Allan R. Kenward's tense wartime drama follows a group of American Army nurses and volunteer aides stationed on the Bataan peninsula in the harrowing early months of World War II, as Japanese forces close in and the fall of the Philippines becomes increasingly inevitable. Confined largely to their jungle dugout, the women come from strikingly different backgrounds and temperaments, from hardened professionals to sheltered debutantes, and their close quarters expose both friction and deep loyalty as they cope with exhaustion, fear, and mounting casualties. Rather than focusing on combat itself, the play centers on the psychological toll of waiting under siege, the gallows humor the women use to cope, and the quiet acts of courage required simply to keep functioning as nurses in an impossible situation. Based on real accounts of the nurses who served at Bataan and Corregidor, the drama was notable for centering women's wartime experience at a time when most theatrical treatments of the war focused on soldiers in combat. Its unflinching portrayal of fear and sacrifice under siege gave it considerable emotional power for audiences watching the war unfold in real time.

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