`Col. Maggie.” and the Green Berets

Martha Raye

The Special Forces soldiers called her “Col. Maggie.” At their request, she is buried along side them at Fort Bragg, the home of the Green Berets.

From:   CaptRon. Down memory Lane with those who knew Martha Raye.

Everyone should know the story of Martha Raye…A true patriot….. Buried in my memory banks, I was at her USO show when on Stration in Phu Bai just South of the DMZ in another life.  Some memories fade, but her dancing in an all white outfit is still very vivid.  Another life, another time, but the memory remains….Kind of glad it does…..

*The following is from an Army Aviator who takes a trip down memory lane:*

*”It was just before Thanksgiving ’67 and we were ferrying dead and wounded
from a large GRF west* *of Pleiku. We had run out *
*of body bags by noon, so the Hook (CH-47 CHINOOK) was*
*pretty rough in the back. *

*All of a sudden, we heard a ‘take-charge’ woman’s voice in the rear.*

*There was the singer and actress, Martha Raye, with a Special Forces* *beret
and jungle fatigues, with subdued markings, helping the wounded into the
Chinook, and carrying the dead aboard.*

*’Maggie’ had been visiting her SF ‘heroes’ out ‘west.’*

*We took off, short of fuel, and headed to the*
*USAF hospital pad at Pleiku.*

*As we all started unloading* *our sad pax’s, a  USAF Captain said*
*to Martha…. “Ms Raye, with all these dead and wounded to process, there
would not be time for your show!”*

*To all of our surprise, she pulled on her right collar and said “Captain,
see this eagle?  I am a full ‘Bird’ in the US Army Reserve, and on this is
a ‘Caduceus’ which means I am a Nurse, with a surgical specialty…. now,
take me to your wounded!”*

*He said, “Yes ma’am…. follow me.”*

The Virginia Pilot Obid 1994

Martha Raye went to Vietnam, where a war was going on, for nine straight years, four months a year, and spend three of those months out with isolated Special Forces detachments in camps all over the country, said Jimmy Dean, executive secretary of the Special Forces Association in Fayetteville at her burial. .

Raye was a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve Nurse Corps.

Raye had entertained troops during World War II and the Korean War as well, but she developed her close relationship with the Special Forces during the Vietnam War.

Tom Squire, a retired Green Beret from Fayetteville, remembers seeing Raye perform in Vietnam just after she was wounded while visiting troops.

“She had a flesh wound and it was bandaged, but she stayed there with the Special Forces soldiers to entertain them,” Squire said. “Other entertainers went to the big air bases and Navy bases, but they wouldn’t go up the rivers and out into the jungle, where she went.”

Raye’s career suffered because of her support for the Special Forces and their efforts in Vietnam. She said in 1988 that she couldn’t find a job for three years after she returned. 

“But I’d do it again,” she said. “Being with the Green Berets was the best part of my life.”

Raye received a special Academy Award in 1969.

S.Con.Res.62 – A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that the President should award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Martha Raye.102nd Congress (1991-199