Ruby Bradley

[Kyt]

Women Medal Recipients

Colonel Ruby Bradley is America's most decorated military woman. She served in WWII - and was a POW for 37 months in a Japanese prison camp. Later she was a frontline U.S. Army nurse in Korea on the day 100,000 Chinese soldiers overran American troops and started closing in on her hospital tent. Col. Bradley has earned 34 medals and citations for bravery, including two Bronze stars. She retired from the Army in 1963, but remained a nurse all her working life.
According to Arlington National Cemetery upon the death of Col. Bradley in 2002 at age 94 -
"On December 1, 1999, then 91 years of age, Col. Ruby Bradley received more than a dozen military awards to replace those she had lost over the years. She is the nation's most highly-decorated female veteran. Senator Rockefeller presented the medals and ribbons to Bradley, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, who lives in Spencer, West Virginia. She was a U.S. Army nurse and a POW for two years in the Philippines and was known as the "Angel in Fatigues" at Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila.

The replacement awards reportedly included:
Legion of Merit medals
Bronze Star
two Presidential Emblems
Meritorious Unit Emblem
The American Defense Service Medal
American Campaign Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
World War II Victory Medal
Army Occupational Medal with Japan clasp
three Korea Service medals
Philippine Liberation Meda
Philippine Independence Ribbon
United Nations Service Medal

COL Ruby Grace Bradley