Purple Heart, Red Cross, and Green Arrows

Chapter 3: Mistaken Identity

Little Baguio, Bataan

April 7, 1942

Chaos and pandemonium.

All hell broke loose in the hospital as medical personnel and patients – military and civilian alike – shrieked and screamed in terror as bombs exploded everywhere. Japanese bombing and artillery fire had been pounding throughout the peninsula in the last five days as the enemy advanced, pushing the combined forces of the Americans and Filipinos towards Manila Bay, where they'd been geographically trapped and psychologically demoralized. Japanese bombers had already dropped about 100 tons of explosives on the military installations, and the defenders were sustaining heavy damage everywhere. Destruction was expected in battle, but the frantic hospital staff and fearful patients could not believe that their enemies were that cruel and merciless to target a civilian medical installation.

The lobby of the hospital was already demolished, and the flames were spreading inwards fast, threatening to consume the portion of the building where most of the medical supplies and hospital records were kept. Smoke filled the corridors, and the smell of death was in the air. Patients who were ambulatory were running aimlessly, scrambling in different directions to flee the wreckage, while those who were too weak, sick, or injured to save themselves were being evacuated by the remaining medical staff who had survived the first major blast and who still had the presence of mind to carry out their duties.

Oliver jumped out of the army truck and ran towards the burning building, but there was no way to enter through the main entrance with all the smoke and debris blocking the way. He tried the east entrance, but the gate was locked from the inside. He looked around and spotted a medical table with wheels. He grabbed it and used it to smash a large glass window near the locked gate. He then entered into the building through the window, sustaining a gash on his forearm from the sharp glass edges in doing so.

"Felicity!" he yelled. "Felicity Smoak!" Where could she be, he wondered. He hoped against all hope that she had not been among those lying bloody and lifeless in the atrium that he had just passed. There was no way to tell, as the flames kept him from coming any closer.

He ran from one hallway to another, desperately calling out the name of the woman he loved. Two times he grabbed blonde-haired women in nurse's uniforms by the shoulder from behind by mistake, thinking it was her. Felicity was nowhere to be found. "Felicity!" he cried out in vain. He was losing hope by the second.

"Lieutenant!" a stranger suddenly called out to him from behind. He turned around to find a Filipino woman with a bleeding cut on her forehead. She looked like she was one of the medical staff. "Sir, last I saw Nurse Smoak, she was helping Dr. Barry Allen evacuate an injured Filipino officer. They were supposed to get on an army truck headed for Corregidor. If you hurry, you might still catch them at the back way," the short, stout woman said. Oliver simply nodded in thanks and hurried to the hospital's rear exit.

He was almost there, just a few paces away from the doorway when – Bam!

A thunderous explosion rocked the entire facility. A bomb had been dropped from the sky, and it detonated at the heart of the hospital building.