Martha “Colonel Maggie” Raye: The Big Mouth Who Went Where the Troops Were

Martha Raye spent most of her public life making people laugh. To American troops who encountered her during three wars, however, she became something considerably more important. They knew the famous comedian with the enormous grin and booming voice as “Colonel Maggie,” a woman who repeatedly left the comfort of Hollywood to travel to places where American servicemen were frightened, wounded, exhausted, and sometimes very far from home.

Her story is easy to reduce to celebrity folklore. A Hollywood star entertained the troops. Plenty of performers did that, and their contribution mattered. But Martha Raye's relationship with the American military went considerably deeper. She traveled with entertainers, climbed aboard military aircraft, visited hospitals and remote outposts, spent time with wounded men, used her training as a nurse's aide when medical personnel needed another pair of hands, and developed a particularly strong relationship with the soldiers of U.S. Army Special Forces. For many veterans, the woman they remembered was less a visiting celebrity than someone who had made herself part of their world.

Martha Raye was born Margy Reed in Butte, Montana, on August 27, 1916, into a family already immersed in show business. Her parents were vaudeville performers, and Raye was onstage as a small child. By the 1930s she had built a career around an extraordinary combination of singing, comedy, dancing, physical humor, and a personality that seemed too large for whatever stage she happened to be standing on.

Her unusually wide mouth became part of her comic identity and helped produce the nickname “The Big Mouth.” Raye embraced it. She was never packaged as Hollywood's delicate leading lady. She was loud, physical, unpredictable and willing to make herself ridiculous if it got a laugh. She appeared with Bing Crosby in Rhythm on the Range, became a familiar presence in Paramount musicals and comedies, appeared in Hellzapoppin', and later worked with Charlie Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux. Radio, Broadway and eventually television followed, including her own program, The Martha Raye Show.

But another career was developing alongside the entertainment business. During World War II, Raye began traveling to entertain American military personnel. The experience changed the relationship she had with the armed forces. Rather than making an occasional appearance and returning home, she became known for going where the servicemen were, including areas far removed from comfortable rear-echelon entertainment facilities. She continued supporting American forces during the Korean War and, when the United States became deeply involved in Vietnam, she went again.

By then Martha Raye was no young starlet trying to generate publicity. She was approaching fifty, had already spent decades in entertainment, and had little left to prove professionally. Yet Vietnam became the chapter of her life that many servicemen would remember most.

Raye developed an especially close bond with Army Special Forces. The Green Berets operated from camps and outposts that could be isolated, primitive and exposed to enemy attack. These were not always convenient locations for visiting entertainers. Raye nevertheless made repeated trips into Vietnam and sought out men stationed far from the large bases and major entertainment circuits.

The soldiers called her “Colonel Maggie.” The title reflected affection rather than an ordinary military commission. Raye was recognized as an honorary lieutenant colonel and became an honorary Green Beret, distinctions that meant far more to her than another Hollywood billing. Army Special Forces would continue honoring her relationship with the regiment long after the Vietnam War ended.

What made Raye different was what happened when the performance was over. She had received training as a nurse's aide years earlier, and when she encountered military hospitals overflowing with casualties, she was willing to work. Accounts preserved by the Smithsonian describe her cleaning wounds, preparing injured men for treatment, donating blood and helping medical personnel where she could. She was not pretending to be a battlefield surgeon, nor does her story require that embellishment. She was a civilian entertainer who saw wounded Americans in front of her and decided that standing around waiting for the next show was not good enough. That distinction matters.

There were stages in Vietnam where Martha Raye performed and brought laughter to men who badly needed it. There were also hospital wards where laughter was not enough. In those places she did what she was capable of doing, whether that meant assisting medical personnel, comforting wounded soldiers or simply staying with someone who was having one of the worst days of his life.

She also understood something about morale that cannot be measured in casualty reports or operational summaries. Servicemen stationed in isolated locations could feel forgotten. A famous entertainer voluntarily showing up in their camp carried a message that went beyond the performance itself: someone had remembered where they were.

Raye did not treat the men as anonymous members of an audience. She spent time with them. She learned names, listened to stories and developed friendships. Army accounts recall her carrying messages and photographs back to families and maintaining relationships with Special Forces soldiers away from the battlefield. The connection continued after the aircraft carrying her left Vietnam.

That is an important part of her story because the Vietnam veteran did not always return to the reception earlier generations had experienced. The conflict divided the United States, and the people who fought it often became entangled in arguments over the war itself. Martha Raye made a distinction that should never have been difficult: whatever anyone thought about policy, the human being wearing the uniform still mattered. She went to them.

Raye's service did not end with Vietnam. She remained deeply connected to veterans and the Special Forces community for the remainder of her life. In 1986, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger presented her with the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award. Decades earlier, the entertainment industry had also recognized the unusual direction her life had taken. At the 1969 Academy Awards, Bob Hope presented Martha Raye with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her humanitarian work. She was the first woman to receive it. Her greatest civilian recognition came near the end of her life.

In 1993, Martha Raye received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The award recognized not simply the woman who had entertained audiences for decades but the courage, kindness and patriotism she had demonstrated through her service to American military personnel during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

By then her health had deteriorated badly. The booming entertainer who had once crossed military airfields, climbed aboard aircraft and traveled into remote camps was nearing the end of her life.

Martha Raye died on October 19, 1994, at the age of 78. Her final resting place says more about how she wished to be remembered than any star on Hollywood Boulevard.

Raye was buried with military honors at the Main Post Cemetery at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the installation so closely associated with the Army Special Forces community she loved. The post briefly carried the name Fort Liberty beginning in 2023, but it was officially renamed Fort Bragg again in 2025. She rests among the military community that had accepted “Colonel Maggie” as one of its own.

Hollywood remembered Martha Raye as an actress, singer and comedian. Television audiences remembered the woman with the unmistakable mouth and the ability to command a room almost instantly. The entertainment industry honored her for a career that stretched across generations.

Many veterans remembered something else. They remembered fatigues and combat boots instead of gowns. They remembered her showing up where entertainers were not expected. They remembered her in hospitals. They remembered her laughing with soldiers, listening to them, carrying messages home, and refusing to act as though being famous placed her above the people she had come to see. That is why the nickname “Colonel Maggie” endured.

Martha Raye never needed to be a soldier to understand one of the most important obligations of military service: you do not abandon your people when things become difficult. For decades, whenever America's troops went to war, Martha Raye kept finding her way back to them. And when her own journey finally ended, she chose to remain with them

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