A Soldier's Life: A Black Woman's Rise from Army Brat to Six Triple Eight Champion

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.

© 2025 University of Virginia Press (Ebook): 9780813953168

Release date

Ebook: May 8, 2025