6888
6888 battalion
A01=Edna W. Cummings
advocate
Army women
Author_Edna W. Cummings
Category=DNBH
Category=DNXM
Category=JWXV
Category=NHW
Category=NHWR7
Charity Adams
Congress
Congressional Medal of Honor
Dominican Republic
Dr. Mary McCleod Bethune
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Hidden Figures
logistics
mail
misogyny
North Korea
President Biden
Puerto Rico
racism
Robert E. Lee
September 11
sexual harrassment
Six Triple Eight
South Korea
strategic communication
Tyler Perry movie
United Services Organization
Walter Reed
women in the military
Women's Army Auxiliary Corps
women's army corps
women's history
Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
Product details
- ISBN 9780813953144
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 May 2025
- Publisher: University of Virginia Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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One woman's extraordinary personal journey in the US military and her triumphant effort to honor her predecessors with the Congressional Gold Medal
Looking back on her remarkable career, Retired Army Colonel Edna W. Cummings can justly say that “the odds ain’t good, but good stuff happens.” Her story is as inspiring as it is improbable, but her memoir is about much more than herself. Chronicling Cummings’s unlikely but successful path to leadership roles in the army and afterward, it also tells the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion—known as the Six Triple Eight—a trailblazing African American World War II Women’s Army Corps unit now the subject of a Netflix film and a Broadway-bound musical — and the grassroots campaign Cummings led to honor them.
In 2022, due in large part to Cummings’s efforts, the Six Triple Eight was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor—the Congressional Gold Medal. Among the fewer than two hundred recipients, including the crew of Apollo 11 and the Navajo Code Talkers, the Six Triple Eight is the only women’s unit to receive this prestigious decoration. In A Soldier’s Life Colonel Cummings narrates her path from childhood to advocate and how she overcame incredible odds not only for herself but on behalf of those who had come before her.
Looking back on her remarkable career, Retired Army Colonel Edna W. Cummings can justly say that “the odds ain’t good, but good stuff happens.” Her story is as inspiring as it is improbable, but her memoir is about much more than herself. Chronicling Cummings’s unlikely but successful path to leadership roles in the army and afterward, it also tells the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion—known as the Six Triple Eight—a trailblazing African American World War II Women’s Army Corps unit now the subject of a Netflix film and a Broadway-bound musical — and the grassroots campaign Cummings led to honor them.
In 2022, due in large part to Cummings’s efforts, the Six Triple Eight was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor—the Congressional Gold Medal. Among the fewer than two hundred recipients, including the crew of Apollo 11 and the Navajo Code Talkers, the Six Triple Eight is the only women’s unit to receive this prestigious decoration. In A Soldier’s Life Colonel Cummings narrates her path from childhood to advocate and how she overcame incredible odds not only for herself but on behalf of those who had come before her.
Edna W. Cummings is a retired colonel in the US Army. She owns and operates a consulting firm based in Washington, DC.
