Oldest La. female veteran dies at age 103

Louisiana’s oldest female veteran, Major Emiline Ann “Duce” Bourgeois, USA (Ret.), was laid to rest last week in Lafourche Parish. She was 103.

Miss Emiline wanted to see the world beyond the Thibodaux corn crib where she was born Christmas Eve 1911.

That wanderlust eventually led her to nursing school and, in 1945, the U.S. Army. Emiline couldn’t be slowed, working her way up the ranks, serving during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

The fifth of 10 children born to Emile and Bridgette Bourgeois, Emiline’s drive set her apart from her green-eyed siblings. She wanted to travel fruther than the mule-drawn hack carriage ride to school. After graduating from St. Charles High School in 1929, Emiline, or “Duce” as she’d taken to calling herself – short for the Cajun-French word douce or “sweet,” the moniker given to her by her grandfather – headed to New Orleans.

“I was worried about her,” younger sister Cora Lee Smith, who is 99, recalled. Cora Lee – or Coco, as she prefers – and younger brother Godfrey, 88, are Emiline’s only surviving siblings. “I didn’t know how she would make a living.”

But Emiline did find work, serving meals at S.H. Kress & Co., a five-and-dime in what is now the New Orleans Ritz-Carlton. The job proved to be a dead-end deal. Emiline shed her apron for a nurse’s dress, enrolling at the Hotel Dieu School of Nursing.

Tucked among photographs, aging newspaper clippings and military certificates, Emiline’s family still has her diploma. It is dated Jan. 4, 1941.

Obstetrics was Emiline’s specialty. She returned to Hotel Dieu after completing a six-month course in obstetrical nursing at Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in New Jersey. She loved caring for the babies and was soon elevated to supervisor of the maternity hall. “I loved the babies,” she said.

Three years later, in 1945, war was raging abroad. Nurses were in high demand and World War II offered a perfect opportunity to serve the country and see the world.

Emiline Bourgeois, R.N., age 34, traded her title for a new one: U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Emiline Bourgeois in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. She enlisted Feb. 10, 1945.

Boot camp was followed with a stateside stint in Texas and then it was off to the 248th General and the 20th Station hospitals in the Philippines, where she served two tours.

A pretty gal with a penchant for the boys, Emiline recalls the wounded GIs were happy to have an American nurse to talk to. She had many boyfriends, but chose to never marry. Marriage and children, after all, would have ended her military career.

“They were very young, and they didn’t know how old I was because I seemed to always look younger than I am,” Emiline told WWL-TV’s Bill Capo in an interview when she was a mere 99.

A certain Australian soldier caught her eye, but when he wanted to get serious, Emiline told him she wasn’t ready. “I intended to stay in the service,” she said.

Before her death, she told a different story when asked why she didn’t marry. “I don’t remember anyone ever asking me,” she said, chuckling.

As World War II neared an end, Emiline would bounce around stateside before being assigned to the 97th General Hospital in occupied Frankfurt, Germany.

Her passion to see the world had been fulfilled.

All the while, Emiline continued to earn promotions; she was awarded the rank of 1st Lt. Bourgeois in the Philippines and Capt. Bourgeois while serving in New Mexico. As the Vietnam War continued to build, Emiline was assigned to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York. For the next four and one-half years, she served as the charge nurse of the obstetrical ward – as one of the U.S. Army’s few female majors.

By 1962, the military approached Major Emiline Bourgeois with an offer she couldn’t refuse: retire with 17 years of service and get credit for 20. Emiline opted to retire in 1962, returning to Thibodaux to help care for her parents.

Emile Bourgeois lived to age 99. Her mother lived to age 93.

Daughter Coco attributes his longevity to his life philosophy: “Work hard and don’t worry.”

“We all share that,” Coco mused, tapping her cane on the floor in Miss Emiline’s front room. “He kept a vegetable garden well into his 90s. He believed in living a quiet life. We all do.”

Upon returning to Thibodaux, Emiline also returned to nursing, accepting a general nursing position at St. Joseph Hospital, where she would continue to work for 20 years.

For years, Emiline exchanged letters and phone calls with friends she made along the way. Her niece Mary Bourgeois spoke of a video she recorded a few years ago of Miss Emiline singing “Happy Birthday” to Justine Juco, a Philippine friend, celebrating Justine’s 100th birthday.

“It’s amazing to think of all she’s seen and experienced,” nephew Francis Bourgeois says. “To think of her as a child growing up in that corn crib, their only means of transportation a mule … then going off to war. And where the world is now … it’s amazing.”

On Christmas Eve, Miss Emiline Ann “Duce” Bourgeois would have turned 104. When asked what she wanted from Santa, her eyes glistened through Coke-bottle lenses, “I’d like some more years,” she smiled. •

Emiline A. Bourgeois, at 101, is the oldest female veteran in Louisiana. She enlisted in the US Army Nurse Corps at the end of WWII and retired as a major.