As the sick and wounded kept coming, we literally ran out of space," she remembered. "Our hospital became larger and larger, stretching out within and beyond the original area for hundreds of feet. Our facilities were taxed to the extreme."
      The nurses had only a few spigot bags in which to hold treated water for 300 patients, and their food supplies were diminishing as more patients joined them.
      "As our food supplies were gradually consumed and we received fewer or no replacements, we began to starve. My usual 115 pounds dropped to about 88 pounds. There were about 6,000 patients in our hospital waiting to be fed. We went on half-rations, relying more on rice than protein. Also, we were out of quinine...many of our GIs died of malaria and dysentery, both known as great killers."
      The nurses dealt with patients who had "gas gangrene," parasitic diseases, post-traumatic disorders, and other ills, using bamboo and vines for "benches, bed frames, clothes lines, tables in the mess hall, mats, drinking cups, cigarette holders and for shelters."
      McKay explained, "Jungle conditions had made every one of us unusually resourceful. Even so, it became more and more obvious that if help didn't come soon, we would all starve to death. I was in charge of feeding 90 people from a 12-quart bucket...a strange mixture, a kind of 'Bataan stew,' with maybe some mule or horse meat, carabao, even monkey, perhaps fish, rice, and occasionally, a few green weeds or maybe vegetables...we always put netting over the food because the flies were everywhere...it was difficult to keep the food clean. We had to be scrupulously careful to give each person his fair share, the exact amount, even down to measuring teaspoons of something."
      With nearly 7,000 patients, she said, "We had fewer and fewer supplies to fight the enemy and were practically defeated by sickness and hunger.
      "Just as Bataan was falling into the hands of the Japanese (on April 9, 1942), all of the nurses were ordered to be transferred at once back to Corregidor. We had no idea what our future destination would be."
      McKay packed her belongings into a "reliable car" and set out on the road through the jungle with two other nurses, passing by "thousands" of troops. They were forced to hitch a ride with two Air Corps men who were "headed for some destination in the mountains" when the car broke down and they spent hours on the road trying to reach the boat to Corregidor.
      "It had been dusk when we left Bataan, and now it was dawn of the next day when we arrived here at the beach near Mariveles Landing. Just a few hours later, at about 8 a.m., our boat reached Corregidor. I remember one of the military saying, 'My God, look at them!' Emaciated, pale, sick and weary, our clothing torn and soiled, we must have astounded him...we didn't know what fate had in store for us. I suppose the command had decided that our usefulness as nurses would be greater on Corregidor than as prisoners on Bataan. With heartbreak, we realized that we had left thousands of the sick and wounded behind us, but these were our orders."
      McKay was then assigned to the Malinta Tunnel Hospital once again, but the harbor was soon surrounded by Japanese, and on the evening of May 3, 1942, 11 Army nurses, one Navy nurse and one Navy wife were taken on a boat through Japanese minefields to "a designated spot about three miles beyond the Rock of Corregidor...a death-defying journey, the most frightening of my entire life...should the slightest thing have gone wrong with the timing, the submarine would never have been able to wait for us and we might all have been drowned."
      The crew of the U.S.S. Spearfish quietly welcomed the women aboard, as it had to wait in silence for their arrival.
      "One of the crew members looking back at Manila said he saw the searchlights from Japanese-operated shore batteries. Quickly, after the passengers, a total of 27, had embarked, the submarine submerged to the bottom where it waited quietly for 22 hours before attempting its escape."
      The Spearfish was bound for Australia, where McKay recuperated, then returned to service in New Guinea, and Leyte, the Philippines, where she once again witnessed war's human sacrifices and the excitement of freedom.
      She returned to the United States in 1945, becoming involved in the demobilization and re-establishment of the Army Nurse Corps, graduating from the University of Minnesota summa cum laude in June 1949, serving as director of the department of nursing at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, in 1953, as chief nurse at Orleans, France, until May 1956, chief nurse at the Fort Eustis, Va., Army Hospital until May 1957, assistant chief of nursing at Fort Ord, Calif., from January 1959 to June 1960, at which time she chose to retire from the U.S. Nurse Corps
      In retirement, she was busy - having never married because the Corps required her to remain single and because the Army pilot she was reported to have loved was killed in battle - returning to the Philippines in 1977 to tour and receive awards for her valor.
      It was noted in the book that "she was a life member of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, a life member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the Retired Officers' Association, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, the Paul Bunyan Arboretum and the Crow Wing County Historical Society. In addition, she was an honorary member of the U.S. Submarine Squadron and Alpha Charter 23 Order of the Eastern Star."
      McKay died Jan. 15, 1988, at the University of Minnesota Hospital while undergoing a second heart surgery. The carillon bells of the Crow Wing County Courthouse, which she'd worked to restore - as they were dedicated to the 194th Tank Battalion and "those incredibly brave men from Brainerd in the Bataan Death March" - tolled for her on Wednesday, Jan. 20, as she was laid to rest with veteran's honors on a snowy day in the Scotland Cemetery outside the Richland Prairie Church. Two midshipmen cadets from the University of Minnesota played "Taps," echoing one another with "Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky, all is well, safely rest, God is nigh." Winter birds called across the snowscape as the cadets' commander read a poem from the Philippine War Memorial at Corregidor..."Sleep, my sons, your duty done, for freedom's light has come. Sleep the silent depths of the sea, in your bed of hallowed soil, until you hear at dawn the low, clear reveille of God." (Bluff Country Reader, Harmony, MN, 28 July 2010)

11 July 1960. A career of nursing service covering 24 years and ranging from Ft. Snelling, Minn., to base section 4 and 7 in Australia, came to a close with the retirement of Lt. Colonel Hortense E. McKay. Colonel McKay plans an immediate trip to her hometown, Brainerd. (This Was Brainerd, Brainerd Dispatch, 11 July 2000)

14 September 1970. Hortense McKay of Lake Hubert flew to Virginia for the retirement of the man who saved her life 28 years ago. He is Rear Admiral J. C. Dempsey, who commanded the U. S. sub that took McKay and 12 other nurses from Corregidor before it fell to the Japanese. (This Was Brainerd, Brainerd Dispatch, 14 September 2010)

17 July 1981. To Hortense McKay a promise is a promise — even if it's 40 years old. She claims the people of Brainerd made a commitment when they placed the carillon bells on the court house as a memorial to those who died on Bataan. Today those bells are silent - a broken promise. (This Was Brainerd, Brainerd Dispatch, 17 July 2011)

            Camp Ripley to Name Medical
            Training Center after WWII Nurse

      The Minnesota National Guard is naming a medical training center in honor of a hero Minnesotan Army nurse.
      The newly constructed Medical Simulation Training Center at Camp Ripley will be christened "LTC Hortense E. McKay MSTC" at 9:30 a. m., Oct. 4, a National Guard release said.
      Lt. Col. Hortense E. McKay, 1910-1988, was a WWII veteran with ties to the Brainerd area. She served in the Philippines during the Japanese invasion, avoiding captivity by escaping from the island of Corregidor on a submarine just days before it fell. She later returned to the Philippines to help care for nurses who had been prisoners but were liberated. (Brainerd Dispatch, 01 October 2015, p. A3, c. 2)

Congressional Gold Medal to be Awarded.

      In February 1941, about the same timer as company A, 194th Tank Battalion departed for training, US Army Nurses Corps 2LT Hortense McKay, raised on Minnesota farmland in the early 1900s, stepped off her transport to serve at America's Tropical outpost, the Philippine Islands. Less than 2 years into her US Army career, she became an Army staff nurse at Fort Stotsenburg, America's garrison protecting its projection of power into the Far Southwest Pacific, next door to the Empire of Japan.
      2LT McKay and approximately 30 men from the 194th had attended school in Brainerd during portions of the prior 15 years. Their fates were to be participants in the first American land and tank battles of World War II, the 194th fighting and 2LT McKay nursing 194th casualties.
      History would enshrine their stubborn defense of democracy, in the chaotic days and months following the almost simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, as determinative in the restoration of fighting capacity in the grievously injured, but ultimately victorious, America.
      "Small and dark with sparkling eyes, in all her words and deeds precise; then to this just add her name, you'll find she's Scotch and not so tame."
      Prophetically, McKay was born at home on the family farm near Harmony, Minnesota. When the world experienced a deadly flu epidemic just after World War I, the entire McKay family was affected, but not McKay and a sister, until the last, causing the two sisters to care for the entire family, an experience which resonated through her life. This was not "playing nurse," but planning to become one, then doing it.
      After the McKay family moved to rural Brainerd and McKay graduated from Brainerd High School, she attended the then St. Cloud Teacher's College, now St. Cloud State University. The Great Depression gripped American life and McKay took her first step into public service, teaching for a year at a Crow Wing County school. The following year McKay was accepted into the prestigious University of Minnesota School of Nursing. From the outset, she was "in the field," including the Glen Lake Tuberculosis Sanitarium. After graduation, she worked at another tuberculosis sanitarium, "TB" running rampantly in the years of the Depression. Her course was set: McKay worked for the federal public health service in the South, and then in Galveston, Texas, a somewhat tropical setting soon to be intensely experienced in the Philippines.
      When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, McKay became 2LT McKay, transferring to the Army Nurses Corps. A year and a half later, 2LT McKay was in the Philippines; several months later the men of the 194th Tank Battalion arrived. During the brief interlude before Japan attacked, 2LT McKay encountered men from the 194th, perhaps including SGT Herbert Strobel, killed in combat shortly after Japan's initial attack, Julius St. John Knudsen, still MIA, and Walter Straka, who became the "last man standing" of the repatriated 194th, now all holders of the Congressional Gold Medal.
      2LT McKay, and many others, including Washington, D.C., knew of the present dangers of her post, and the known, nearby indicators of great risk. After combat commenced, 2LT McKay was pushed deeper into the Bataan jungle in support of America's tenacious fighting retreat, and supplies of all types, including food and medicine, disappeared. What was left was less than the proverbial "a wing and a prayer." No wings - only prayer for the devout 2LT McKay.
      "Air raid sirens continued to shriek through our (hospital) wards. The planes began to descend in droves. Now it was sheer terror for all of us. The bombing was followed by strafing, all devastating and horrible.
      No one was prepared for the volume and rapid accumulation of wounded, dying and dead, men literally dying in front of her. And so it was, on Christmas Eve, with the shortest of notice, 2LT McKay and her nursing colleagues we're ordered immediately to evacuate to Corregidor, a fortified island at the entrance to Manila Bay.
      Leaving all behind, she served on "The Rock" for several weeks, but in late January 1942 she returned to Bataan, by rowboat, to staff a field hospital in the jungle. Snakes, large rats, cobra, only rain water to drink, a vicious heat, advancing starvation, mounting casualties, far exceeding this basic hospital's capacity, and nonexistent sanitary human waste disposal: In this environment, insect and contaminated water spread deadly diseases without medications to defend against them.
      The end was near.
      All nurses were ordered back to Corregidor, departure to be in darkness, April 8, 1942. In the Bataan jungle, with combat surrounding them, the nurses made the beach, and made Corregidor at dawn, April 9. On that day, the 194th and all allies were ordered by their command to surrender, the signal to do so being "CRASH." And they did. The nurses evacuated to Corregidor left behind countless sick and wounded, and along with earlier evacuations, including those which left some 80 nurses in Japanese captivity, these retreats from nursing created emotional wounds carried by McKay to her grave 46 years later.
      "It was a death defying journey, the most frightening of my entire life."
      Three weeks later, 2LT McKay and a dozen other women, the last Americans to escape in order to serve again, were spirited off Corregidor by the submarine USS Spearfish. Corregidor surrendered two days later. If they survived Japanese captivity, then the tens of thousands of POWs, including many Army nurses, did not experience freedom for the next almost 4 years, and instead endured - or died from from - unspeakable hardships.
      LT McKay and 26 other women traveled by a small boat, in complete darkness, through Japanese minefields, to the Spearfish 3 miles off Corregidor. The then seriously overcrowded Spearfish immediately went to the bottom, in strict silence, prolonged, before attempting escape. The Spearfish commander was a junior officer who survived the war and invited then LTC (ret) McKay to to his retirement as a rear admiral twice decorated with the Navy Cross for his WWII service. She was there for him, as he had been there for her.
      The Spearfish's route was mostly under enemy controlled waters, for 17 days to Australia. Conditions on the sub were unbearable, but were borne with dignity by all, including the submariners, one of whom anonymously wrote a poem. "What Women Can Do to a Submarine Crew," which ended with "I'm trying to say in all these verses, we brought aboard some pretty nurses on that eventful day in May when we were out Corregidor way."
      "I still had no idea of the extent and horror inflicted upon our sick and starving soldiers in the long Death March at Bataan."
      In Australia, now 1LT McKay was given the option of returning to America or staying and carrying on. Being a McKay, she chose the latter, both with nursing itself and then, also, the start of a "second career," nursing administration. As 1LT McKay was about to leave for the battle zone of New Guinea, she received a call from her brother, a sailor, who was "in town" and briefly saw him before she departed.
      She was to see him again during their Pacific Theatre service, he survived the war and in time, assisted in arrangements for LTC (ret) McKay's funeral. In New Guinea, now CPT McKay also met WAC Army CPT Eleanor Nolan, a Brainerd native who attended high school for a time with CPT McKay. The tenor of war was changing, and from New Guinea, CPT McKay was about to return to the Philippines, once again a lethal battleground as America struck back.
      MAJ McKay was now Chief Nurse McKay, in charge of nursing in a Leyte battlefield hospital. Patients represented the spectrum of casualties, including psychiatric, contagion, liberated Army POWs, US Army Nurses Corps POWs liberated through combat extractions by special US Army elements, and Japanese POWs. A temporary assignment in Manila took her, hauntingly, to the hospital she served in at the moment of attack years earlier. With nursing personnel transferring in from ceased hostilities in Europe, and nursing reinforcements from America, it was time to go home.
      During those horrible hours of jungle warfare, we attempted to put aside self and self-piity and substitute love for our fellow man. And in reply, a whispered "thank you" from a very sick soldier, or a grateful look from the eyes of one dying, was all the appreciation and love we nurses ever wanted."
.      In peace, MAJ McKay turned to significant lead positions in the post-war Army Nurses Corps, principally work intended to modernize Army nursing based on WWII experiences, which then were used in new combat environments in Asia; Head Nurse in the Army's 12 state Chicago zone, a Nursing Education degree from the University of Minnesota, Director of Nursing, Medical Field Services School, Fort Sam Houston, first US Army nurse assigned to conduct courses and classes, Chief Nurse of all US Army hospitals in Europe, all of this for 15 years after the end of WWII. At Army retirement as LTC McKay, her rank was among the very highest ranks possible in the US Army Nurses Corps.
      "Retirement" was not retirement for citizen McKay, who continued in service to others through numerous civic organizations, not just as a "member of," but in manual labor volunteer roles, such as scrubbing the ancient steps of Brainerd's Carnegie Library in a cold spring rain, raking pine needles in the Paul Bunyan Arboretum, sewing costumes for college theatre productions, "back office" work for local chapters of the American Association of University Women and the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, active efforts to restore Brainerd's carillon bells dedicated to Brainerd's "Boys of Bataan" for their sacrifices in WWII, and her supportive membership in the Crow Wing County Historical Society following one of her last Army Nurses Corps responsibilities, fittingly as the first Army nurse assigned to the Historical Writing Section of the Nurses Corps Historical Unit, gathering materials for the seminal "Army Nurses Corps History from 1901 - 1958."
      Hortense McKay's formal honors are legion, including select membership as an Angel of Bataan and Corregidor and related recognitions listed on several statues on Bataan, including one along the Bataan Death March route, as a treasured honorary member of both the Viking Submarine Squadron and the US Submarine Veterans of WWII, the Army's Bronze Star, for defense of the Philippines, and a medical simulation training center in her name at Camp Ripley, a national military training facility.
      Now, 35 years after her passing, America recognizes the extraordinary LTC McKay by its awarding to her the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions, which the United States Congress can grant, for LTC McKay's enduring contributions to life in the ferocious battleground of WWII's Philippines.
      The light from the beacon that was Hortense McKay shown projected across most of the world, from her humble roots in southern Minnesota and upbringing and education in central Minnesota, through a life lived in service to others in both war and peace. LTC McKay was never not a nurse, in name or in deed, persevering in that high calling to her very end.
      There was a young girl, in the fields of Harmony, intently staring into a camera pointed at her while she lovingly cradled wildflowers close to her. Much can be learned about the public servant this little girl was to become by returning her level gaze: Determination, intelligence, curiosity and a readiness to be "not so tame" when life required a heroic response.
      Then there was a young Army nurse, stepping into history 8,000 miles away from Harmony, carrying her Bible until her perilous escape from the assault on Corregidor, but nonetheless escaping with it and with her McKay attributes in her very being through all that followed, including her grace filled retirement.
      When death finally came to that young girl from Harmony, the carillon bells she helped restore to life to honor the men of the 194th Tank Battalion who she served alongside in the Philippines, bells which never rang for her in life, now, when she departed the soaring arches of Brainerd's First Presbyterian, the historic Church of Scotland, for the last time, on her last journey, those same bells rang out for her, only. Today, it is the men she nursed and comforted, and Hortense McKay, an Angel of Bataan, for whom the bells toll.
      After war and strife, disease and death, horror and salvation, unspeakable tragedy and unimaginable miracles, time ended for that young girl from the fields of Harmony, where it began, but now on the other side of the century: Beside a white clapboard Presbyterian church, likely where Hortense McKay had been baptized almost 80 years earlier, not alone in the Scottish Cemetery there, but with her parents, again, in Harmony.
      Quoted material is from the Brainonian, yearbook of Brainerd Public Schools or from Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered, by Maxine Russell (Bang Printing, 1988), which includes chapters about five 194th soldiers and the Bataan Death March. Jungle Angelis available at the Minnesota Military Museum, Camp Ripley, and the Crow Wing County Historical Society, which also provided photographs seen in this publication. (Brainerd Dispatch Supplement,) 04 March 2023.

'A LADY, A CITIZEN, A NURSE AND A FRIEND'

      A large black and white photo of a young woman in an Army uniform looked out upon the faces of civilians and military personnel alike who filled Brainerd's Gichi-ziibi Center for the Arts Saturday, March 25.
      The face of Lt. Col. Hortense McKay, serious but with the hint of a smile, hung above the stage, as the day's various speakers celebrated the life and legacy of a local hero.
      Born on a rural Minnesota farm in 1910, McKay graduated from Washing High School in Brainerd in 1927 and went on to serve her country in World War II. Now, almost 80 years after the end of the global conflict, and 35 years since McKay was laid to rest in 1988, her name enters the history books alongside the likes of George Washington, Thomas Edison, Frank Sinatra, Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks.
      Those are some of the famous recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest expression of national appreciation bestowed by the U. S. Congress.
      McKay is the latest recipient, honored posthumously for her service with the U. S. Army Nurse Corps in the Philippines during the 1940s, and fittingly during Women's History Month.
      McKay's niece Patricia McKay Broback and nephews Richard and John McKay accepted the award on behalf of their aunt.
      "It's a great honor. Our family's very proud of her. She was a great woman; she was a great example. She was a fabulous aunt to have," Broback said before Saturday's ceremony. "Just the person she was and the way that she treated us meant the world to us. It helped shape the people we are today."

The jungle angel
      After high school, McKay attended St. Cloud State Teachers College and the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. She worked in the Deerwood Sanitarium for a time and went on to do public health work briefly in Louisville, Kentucky, before entering the U. S. Army Nurse Corps in 1939.
      "The need for nurses was great, the opportunity for advancement was obvious, and of course I believed in human justice," McKay recounted in her 1988 memoir, "The Jungle Angel: Bataan Remembered."
      Around the same time the Company A, 194th Tank Battalion left Brainerd in February 1942 for training, McKay, too, stepped into the line of duty, eventually finding herself in the jungles of Bataan on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.
      She arrived in the Philippines in 1941, stationed at Fort Stotsenburg, next to Clark Field. There, she was one of 71 nurses overwhelmed with casualties after the first bombing attack by the Japanese.
      Later that year, she was evacuated to the island of Corregidor before it fell and cared for the wounded in the Malinta railroad tunnel hospital. McKay was transferred to Hospital 2 in Bataan in early 1942. Working at the lesser equipped of the two hospitals in Bataan, with all accommodations outdoors, McKay cared for sick and wounded soldiers, fighting an extremely limited supply of medicine and other equipment, while battling excessive heat, advancing starvation and unhygienic facilities. Staff and patients alike were plagued with diesease-carrrying insects and contaminated water. Many nurses came down with the same afflictions for which they treated their patients.
      McKay and her team became known as the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor, so named for their brave and exemplary service in the face of hardship.
      "The art of nursing, I thought, is far more than medicine," McKay wrote in her memoir. "It is a few words of encouragement, the squeeze of a hand, a refreshing bed bath and a kind glance. During those horrible hours of jungle warfare, we attempted to put aside self and self pity and substitute love for our fellow men, and in reply, a whispered 'thank you' from a very sick soldier, a grateful look from the eyes of one dying, was all the appreciation and love we nurses ever wanted."
      The quote from McKay's book was recounted Saturday in a short film scripted, directed and produced by Brainerd High School senior Cadence Porisch. "The Meaning of Compassion" took viewers briefly through McKay's life, recounting the horrors of her service and her life of giving.
      McKay and her fellow nurses were ordered back to Corregidor April 8, 1942, just one day before the fall of Bataan and the ensuing Bataan Death March, during which hundreds of American soldiers died.
      Three weeks later, McKay was evacuated on the USS Spearfish submarine to Australia — a hot, cramped 17-day journey. Once in Australia, she was given the option to return home to the U. S. or continue serving.
      McKay chose the latter.
      She carried on in New Guinea for a time before returning to the Philippines. McKay served as chief nurse, in charge of nursing in a Leyte battlefield hospital, where she cared for a broad spectrum of patients, many liberated prisoners of war.
      Then in 1945, with nursing personnel transferring in from ceased hostilities in Europe and nursing reeinforcements from the U. S., McKay finally got to return home.
      Military women including Col. Hope Williamson-Younce and Capt. Rachel Cochran spoke Saturday of McKay's legacy and what it means to them and to their professions.
      Quoting Booker T. Washington, who said, "Success always leaves footprints," Williamson-Younce, interim corps chief of the Army Nurse Corps reflected upon McKay's success.
      For over a century, the Army nurse Corps has been at the forefront of military medicine, providing care to our service members in both war and peace. The footprints that Lt. Col. McKay left are enduring," Williamson-Younce said. "Her servant leadership, and that of the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor, is not lost on the 7,000 active duty reserve, National Guard and civilian nurses currently serving around the globe. Army medicine is Army strong."
      Cochran, a battalion physician assistant with the Minnesota National Guard and decorated combat veteran, doesn't believe she'd be where she is today without women like McKay.
      "I stand before you today in 2023 as a woman in the military, serving in a combat unit full of tankers and infantrymen," Cochran said. "One hundred years ago, however, this would have been unheard of. I find this ironic because, despite the fact that women across history have been serving in combat environments for centuries — primarily as nurses — it wasn't until 10 years ago that the ban of women serving specifically in combat roles was lifted. I believe it was Col. McKay and women like her who paved the way for me to be able to serve my country the way I do in the 21st century."

A life of service
      In peacetime, McKay worked to reorganize the Army Nurse Corps and modernize Army nursing based on her WWII experiences. She later earned a nursing education degree from the University of Minnesota and became director of nursing at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.
      Outside of work, she was known affectionately among her family members as Annie H., often incomprehensible to her relatives.
      "She was a complete and multifaceted person," Broback said choking up when she first started talking about her aunt. Her courage, fortitude and practical approach to life defined the woman we knew. As unique as Hortense's life was, so are our many memories."
      Strict and dedicated yet appearing magical through her world travels, McKay was the relative from whom her family anxiously awaited calls on holidays, excited to learn where in the world she'd be calling from this time.
      She took a strong interest in her nieces and nephews, gifting them, Broback said, with her lifelong love of learning.
      "And to quote my cousin Ann," Broback concluded, "'Hortense wasn't just our aunt, who we revered at times, but a very respected woman for all her time.'"
      McKay retired from the Army in 1960 but remained an active member of her community, known for scrubbing the steps at the old Carnegie Library in Brainerd, raking pine needles at the Northland Arboretum, sewing costumes for college theater productions and volunteering with the Crow Wing County Historical Society.
      She earned the Bronze Star for her work during WWII and in 2015 became the first female soldier to have a building named after her at Camp Ripley, when the Minnesota National Guard dedicated its combat medical training center to her.
      McKay died Jan. 15, 1988, while undergoing a second heart surgery at the University of Minnesota Hospital.
      And now her legacy lives on.
      "Col. Hortense McKay set a precedent that is now being written in the pages of history that women can do the hard things set before them," Cochran said.
      She lived out who God meant for her to be and set fire to the world's previous expectations of what a woman can do."
      The full Congressional Gold Medal ceremony is available at: http://youtube.com/live/2fA_IDEpsFw?feature=share. (Brainerd Dispatch, 29 March 2023)