thewomanwarriors.com

On a crisp fall day in a cemetery in Queens, a Marine Corps honor guard blew taps over the country’s oldest female Marine.

Sgt. Miriam Cohen did not die jumping on a hand grenade, or storming the beaches of Normandy or battling the Japanese on Iwo Jima.

Most appropriately, she died on Veteran’s Day, one day after the 234th birthday of the United States Marines Corps. Cohen lived nearly half as long: She would have been 102 on Dec. 13.

When World War II threatened civilization, this beautiful, gutsy Brooklyn gal answered the call of a bugle, just like the one that played over her coffin Tuesday.

“Miriam was born in Sheepshead Bay and graduated from Smith College, where she was the only Jew in the school,” says her younger sister Marine Roberta Eaton, 86, of the Women’s Marines Association of New York.

“On Feb. 13, 1943, Miriam graduated in the first class of WWII women Marines. At 35, she was one of the oldest women to ever join the Marines.”

Cohen did six weeks of basic training at Hunter College, (where Lehman College stands today) honing her secretarial skills to fulfill the Marine Women’s motto: “To Free a Man to Fight.”

“Unlike the WACS and WAVES, Marine women have no acronym,” Eaton says. “We were Marines. Period. Marines for life. Miriam told me she was stationed at USMC headquarters in Washington during WWII. She had special clearance to handle sensitive documents.”

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