Buried far across the sea from her home in Louisiana, lies a young woman named Cecile who lost her life during World War II. Called Cecile Champagne as a toddler and as a young woman, we may never know how she became Cecil to the U.S. Army.

Cecile Ann Champagne[i], a.k.a. Cecil, was born to Archille Charles “A.C.” Champagne and his wife, Adele Marie Kinler Champagne. The couple, who had deep Louisiana roots, married in 1905.[ii] They had two children, Emma Madeline Champagne in 1905 and then Gustave “Gus” Joseph Champagne in 1909. Her father, A.C., worked many years in the railroad industry and the family lived in what is described as Police Jury Ward 2 in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.[iii] Cecile was born in 1917.[iv]

By 1920, when Cecile appears on the U.S. Census, the family is listed in a rental home in Luling, Louisiana. Achille is working for the Texas and Pacific Railway. Cecile stays at home with her mother while the older siblings are in school.[v] Aside from the railroad, her father was involved with politics. He ran for St. Charles sheriff in 1920 and came in second out of four candidates.[vi]

As Cecile hits her teenage years, the family is still in St. Charles Parish and her dad is still working with the railroad. However, by this time the family is in a home they own. Only the girls live at home. Aged 21, brother Gus is working for the telegraph company and living in a railroad camp in Oklahoma.[vii]

The family suffers a big loss when A.C. dies in 1935. After that, as the war years loom, Cecile is still in St. Charles Parish but lives with her Aunt Cecile Kinler, a single woman aged 51. Aunt Cecile is her mother’s younger sister and she owns her own home. Cecile, her mother and her older sister, Emma, live there. Aunt Cecile is a merchant of a retail store. Cecile is working six days a week at the post office as a clerk. Her brother, Gus, has married and his family live near-by.[viii]

HER LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

Cecile completed four years of high school so she would have graduated around 1935. She worked as a postal clerk. Just before taking up military life, she was living in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.[ix] Cecile had a family link to the U.S. Postal Service. Her great uncle, Septime Kenler, had been the postmaster in Hahnville, Louisiana, located in her home area of St. Charles Parish.[x] Cecile’s experience in the post office becomes important in her role in World War II.

HER MILITARY STORY

In 1941, a bill was introduced that would eventually change Cecile’s life. Representative Edith Rogers from Massachusetts proposed establishing a women’s corps of the army. The proposed bill didn’t gain traction until the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Pushed by the enemy attack, the bill became law on May 15, 1942, establishing the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). While the women had an official status and salary, they did not have the benefits the men received.[xi] After training, the WAACs were working mostly in baking, clerical, driving, and medical jobs.[xii]

An article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper discussed women in the armed services. The article read “Within a few short months WAACs and Waves and Spars have become established patterns in the fabric of wartime living. They have earned their place in the scheme of things and won the respect not only of officialdom but of the man in the ranks and his next-door neighbor.”[xiii]

From the point she entered the military, Cecile Ann Champagne became Cecil A. Champagne. She was a corporal in the U. S. Women’s Army Corp, known as the WACs. Her service number was A-801491.[xiv] She enlisted in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 4, 1943.

In the summer of 1943, the U.S. Army removed the word “auxiliary” and so the WAACs were renamed the Women’s Army Corp(WACs). At this time, the thousands of women who had enlisted began to receive full benefits.[xv] Becoming a WAC, wasn’t just as simple as signing up. According to a history of women in the army, “the entrance requirements were rigorous.” Many women applied who did not get chosen.[xvi] WACS did many jobs from delivering the troops and supplies to transferring aircraft.[xvii] Other WACs worked as air controllers, mechanics, postal clerks, switchboard operators, sheet metal workers, weather forecasters, and more.[xviii]

The U.S. Army tapped into Cecil’s postal experience. Cecil was stationed with the 1st Base Post Office at Sutton Park in Sutton Coldfield.[xix] The Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield is about 7 miles northeast of Birmingham, England and often called Sutton. During WWII, there were nearby internment camps for Germans and Austrians as well as prisoner of war camps for Germans and Italians.[xx]

The 1st Base Post Office became a necessity during the war. A school that had been under construction before the war and was unfinished was tapped for use. With the growth of forces in Britain, our troops wanted to send letters home and the people at home wanted to send letters and packages. The Sutton Park Railway Station was taken over by the post office. As more and more American troops arrived, the post office had to grow. They used more soldiers and eventually there were 51 local women recruited to work alongside 140 Americans. There were so many American military personnel in Sutton that hundreds of them were housed with local families. Every home with a spare room was required to give it up to soldiers. Eventually they had to build a 52,000 square foot building to house the post office. By 1943 there were hundreds of soldiers and hundreds of civilian women working and handling two trainloads of mail a day. Even with all those workers, there was a huge backlog of mail. Cecil was one of those workers handling mail from back home for the soldiers so far from family.

HER LAST DAY

On her last day, Cecil was in the 33rd Station Hospital in Lichfield England.[xxi] That January, Cecil was one of 1,392 patients cared for that month at number 33.[xxii] It was there that she succumbed to meningitis, an inflammation of the lining covering the brain and spinal cord most typically caused by infection.

Cecil died on January 9, 1945.[xxiii]

MEMORIALS

Corporal Cecil A. Champagne is remembered on plaque two of the Veteran’s Memorial, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. It is in front of the Courthouse for St. Charles Parish in Hahnville, Louisiana.[xxiv] Erected in the 1960s and dedicated to the men that lost their lives, it is possible the builders did not know Cecil was a woman.

HER GRAVE

Cecil A. Champagne was buried in the Cambridge American Cemetery in Cambridge, England. The location Is Plot C, Row 5, Grave 59.[xxv]

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

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