Genevieve de Galard, a nurse dubbed the “Angel of Dien Bien Phu” for
treating wounded during a defining 1954 battle in then French Indochina,
has died aged 99, with President Emmanuel Macron on Friday hailing her
“exemplary devotion”.
Galard was the only French woman on the
ground during the clash at Dien Bien Phu, which led to French troops’
defeat by communist forces in Vietnam and marked the country’s last
stand in colonial Indochina. She passed away on Thursday.
The
blue-eyed nurse, who hailed from a family of aristocrats, applied field
dressings, administered injections and comforted the wounded. Some died
in her arms.
Galard volunteered to go to French Indochina in 1953 and helped evacuate casualties.
One of the evacuation planes she travelled in was destroyed by gunfire when she was about to leave Dien Bien Phu.
She
remained on the ground for two months, “the only nurse in this tropical
trap, where 15,000 men were fighting and dying”, the president’s office
said.
“When this is over, Genevieve, I will take you dancing,” a soldier,
who had lost both arms and a leg, told her, Galard would later recall.
French
daily Le Figaro said that Galard “was certainly one of the last
witnesses to one of the worst tragedies suffered by the French army.”
“The angel of Dien Bien Phu has left us,” Macron said on X.
“As a military nurse, Genevieve de Galard showed exemplary devotion
to the courage and suffering of 15,000 French soldiers during the worst
hours of the Indochina war.”
Galard told AFP in 2014: “The noise
of the bombings was infernal and, when there was a lull in the morning,
we knew that other stretchers were going to arrive.”
When the French-held garrison fell in May 1954, the 12,000 surviving French soldiers were taken prisoner.
Galard herself was held prisoner for 17 days and was repatriated to France after being granted freedom by president Ho Chi Minh.
– ‘Supreme fortitude’ –
On her return she was celebrated as a star and French magazine Paris Match featured the 29-year-old on its cover.
“I had never wanted or sought it,” she said of her fame. “I had only done my duty.”
In
July 1954, US President Dwight Eisenhower invited her to the United
States where she was awarded the US Medal of Freedom and received a
standing ovation from the House of Representatives.
“Her supreme
fortitude in hours of peril, her unfaltering dedication to her mission
reflected the greatness of spirit manifested on many fields, in many
centuries, by the soldiers of France,” Eisenhower said.
Throughout her life, Galard continued to care for the disabled, in
particular at the Invalides rehabilitation centre, Macron’s office said.
The English translation of her memoir, The Angel of Dien Bien Phu, was published in 2010.
In 2014, Galard received France’s highest honour, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.
Eric Ciotti, head of the right-wing Republicans party, took to X to hail a “French heroine.”
“In inhuman sanitary conditions and a deluge of bombs, she saved so many French soldiers,” he wrote.
This
year, France has for the first time been invited by Vietnam to
commemorate the battle. Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu represented
Paris at commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of Dien Bien Phu in
May.
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