Ruby bradley biography
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By 1958, she promoted to colonel, making her one of the first Army nurses to hold a permanent rank.
In March 1963, Bradley retired from the Army and worked as a civilian nurse supervisor in West Virginia for two decades.
She received a total of 34 medals and citations, including two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Star Medals, two Army Commendation Medal and a Florence Nightingale Medal.
She passed away in 2002 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
We honor her service.
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A very important Cold War era installation, Fort Eustis was made the headquarters for the Army Transportation Corps and School and a port was built throughout 1946 to reflect this major change in the Fort’s role. She died in 2002 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
CAROLE JAKUCS, RN, MSN, PHN, is a full-time freelance writer and diabetes educator.
In November 1958, Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev insisted that the U.S. leave the western half of the divided city, something that was interpreted as an ultimatum by Washington. During WWII, Letterman served as one of the Army’s largest hospitals, receiving more than 73,000 patients in 1945 alone. From January to June 1951, Bradley served on temporary duty as the Assistant Chief Nurse at the 361st Station Hospital in Tokyo, before returning to the 171st, now stationed in Sasebo, Japan.[9]
Given the rapidity of the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) offensive in late 1950 and the high rate of soldiers wounded in action during this period, treating soldiers in Japan made sense.
Bradley likely would have cared for any sick or injured construction workers building this port, which distinguished Fort Eustis from any other domestic Army installation.[3]
Bradley left Fort Eustis to take advantage of an Army training program, studying Nursing Administration at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
While Bradley was attached to the 171st Evacuation Hospital, her unit likely looked similar during her deployment to Korea (courtesy of the AMEDD Center of History and Heritage)
Bradley was briefly sent back to Japan in mid-December 1950. Several family members and Army soldiers laid roses on the coffin, saluting as they turned to leave.
Colonel Bradley entered the Army Nurse Corps as a surgical nurse in 1934.
Bradley refused to leave until all of the patients had been safely loaded onto evacuation aircraft. As the transport taxied down the runway, the ambulance she’d just departed from exploded behind them.
Later Career
In 1958, Bradley was promoted to colonel — one of the first three Army nurses to hold that permanent rank. For the first few months of her captivity, Bradley was held in an internment camp at Camp John Hay.
“A group of more than 500 men, women and children was crowded into one building … designed for 50 men,” she recalled.
After about six weeks, the internees received Japanese permission to establish a small camp hospital.
In March 1958, near the end of her time in Georgia, Bradley was promoted to colonel, becoming one of the first Army nurses to hold a permanent rank.[12]
In July 1958, Bradley was deployed overseas for the final time, this time to the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe in Heidelberg, Germany, where she once again served as the chief nurse. In October 1961, a couple of months after the August 13th erection of the Berlin Wall, American and Soviet tanks faced each other on either side of the diplomatic checkpoint between East and West Germany.
Bradley and another Army nurse, Lt. Beatrice Chambers, walked more than 18 miles to a logging camp in Lasud, where they cared for civilian refugees, many of them women and children. Two weeks before her deployment to Heidelberg, on July 15, President Dwight Eisenhower deployed U.S. Army Europe forces to Lebanon in response to instability within the Middle Eastern country.
She was given a full-dress honor guard ceremony when she left Korea, becoming the first woman to receive this salute.[11]
Upon her return to the United States, Bradley was stationed as the Chief of the Nursing Division for the Third U.S. Army at Fort McPherson, Georgia. This hospital, which was built in late 1943 and opened in 1944, served as a center for wounded overseas soldiers before their transfer to Army Hospitals closer to their home.
Some of its first patients were casualties of the Invasion of Normandy, arriving at McGuire in late July 1944.