Valérie André was 10 years outdated in 1932 when, armed with a congratulatory bouquet, she greeted the hero aviator Maryse Hilsz on the Strasbourg airfield in France.
She was already dedicated to turning into a physician, an bold profession purpose for a younger woman on the time. However she was so warmly acquired when she offered the flowers to Ms. Hilsz, who had simply accomplished a record-breaking round-trip flight between Paris and Saigon, that she dedicated herself to a different formidable goal: She determined to turn out to be an airplane pilot.
Valérie André not solely pursued each professions; she thrived in them. She turned a mind surgeon, a parachutist and a helicopter pilot who was mentioned to be the primary girl to fly rescue missions in fight zones for any army power. She was additionally the primary Frenchwoman to be named a common and was a five-time winner of the Croix de Guerre, for bravery in Indochina and Algeria.
Dr. André died on Jan. 21 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a suburb of Paris. She was 102.
“All of it started with the dream of a 10-year-old lady, flying like a star,” Olivia Penichou, a spokeswoman for the French Ministry of Protection, mentioned in saying the dying on social media. “She labored with dedication to make sure that the armed forces opened as much as ladies specialties as closed as these of fighter pilot.”
The announcement didn’t say if any fast members of the family survived.
In 120 fight missions within the early Fifties within the dense jungles and soggy rice paddies of Indochina, the place the French have been making an attempt with out success to repulse Communist guerrillas, Dr. André flew 168 wounded troopers from the battlefields to hospitals in Hanoi — together with enemy troopers, when there was room on the 2 litters mounted on her single-seat Hiller chopper.
She later flew 365 missions into fight zones in North Africa, the place Algerians have been searching for independence from France. In 1976 she was promoted to common, the primary girl to be elevated to that rank within the French Military.
However whereas her heroism was celebrated at house and she or he wrote two memoirs in French, her exploits weren’t as well-known overseas — no less than till not too long ago.
She was the topic of a 2021 documentary, “Madame le Général,” and of an English-language e-book, “Helicopter Heroine: Valérie André — Surgeon, Pioneer Rescue Pilot, and Her Braveness Beneath Hearth,” by Charles Morgan Evans, an aviation historian, printed in 2023.
Valérie Collin André was born on April 21, 1922, in Strasbourg, within the Alsace area of northeastern France close to the German border. Her father taught music at a boys’ highschool. Her mom inspired her 4 daughters to pursue the identical alternatives for increased training that have been accessible to her 5 sons.
Dr. André would promote that agenda all through her profession.
“I thought of that every girl possesses the potential for selecting her personal life, even when that alternative required extra tenacity than that of a person,” Mr. Evans quoted her as saying.
When she determined to indulge her passions for each drugs and aviation, she tutored college students in French and math to pay for flying classes. She acquired her pilot’s license when she was 16.
Two years later, in 1940, the Germans invaded. She fled Alsace — first to southwestern France, the place the College of Strasbourg had decamped, after which to Nazi-occupied Paris, the place she continued her research on the Sorbonne.
Whereas most girls finding out drugs in France on the time have been shunted into pediatrics, gynecology or public well being, she majored in neurology. She acquired a medical diploma in 1948, when she was 26.
“On the finish of my medical research, the dean of the college of drugs advised us the army in Indochina didn’t have sufficient docs,” Dr. André advised the aviation journal Vertical in 2017. He urged that she be a part of the military.
Whereas working as a surgeon, she witnessed a helicopter demonstration in Saigon early in 1950 and persuaded her superiors that evacuating the wounded from fight zones to hospitals by chopper could be higher than parachuting, which she had carried out, to deal with them on the bottom. She later advised the Smithsonian Information Service that troopers have been awe-struck after they noticed “a woman, of all issues, falling out of the sky.”
She returned to France for preliminary coaching, underwent additional coaching in Vietnam starting that October, after which started commanding her first medevac helicopter flights early in 1952.
Based on the Nationwide Air and Area Museum on the Smithsonian Establishment, she was one of many first 12 ladies on this planet to obtain a helicopter pilot score and the primary girl to fly a helicopter into fight zones.
In 1953, after surviving a crash, she doubled again to France, the place she established medical models at army heliports. In 1957 she was deployed to Algeria, the place she logged lots of of rescue missions earlier than coming house in 1962.
As the military’s doctor common and a member of a presidential fee, she lobbied indefatigably to grant ladies a extra lively position within the army. She retired in 1981 as inspector common of drugs.
Earlier than she moved right into a retirement house in Issy-les-Moulineaux, which occurs to be close to the Paris heliport, Dr. André lived on the highest flooring of a six-story constructing close by.
“I wished numerous sky,” she mentioned.
As a result of she was a petite girl — she weighed lower than 100 kilos — her helicopter with Pink Cross insignias might accommodate a stretcher on every skid. Earlier than she flew solo, she was skilled by an Air Power colonel, Alexis Santini. In 1963, she married him.
Nicely earlier than he died in 1997, she outranked him.