Long before air ambulance companies like CareFlight and TV shows like China Beach and M*A*S*H, Valérie André flew air rescue missions in combat zones for the French army.
“The woman who came from the sky.”
Valérie André learned to fly before the start of World War II when she was just 17.
She grew up in Strasbourg, France, and first saw an airplane when she was 10. She said she told her parents at a young age, “I would be an aviator. They thought I would outgrow it,” according to her biography.
During World War II, and despite stay-in-place orders from the Nazi Gestapo, André attended university in Paris while supporting the actions of the French resistance. In 1948, she became a medical doctor.
When she joined the French colonial government's Air Force and was stationed in Southeast Asia during the First Indochina War, she realized that the most challenging part of her job was getting the wounded out of the heavily vegetated war zones.
On one mission to Laos, where she was airdropped into a French fort, André treated both military personnel and civilians who lived near the outpost. Her exploits became legendary. To the local populace, she was known as “the woman who came from the sky.”
I weighed less than 45 kilograms (99 lbs), which meant we could even carry an extra wounded man if necessaryValérie André
Andre returned to France and became a qualified helicopter pilot. She then returned to Southeast Asia, where the Indochina War was still raging, and pioneered helicopter rescues there.
“I had medical training to stabilize the wounded,” she said in her biography. “And I weighed less than 45 kilograms (99 lbs), which meant we could even carry an extra wounded man if necessary.”
One typical mission occurred on 11 December 1951, when casualties urgently needed evacuation from the French position TU-VU on the Black River in Vietnam. The only available helicopter, stationed near Saigon, was dismantled, flown to Hanoi, and reassembled. Captain André then flew into TU-VU despite heavy mist and anti-aircraft fire. There, she triaged the casualties, operated on the most pressing cases, and flew the urgent wounded back to Hanoi, two at a time.
The very early helicopters could not carry the wounded inside the tiny cockpit. They were strapped to the landing skids on the stretcher.
From 1952 to 1953, she flew 129 helicopter missions rescuing 165 soldiers, and on two occasions completed parachute jumps to treat wounded soldiers who needed immediate surgery.
André continued in Algeria as a Medical Commander for the French colonial army in 1960, completing 365 combat missions. She had a total of 3200 flight hours and received seven citations of the Croix de Guerre.
She was the first French female military member to become a General Officer in 1976 when she was named a Physician General. In 1981, she was promoted to Inspector General of Medicine for the army.
Photographing Valérie André
I had the good fortune to meet General Andre in 2000—25 years ago. I had the opportunity to make her portrait to accompany photographs of other aviators who had also made history. She was given the respect she deserved by great names you have likely heard of.
Her obituary in the Washington Post from a few weeks ago states:
"Valérie André, a French military officer, brain surgeon and licensed pilot who was believed to be the first woman to fly helicopter rescue missions in combat zones — during the French-Indochina war of the early 1950s — and who two decades later became the first woman to reach the rank of general in the French armed forces, died Jan. 21 in Paris. She was 102."
Wishing you blue skies and tailwinds,
Blue Skies and Tailwinds is presented by SNC, a global aerospace and defense firm, with support from the Wright State University Aviation Science and Technology Program. The series is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
