Oldest female Army vet, 108

Alyce Dixon, the nation’s oldest female veteran, who expedited mail delivery in wartime and later worked as a civilian at the Pentagon, facilitating what she called the purchase of everything from “pencils to airplanes,” died Saturday at a veterans’ retirement center in Washington. Shewas 108.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced the death but did not disclose the cause.

Mrs. Dixon was working for the War Department’s secretarial pool at the newly constructed Pentagon when in 1943 she enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, soon to be called the Women’s Army Corps.

She was initially limited to administrative assignments in Iowa and Texas before joining the newly established 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in early 1945. The battalion was the only unit of black women in the WACs to serve overseas in World War II andwas led by Charity Adams, one of the first black female commissioned officers in thewar.

The Army was still segregated at the time, and Mrs. Dixon’s battalion — comprising more than 800 African-American women, dined andwas housed separately from other WACs.

The 6888th was tasked with sorting and distributing what she estimated were billions of backlogged letters and packages, a pileup attributed to the delivery disruption caused by the Battle of the Bulge.

Mrs. Dixon, who leaves no immediate survivors, said she never wanted children.