A Navy nurse's fortitude, grit tided her over during 3-year-captivity

With two decades of service, Navy nurse Laura Cobb was stationed in the Philippines at Canacao Naval Hospital. A brief yet riveting tour on Guam at the time of a major typhoon in 1940 primed her for the tumultuous years ahead.

As the Japanese began the relentless bombing  of American military installations in the  Philippines, following the surprise Pearl Harbor attack, Cobb and her fellow nurses swiftly relocated the casualties to Sternberg Army Hospital in Manila, and later to a makeshift hospital on the campus of St. Scholarstica’s College.

With the defense of Manila a lost cause, General MacArthur’s evacuation order saw a majority of the servicemen temporarily decamping for Corregidor except for the 11 Navy nurses who were left behind in the ensuing chaos as Manila burned.

Despite this, Cobb and her fellow Navy nurses rose to the occasion, continued providing care to the wounded, until their capture and transfer to the internment camp on the campus of the University of Santo Tomas.

Collaborating with Dr. Charles Leach, Cobb and the band of Navy nurses set up a hospital to care for the vulnerable patients in the camp.

With swelling population and disintegrating conditions, it became exigent to move 800 men to another camp in Los Baños, Laguna, where their continued collaboration with Dr. Leach ensured the continuity of care. They set up a 25-bed makeshift hospital which they administered until their liberation on Feb. 23, 1945.

[It must be noted that in 1942, with the fall of Corregidor and Bataan, the captured Army nurses were also relocated to Santo Tomas. In the wake of Navy nurses’ departure, the Santo Tomas camp was left in the care of the Army nurses.]

After the war, Cobb’s resolute leadership did not go unnoticed as she received a Bronze Star. There were attempts at giving her a grander recognition but did not gather enough steam to see fruition.

Even long after her retirement in 1947, Cobb continued to receive tributes for her valiant efforts during WWII. She and the rest of the nurses immortalized in Elizabeth Norman’s “We Band of Angels” shone a spotlight on the pivotal roles women played, and the resilience they showed.