Laura Mae Cobb was born on May 11, 1892 in Atchison, Atchison County, Kansas. She was the daughter of John Cobb and Nancy Jane Cooper Cobb. The family moved to Mulvane, Kansas shortly after her birth. After she graduated high school in Wichita, she taught school briefly before going to nurse training program at Wesley Hospital in 1915 and graduated in 1918. Cobb then joined the US Navy as a nurse that same year. She served in the Navy until 1921 (including brief service at the Canacao Naval Hospital in Manila at the end of World War I) when she separated and went to work in civilian hospitals in Iowa and Michigan for the next three years. But in 1924 she returned to the Navy working in several Naval hospitals to include Washington, D.C. for ten years. In the late 1930's the rumors of war that had begun to circulate enticed Cobb to request overseas duty. In April of 1940 she was transferred to Guam and while there she received a commendation for "continuous duty for forty-eight hours, during which she repeatedly risked life and limb in her efforts to insure the safety and comfort of the patients" during the typhoon of November 3, 1940. In February, 1941 she returned to the Philippines as the Chief Nurse at Canacao Naval Hospital in Manila. When the Japanese attacked the Cavite Navy Yard on December 10, 1941, Cobb and ten other navy nurses remained with the wounded in Manila until the US Military there surrendered to the Japanese on January 2, 1942. She and he other nurses were housed with US Army nurses who had also been captured at Corregidor. The were housed at the Santo Tomas school in Manila for the duration of the war along with a great many Allied citizens who had been imprisoned. The nurses ran a sort of hospital there for he civilian detainees but suffered the same deprivations as the other prisoners. They were liberated by United States Army forces in February 1945.

Laura died on September 27, 1981 at the age of 89 in Wichita, Kansas and is now buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery, Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas, USA.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com