Following the end of World War II, there was a massive demobilization of American military forces, including the women’s services. No longer a military necessity, the WACs, WAVES, Women Marines, SPARs, and Air WACs were reduced to skeleton strength.
On 12 June 1948, Congress passed the Women’s Armed Forces Integration Act (PL 625) that admitted women into the regular and reserve of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, and accorded a permanent role for women in the military—with full rank and privileges. Simultaneously, however, it placed a cap on enlistments (2 percent of the active duty force) and promotions, limiting women to the rank of lieutenant colonel or commander. In addition, women were specifically excluded from combat.1
During that same period, there was another significant change occurring. The end of World War II brought about another significant change that would affect the military. The alliance of convenience between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had joined forces to defeat the Axis powers of Germany and Italy, ended with the war. With the defeat of national Socialism, both nations were free to return to their more traditional roles of competition and mistrust. The situation was further complicated by the emergence of a second Communist nation on mainland China in early 1949.
The resulting competition for influence and control in the postwar world would become known as the Cold War. The first arena for a military contest between Communism and democracy was in Korea. In the years following World War II, Korea was 450 miles long and 160 miles wide, bordered by the Korean strait, the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. At the Cairo Conference in 1943, during World War II, Korea, which had been occupied by the Japanese for thirty-five years, had been promised independence but instead was provisionally divided in half following its liberation in 1945. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a socialist dictatorship, under Kim Il Sung occupied the area north of the 38th parallel and the Republic of Korea, a right-wing republic under Syngman Rhee was south of the 38th parallel.
Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea, and there was a continuing series of border incidents between North and South Korean forces. In 1948, both the Soviet Union and the United States withdrew troops from Korea. By 1950, there were between one hundred fifty thousand and two hundred thousand Soviet-trained troops in the north equipped with Soviet T-34 tanks and Yak fighter planes compared to an ill-equipped army of one hundred thousand in the south (supported by a small group of American military advisors).2
On 25 June 1950, North Korea, with the knowledge and support of the Soviet Union, launched a full-scale invasion across the 38th parallel into South Korea. The international response was rapid. On 27 June, President Harry Truman requested and received permission for military intervention in Korea, and ordered U.S. air and naval forces to the area, deploying the 7th Fleet to the Sea of Japan, and placing all American forces under the command of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. On the same day, the United Nations approved a resolution in support of the Republic of Korea. In addition to the United States, fifteen countries agreed to send combat troops and another five countries3 agreed to provide medical support. It was the first time a multinational force had been constituted to repel Communist aggression.4
1. Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
2. Savada, Andrea Matles, editor. The Korean War (1950–1953). The Library of Congress Country Studies–North Korea, Washington: The Library of Congress, Federal Research Division, Call #DS932 N662: US Government Printing Office, 1994.
3. Walker, Jack D. “A Brief Account of the Korean War.” Korean War Educator. http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/brief/brief_account_of_the_korean_war.htm
4. The Korean War in Brief. Office of Public Affairs, Veterans Administration, June 2000 (Fact Sheet); and Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War. New York: Random House, 1988.
Women in the newly formed U.S. Air Force served in Korea as flight nurses aboard air evacuation flights. An estimated fifty air nurses served during the war, and most came from backgrounds similar to Lt. Margaret Fae Perry, USAF.
Already a nurse in February 1950 when she enlisted in the USAF to further her education and perhaps travel, she arrived for training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, shortly after the start of the Korean War in June 1950.
After her commission as a second lieutenant, she applied for and was accepted to military flight school. She reported to Montgomery, Alabama, in November for a six-week course of training in air evacuation of wounded personnel, after which she was assigned to the 1453 Squadron at Hickam AFB, Hawaii.
She flew numerous air evacuation flights from Korea to Guam, Japan, Hawaii, and the mainland United States, participating in two major campaigns, the Summer Campaign of 1952, and Third Korean Winter Campaign. She earned an Air Medal as well as campaign and service medals, including the Korean and United Nations Service Medal.
On 22 December 1952, she boarded a C-47 on her last evacuation mission before rotating home for discharge. Due to confusion in takeoff instructions, her plane collided with an F-80C fighter, also cleared for takeoff. The collision resulted in an explosion that killed personnel aboard both aircraft, including Perry and fellow air nurse Virginia May McClure.
The Margaret Fae Perry Scholarship at the West Virginia University School of Nursing was created to honor her memory.1
One other USAF nurse, Capt. Vera Brown, died when the evacuation flight she was on crashed in the Kwajalein Islands after taking off from Ashiya AFB, Japan, on 26 September 1950. In addition to Brown, nineteen others died in the crash.
1. Stump, Shelly. “Flight Nurse Honored with Scholarship Fund.” Morgantown, WVa., West Virginia University Magazine, Vol. 27, Number 1, Spring, 2004.
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Photo courtesy of The Women’s Memorial
Margaret Brosmer stood on deck of the USS James O’ Hara, which was carrying her west across the Pacific, and listened to the sound of gunfire. It was a clear morning in early August 1950, and some of the officers were giving the nurses of the 1st MASH unofficial training in the use of the .45 automatic pistol. This served to remind Brosmer that she was en route to a combat zone.1
Brosmer’s background was similar to that of many of the women who served during the Korean War. Born into a family of modest means in Columbus, Ohio, on 23 August 1922, she was the middle child of five. After graduating from Rosary High School, she attended St. Elizabeth Nursing School in Dayton, Ohio, and enrolled in the Cadet Nurse Corps, which provided free training—paid for by the government—to help alleviate a nationwide nursing shortage.
Brosmer enlisted in the Army Reserve in March 1949 because she wanted to earn a living, use her training, and because she thought it would be fun. She was placed on extended active duty on 9 November 1949, and sent to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for basic training, after which she was assigned to Walter Reed Hospital in D.C. On 20 July 1950, Brosmer was alerted for duty with the FEC and was ordered to report to Fort Lewis, Washington, where she was assigned to the newly formed 1st MASH. The FEC sailed from the port of Olympia aboard the USS James O’Hara on 4 August.2
Although the O’Hara was scheduled to land at Wonsan Harbor in Korea, the discovery that the harbor had been armed with more than two thousand mines caused the ship to be diverted to Yokohama, Japan, where they docked on 11 August. Brosmer recalled: “We landed in Yokohama. We were there for just about a month, and worked with the nurses at the [field] hospital. We worked with them . . . while they tried to decide what to do with us. In the meantime, MacArthur was planning the Inchon landing.”3
Gen. Walton Walker’s Eighth Army had withdrawn behind the Naktong River and withstood counterattacks on 5 and 31 August. By 12 September, North Korean forces were exhausted. MacArthur’s plan was to land behind the enemy at Inchon and disrupt their operations by trapping the North Koreans between his forces, cutting them off from the north.
In a brilliant maneuver, MacArthur sent the X Corps ashore at Inchon and up the western coast of Korea on 15 September 1950. X Corps consisted of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division and the Marine 1st Division, and it moved to cut the enemy’s lines of supply and communication to the forces besieging the Naktong Perimeter to the south, forcing North Koreans to withdraw in panicked disorder. While X Corps pressed to recapture Seoul, South Korea’s capital city, the Eighth U.S. Army and ROK forces broke out of the Naktong Perimeter and linked up with X Corps near Osan on 26 September.4
With the landing at Inchon, the 1st MASH finally had a mission, as the unit was selected to support X Corps and they loaded aboard the USS Gen. W.A. Mann for transportation to Korea. They sailed from Japan on 23 September, and arrived at the docks of Inchon on 26 September. “We went into Inchon ten days after the Marines landed. We went in just like they did. We went in on the high tide, and we went over the side of the ship, down rope ladders and into the LCM [landing craft] and into the dock. When we got there, things were pretty much in hand, because that [the landing] was such a surprise, and the Koreans just turned tail and left fast.”
Because of the success of the landing, there were very few American casualties, so the majority of the medics time was spent treating North Korean POWs and Korean civilians. By 4 October, the 1st MASH was working with nurses of the 4th Field Hospital in Seoul, which had been liberated on 28 September. Seoul, located at the intersection of most major highways and railroads in South Korea, would remain a target, and change hands several times during the war.5
Following up with his success at Inchon, MacArthur planned a second amphibious landing, this time farther north on the eastern coast, at Wonsan. On 7 October, elements of the Eighth Army captured the northern capital of Pyongyang, and the UN passed a resolution changing the aim of the war from saving South Korea to the unification of Korea. That same day, the 1st MASH was ordered back to Inchon, where they joined a convoy of the 7th Medical Regiment conveying wounded south to Pusan.
On 7 October, the 1st MASH departed Inchon for the eight-hundred-mile trip to Pusan. Brosmer recalled: “It was quite a long trip, about ninety-six hours, with nothing but dirt roads. It was dry, and the dust was so bad we took the masks we wore in the operating room and wet them down . . . because we couldn’t breathe. On the way down, we had to go down the canyons and there were hills on both sides. . . . We nurses traveled in ambulances. There were thirteen of us. . . . We put six (nurses) in one ambulance, seven in another.”6
The convoy stayed overnight at An Yan Ni, leaving there the morning of 8 October and proceeding along the Suwon-Taegu Highway south toward Pusan. On the morning of 9–10 October, the convoy was ambushed south of Chungju.
The Chief Nurse, Capt. (later Maj.) Eunice Coleman, USA remembered: “It was three in the morning when we were ambushed. We were riding in an ambulance and had to jump for the ditch. The whole sky seemed to be on fire, lit up by gunfire and burning vehicles. The shooting lasted until daybreak. At 7:00 AM our hospital was already working by the roadside.”7
Brosmer, in the second ambulance, recalled she slept through a good part of the ambush. “Someone came banging on the back door of the ambulance and said, ‘Get out! Get out of there. They’re shooting at us. Get out in the ditch.’ Well, the thing was over by this time and the girls in the ambulance in front of us were all out in the ditch—cold, wet, and gooey. And here we were, in there . . . asleeping away. They’d been out there most of the night. They were shooting at us pretty good, I guess, but they didn’t get to us, because they were shooting at them. We were oblivious to all of this, so we just slept through the whole thing. From that point on, they called us the ‘Lucky Thirteen’.”8
With eight fatalities and numerous casualties, including several serious head and chest wounds, the convoy continued on to the nearest field hospital, at Taejon. After leaving the wounded at the field hospital, the 1st MASH proceeded to Pusan, arriving on 10 October. They worked in a POW hospital under the control of the 64th Field Hospital for about a week before leaving Pusan and boarding the transport USS Gen. E. D. Patrick on 16 October in preparation for traveling north with X Corps for the landing at Iwon on the northeastern coast.
After being allowed to disembark on 25 October to attend a Bob Hope Show in Pusan, they reboarded the ship and sailed from Pusan Harbor on 29 October bound for North Korea. They dropped anchor off Iwon on 30 October. The landing was delayed when it was discovered the harbor was heavily mined, and it wasn’t until 4 November that the nurses touched dry land. They traveled by convoy, arriving in Riwon the first night, and continuing on to Pukchong, where they set up the hospital and opened for business. There were plenty of customers.
Wonsan had fallen to the South Korean Army on 11 October, and the Eighth Army captured Pyongyang on the 19 October. The Marines landed at Wonsan on 20 October, and U.S. and ROK forces continued north unopposed.
The Lucky Thirteen. Courtesy of Margaret Brosmer
Unbeknownst to the American command, two hundred sixty thousand Chinese troops (CPV), at the request of Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, had crossed the Yalu River on 19 October in support of North Korean forces and were now massed along the front. On 24 October, replenished and resupplied, American forces advanced north. The following day, Communist forces counterattacked, first on the Eighth Army, and two days later on the X Corps in the mountains to the east.9
General Walker’s Eighth Army rapidly retreated from the Chongchon River south to Pyongyang. Before the month was over, the Eighth Army had fallen back nearly three hundred miles, and had air-evacuated all of its forward hospitals. Pyongyang fell to Communist forces on 5 December. The 8076th didn’t leave the city until 4 December, when the nurses were flown to Kimpo. The Eighth Army’s retreat exposed the flank of the 1st Marines, which didn’t receive orders to withdraw until it was almost too late.10
Encircled and trapped, the 1st Marines fought their way out of the Chosin Reservoir along narrow paths slick with ice in temperatures as low as 24 degrees below zero. The Chinese, in control of the high ground, peppered the retreating troops with machine gun and mortar fire, resulting in a high number of casualties.
“The men were ragged, their faces swollen and bleeding from the icy wind. A few were without hats, their ears blue from the cold. Others were barefoot because they couldn’t get their frostbitten feet into their shoepacs. Casualties were enormous, but the Marines stayed together in a column and struggled with their equipment, their wounded and their dead, all of whom were carried out.”11
From early November until 4 December, the 1st MASH was swamped with casualties. “We had three operating tables going constantly and had only two nights without operations. For the rest of the month, we had surgical operations around the clock.”12 Temperatures were so low that medical personnel had to chip ice out of the washbasins in order to scrub raw, red hands.
MASH units were located—by necessity—near the front lines, and were frequently on the move. Lt. Genevieve Connors of the 8055th recalled, “We went where the action was, either forward or backward depending on the front line’s location.”13
With the Communists close in pursuit of the retreating Marines, the hospital was ordered to withdraw to Pusan on 3 December. They left in convoy, and traveled eighty-six miles over icy mountain passes to arrive in Hamhung at 9:00 PM They proceeded to Hungham on 6 December and set up a hospital in an abandoned school.
“We had to leave Pukchong at twenty-minutes’ notice,” Major Coleman remembered. “It was an all-day ride down the mountain roads covered with frozen snow, edged by a steep precipice. We reached the Hungham perimeter on December 6th and found patients waiting for us. They were men of the 3rd and 7th Divisions, (1st) Marines and many Chinese prisoners of war. We were operating within an hour of our arrival.”14
The Chinese continued to advance on Hungham, prompting one of the greatest evacuations under fire in military history. On 11 December, the evacuation began, and by 24 December, Christmas Eve, the evacuation was complete. Two hundred thousand U.S. and ROK troops, and Korean civilians were safe. The last of the evacuees left under cover of naval bombardment.15
On 15 December, the 1st MASH loaded aboard LCMs and rode out to the USNS Fred C. Ainsworth, setting up an onboard hospital, along with the 121st Evacuation Hospital. The Ainsworth sailed from Hungham Harbor at 1:40 PM on 24 December, only after the last men were off the beach and aboard ships.
Brosmer witnessed the final hours from the deck of the Ainsworth: “The USS Missouri was sitting down about a mile from us, shooting those big sixteen-inchers right over our heads. . . . There were two cruisers, the St. Paul and the Minneapolis sitting right next to us. . . . It was just like the Fourth of July . . . and the Air Force was up there overhead, just bombing the heck out of them, keeping them back. . . . I think they finally got the last man off the beach at 2:00 PM on Christmas Eve. After they got the last man off the beach, the engineers blew up the harbor from one end to the other. What they couldn’t get aboard a ship was destroyed when they blew up the harbor. There was nothing left but dust.”16
Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgeway, the new Eighth Army Commander (after the death of General Walker in a jeep accident), initiated a series of offensives at the start of 1951; Operation Thunderbolt in January, Operations Round-up and Killer in February, Operation Ripper in March, and Operation Rugged in April.17
After landing at Pusan on 26 December, the 1st MASH left in convoy arriving at Chonju the following day, remaining there until after the new year. The unit moved to Andong on 24 January 1951, and then further north to Chechon on 3 February. At one point, the Chinese advanced to within three miles of the hospital.
“While we were in Chechon, patients came in by helicopter and ambulance. There were two planes and four pilots who did nothing but ferry patients from the front back to us. We were always fifteen hundred to two thousand yards from the front line. We could hear the fighting because we were that close. The key was to stay close so that the faster you could get them into surgery and taken care of, the more you could save.”18
In April, MacArthur was relieved of command, and the nurses of the “Lucky Thirteen” became eligible for rotation out of Korea. Brosmer recalled: “In mid-April they gave us nurses the choice of either staying with our units in Korea or going back to Japan and out of the combat zone. I didn’t have any desire to go back to Japan; I wanted to go home. If you stayed in Korea, you got points towards rotation back to the States, but if you returned to Japan, you would have to stay six more months, so I opted to stay in Korea.”
Brosmer spent her remaining time in Korea assigned to the 4th Field Hospital in Taegu until leaving Korea and rotating home on 20 May 1951. She sailed from Japan aboard the USNS Marine Phoenix and arrived to a hero’s welcome and parade on 25 August, one of the first seven nurses to return stateside from Korea. For Brosmer, the Korean War was over.
The character of the war itself was changing. By the summer of 1951, the dynamic advances and retreats that characterized the first year were replaced with a war more static in character, reminiscent of the World War I. The Chinese and North Koreans, suffering from heavy casualties as a result of UN offensives, were amenable to entering into an armistice, and formal truce talks began on 10 July 1951.
Brosmer remained in the Army and served another nineteen years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. She saw service overseas in Germany, Italy, and Puerto Rico, as well as in stateside postings as prestigious as West Point and Walter Reed Medical Center where she helped pioneer open-heart surgery. She retired at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on 31 August 1970 with twenty-one years of service.19
Brosmer currently lives in Southern California where she makes public appearances speaking about the Korean War. She is also one of the few female members of the “Chosin Few,” an elite organization of veterans of the Chosin Reservoir, who have affectionately dubbed her “Hot Lips,” referencing the fictional MASH operating room nurse, Maj. Margaret Houlihan, from the 1968 novel M*A*S*H* by Richard Hooker.20 Brosmer considers the movie and TV series “pretty accurate, except for all the hanky-panky.”
Having experienced firsthand the result of entering a war unprepared, she remains an advocate of a strong military.
1. Margaret Brosmer, interview by Scott Baron, 29 May 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial, Arlington, Va.
2. Ibid.
3. Strait, Sandy. What Was it Like in the Korean War. New York: Royal Fireworks Press, 1999.
4. Summers, Col. Harry G. The Korean War: A Fresh Perspective. Military History Magazine, April 1996.
5. Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
6. Margaret Brosmer, interview by Scott Baron, 29 May 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial Arlington, VA.
7. O’Connor, Rev. Patrick. “Catholic Nurse Describes Life on Korean Battlefield.” The New World (NCWC News Service), 16 February 1951.
8. Margaret Brosmer, interview by Scott Baron, 29 May 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial Arlington, VA.
9. Author. Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
10. Witt, Linda, Judith Bellafaire, Britta Granrud, & Mary Jo Binker. A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value: Servicewomen of the Korean War. Lebanon, N.H.: University of New England Press/Military Women’s Press, 2005, pp. 192–3.
11. Higgens, Marguerite. War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent. New York: Doubleday Books, 1951.
12. O’Connor, Rev. Patrick. “Catholic Nurse Describes Life on Korean Battlefield.” The New World (NCWC News Service), 16 February 1951.
13. Witt, Linda, Judith Bellafaire, Britta Granrud, & Mary Jo Binker. A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value: Servicewomen of the Korean War. Lebanon, N.H.: University of New England Press/Military Women’s Press, 2005, pp. 192–3.
14. O’Connor, Rev. Patrick. “Catholic Nurse Describes Life on Korean Battlefield.” The New World (NCWC News Service), 16 February 1951.
15. Clements, Glen. “Epic Hungham Evacuation Ends; 200,000 Taken Off Beachhead.” Pacific Stars and Stripes, 6(333); 16 December 1950.
16. Margaret Brosmer, interview by Scott Baron, 29 May 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial Arlington, VA.
17. Author. Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
18. Margaret Brosmer, interview by Scott Baron, 29 May 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial Arlington, VA.
19. Ibid.
20. Richard Hooker was a pseudonym for Richard Hornberger, who as a captain and surgeon for the 8055th MASH performed “Meatball Surgery” in Korea. The novel is based on his experiences.
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Photo courtesy of The Women’s Memorial
Many of the women who served in Korea from 1950 to 1953, were not serving in their first war. Many military nurses had served in harm’s way during World War II, although few had actually served at actual sites.
On 30 November 1951, as the Eighth Army prepared to withdraw from Pyongyang in the face of one hundred thousand Chinese and North Korean soldiers intent on recapturing the capital, nurses and medics of the 171st Evacuation Hospital scrambled to evacuate the sick and wounded.
Maj. Ruby Grace Bradley moved from ambulance to plane and back on the improvised landing strip as she supervised loading of the last of the wounded onto the plane. As chief nurse, she’d refused evacuation until the last patients were loaded aboard. As she returned from one last visit to the ambulance and dodged snipers’ bullets on her way back to the plane, the ambulance exploded, victim of a direct hit from an enemy shell.1 Years later, in an interview, Bradley would remark, “You got to get out in a hurry when you have somebody behind you with a gun.”
Bradley could speak with authority. The first time she found herself in similar circumstances was in the Philippines in December 1941. She hadn’t been quick enough, and had spent thirty-seven months as a POW of the Japanese.2
Ruby Grace Bradley was born on a farm in Spencer, West Virginia, on 19 December 1907 and dreamed of being a teacher. After high school, she attended Glenville State Teachers’ College and graduated in 1926. She taught elementary students for four years in Spencer’s one-room schools until 1930, when she changed direction and entered the Philadelphia General Hospital School of Nursing.
After graduation from nursing school in 1933, she accepted a position as a nurse for the CCC at Walter Reed Hospital in D.C. Her first exposure to the military must have been favorable, as she enlisted in the ANC nine months later, on 16 October 1934.3 With the relative rank of second lieutenant, she served as a general duty nurse at Walter Reed until transferred to the station hospital at Fort Mills in the Philippine Islands. She reported for duty at Fort Mills on 14 February 1940.
Many military personnel favored serving in the Philippines in 1940, and Bradley enjoyed the dances and parties in the warm tropical evenings. But storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, and most observers believed that war with Japan was a matter of when rather than if. On 14 February 1941, Bradley assumed the duties of surgical and head nurse at the station hospital, Camp John Hay, in the mountains of Baguio, Luzon. She was on duty the morning of 8 December, preparing for a routine hysterectomy, when she was summoned to headquarters and informed that the Japanese had bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As she reported back to the operating room to assist in the surgery, bombs began to fall.4
That morning, eighteen Japanese planes, seventeen of them in formation, dropped 128 bombs on the post, many of which, luckily for the Americans, failed to explode. Lieutenant Bradley and her fellow nurse, Lt. Beatrice Chambers, along with Soldiers and civilians, fled into the mountains and tried to get to Manila but found all roads blocked. The retreating Americans had destroyed bridges over the rivers, and the Japanese aircraft had targeted major highways. When they were captured, along with others, on 28 December 1941, they became the first nurses seized by the Japanese.5
For the next three months, Bradley and Chambers remained at the hospital at Camp John Hay, treating prisoners as best they could, lacking both instruments and medicine. Several missionary and civilian nurses assisted them. Whatever instruments and medicines they possessed had to be smuggled into the camp.
In April 1943, they were transferred to the civilian internment camp, Camp Holmes, in Baguio, where they remained until 20 September when Bradley was moved to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. Chambers elected to remain behind, a move she would later regret.
During her time in captivity, Bradley and the other “Angels in Fatigues” not only improvised medical supplies (using hemp for sutures and sheets for bandages) but smuggled in food and medicine to give to starving children, a violation that could have resulted in their execution. Credited with assisting in 230 covert operations, including the delivery of thirteen American babies, Bradley weighed a scant eighty pounds when American forces liberated the camp on 3 February 1945.6
Returning from the Pacific to a hero’s parade in Spencer, West Virginia, Bradley was promoted to first lieutenant after eleven years in the Army, and after taking leave, reported to the station hospital at Fort Meyer, Virginia, as assistant chief nurse on 4 July 1945. One month later, on 12 August, she assumed the same duties at McGuire General Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, where she was promoted to captain on 27 October.
On 1 March 1946, she took over as principal chief nurse of the station hospital at Fort Eustis, Virginia. Assignments rotated rapidly; a year at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco (starting in August 1947), seven months at Walter Reed in D.C., and then ten months at a naval air station in Cocoa, Florida.
On 17 July 1950, Bradley, newly promoted to major as of the previous May, volunteered for assignment as chief nurse of the 171st Evacuation Hospital at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was ordered to prepare for immediate movement to the FEC. Like Bradley, the hospital had seen service during World War II. Bradley arrived with her unit at Camp Hakata, Japan on 27 August, and landed at Taegu, Korea, on 21 September, less than a week following the Marines’ landing at Inchon.7
On 28 October, the 171st moved north to Pyongyang in support of the U.S./UN offensive, but the unexpected entry of two hundred sixty thousand Chinese troops changed the equation and by late November, the hospital was scrambling to withdraw in the face of an advancing enemy. The 171st withdrew to Yongdongpo, arriving on 6 December, and ten days later moved to Camp Kokura, Kyushu, Japan. Bradley remained with the 171st until July 1951, when she was posted as a nursing consultant to Headquarters, Eighth U.S. Army, Korea. She was promoted to chief nurse of the Eighth Army on 1 August; she remained with the Eighth Army until 20 June 1953.
Following the Korean War, on 15 June 1955, Bradley was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest award of the International Red Cross, for her service as a POW in World War II, and as a combat nurse in Korea.
She remained in the Army and served at Fort McPherson, Georgia, as chief nurse, Headquarters U.S. Army-Europe at Heidelberg, Germany, and later as director of nurses, Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Bradley retired as a full colonel on 31 March 1963.8
After leaving the Army, Bradley continued nursing until she retired at the age of eighty. She died of a heart attack on 28 May 2002 in Hazard, Kentucky, at the age of ninety-four, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, which included a twenty-one-gun salute, riderless horse and caisson, and a U.S. Army Band. She is the most decorated woman in the history of the U.S. Army.9
Bradley was frequently heard to recall the words of her recruiters when she’d enlisted in 1934: “Now don’t worry, you won’t be in a war.” Then she’d laugh and smile. “Here I was in two of ’em.”10
1. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, statement on the Senate floor, in memory of Col. Ruby Bradley, 7 July 2002.
2. Bradley, Ruby G. “Prisoners of War in the Far East.” ANC Web site: http://history.amedd.army.mil/ANCWebsite/bradley.htm
3. Ibid.
4. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels–The Untold Story of American Nurse Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. New York: Pocket Books, 1999, pp. 6–7.
5. Bradley, Ruby G. “Prisoners of War in the Far East.”
6. Johnson, Laura Kendall. “One of the Most Decorated Women in Military History Laid to Rest.” Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 9 July 2002.
7. Bradley, Ruby G. “Prisoners of War in the Far East.”
8. Ibid.
9. U.S. Army Center for Military History.
10. NBC Nighty News with Tom Brokaw Feb. 23, 2000 or (www.west-point.org/family/Adbc/Media/BostonBradley.htm.)
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Margaret Brosmer was interviewed by Scott Baron on 29 May 2005. Photo courtesy of Margaret Brosmer
