In the News

An Army Veteran from Greene County Mississippi is getting a Purple Heart more than 70 years after being wounded during the Korean War. It’s a big honor and one final send-off for this family’s late father. This Purple Heart will be presented just before Veterans Day, posthumously to the family of Army veteran Rawleigh Bradley.

Bradley was injured in a missile attack in Korea in 1950. His daughter Pamela Anderson says she was talking with a friend about her late father’s war wound and she mentioned he never got a Purple Heart.

That sent her on a search for military records showing evidence of the incident. Anderson says the records from the national archives were lost in a fire but Congressman Mike Ezell’s office was able to find them at another agency. After a year of work, they were able to get the medal for their dad.

“I’ve seen him work all his life. He struggled during those times. It was bad for them and he struggled. And he was never a boisterous man. He, like I said, he was humble and I wanted to, I guess in a sense I wanted to fight for him and give him what he deserved,” said Bradley’s daughter Pamela Anderson.

Today she works for Greene County’s EMA. “And when we got it, I cried. You know, I just took off running around here and he’s got it. He got it. You know, it was just the most amazing thing to me to know that I helped him get that.”

Anderson says her father passed away nearly 40 years ago in 1985. He spent three decades in the army–and retired to be a police officer in Leakesville. Bradley’s family will be presented with a purple heart at the Greene County Veteran’s Day program at the courthouse at 9:30 on Thursday, November 9th.