Is a French military nurse, air conveyor, who joined the camp at Dien Bien Phu, before the closure of the runways and refused to be evacuated, she stayed until the end to take care of the wounded and dying. Known as the “Angel of Dien Bien Phu”, Geneviève de Galard is France’s greatest living military heroine and has been awarded the country’s highest honor.
In the years following World War II, a young French woman, Geneviève de Galard ( born in 1925), decided to make a big change in her life. “The English studies I had been pursuing only served my personal interest, and I realized that continuing in that direction could not fulfill my life.”
“I dreamed of new perspectives, of less self-centered adventures. I simply wanted to be useful, and I couldn’t imagine a life without giving to others or pursuing an ideal.”
So she resumed her studies and obtained diplomas in “medical-social work” and nursing in 1950, then became a convoy girl in the French air force. At her request, she was assigned to Indochina from May 1953, in the middle of the war between the French and Viet Minh forces. She repatriated the wounded between Dien Bien Phu and Hanoi on board medical planes.
Nearly a year later, on March 28, 1954, at about 4:00 a.m., she flew aboard a Douglas C-47 transport plane to the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. It was Geneviève de Galard’s 40th flight to evacuate wounded soldiers from Dien Bien Phu and her 149th medical evacuation in Vietnam.
This C-47 faced heavy Viet Minh artillery fire but landed safely. However, while taxiing down the runway in the dark, the plane became entangled in barbed wire, causing an oil leak in one of its engines. The plane had to be repaired before it could transport the 25 wounded soldiers lying on stretchers in a trench along the runway. At dawn, the Viet Minh opened fire with 105 mm howitzers. There was no flight for the wounded and for Miss de Galard. She was stuck there, the only European woman in a garrison of some 15,000 French and French Union soldiers.
Geneviève de Galard did not try to return to Hanoi, she stayed in a muddy underground bunker to care for the most seriously wounded. In hellish, brutal, primitive and unhealthy conditions, the nurse worked with Dr. Paul Grauwin, the French head doctor. Responsible for the seriously wounded, she washed and disinfected the wounds, re-dressed the dressings, lit the cigarettes, smiled and comforted the wounded, young soldiers who had been struck down by the war.
She was the nurse, the friend, the confidant and the image of gentleness in the hell of the fighting. The legionnaires soon nicknamed her “Mam’zelle”. She still keeps today very good contacts with the veterans of Dien Bien Phu.
In April 1954, she was named first class of honor in the Foreign Legion along with Colonel Bigeard.
The “Hero in a White Coat” became the only woman among the 15,000 French soldiers in Dien Bien Phu during the famous Viet Minh siege of 1954 that ended the French occupation of Indochina.
When the camp fell, on May 7, 1954, the Viet Minh authorized the medical personnel present to continue to treat the wounded. Geneviève de Galard wished to stay until the last ones were evacuated. The Vietnamese considered releasing her. Once again Geneviève de Galard showed her character by refusing to leave and abandoning her patients. Finally released on May 24, she was welcomed by a large crowd at Orly airport on her return to France, making the front page of Paris Match. She was astonished. What did she do but her duty? From then on, American press agencies and an English newspaper asked her for the exclusivity of her impressions in exchange for astronomical sums. She refused. A film producer wants to shoot a saga and have Leslie Caron play her role. She rejects the proposal.
“France welcomes the heroine of Dien Bien Phu”, headlines the weekly Paris Match. The United States nicknamed her “the Angel of Dien Bien Phu”. Geneviève de Galard, who was 28 years old at the time, did not understand what was happening to her.
She was later invited to the United States by President Eisenhower who awarded her the Medal of Freedom on July 29, 1954, the highest American decoration that can be awarded to a foreigner. In France, Geneviève de Galard was elevated to the dignity of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor in 2011.
She resumed her work as a courier for a while, married Colonel Jean Heaulme in 1956 and had three children. She then followed her husband, an officer in the army, to his various postings. Famous in spite of herself, she chose to resume her life in anonymity as soon as she could. She now lives in Paris.
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