World Battlefronts, PHILIPPINES: Not Japs Mosquitoes

The costliest American shortage in the Battle of Bataan was revealed last week: quinine (see p. 71). There was no more medicine to fight malaria, and in the long run malaria put more soldiers out of action than the Jap.

Food was running out and men were getting leaner on a diet of carabao (water buffalo), cavalry horses and mules, but they stayed on their feet and fought until the burning fever of malaria laid them out. Thousands of prostrated fighting men jammed the field hospitals. Others, listless, weary and sometimes out of their heads hung on with their outfits where they were more liabilities than assets.

The men needed only two little quinine pills a day-but there weren’t two pills apiece to give them.