Valérie André was 10 years outdated in 1932 when, armed with a congratulatory bouquet, she greeted the hero aviator Maryse Hilsz on the Strasbourg airfield in France.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 formidable profession aim for a younger woman on the time. However she was so warmly acquired when she introduced 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 change into 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 stated to be the primary girl to fly rescue missions in fight zones for any army drive. She was additionally the primary Frenchwoman to be named a basic 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 woman, flying like a star,” Olivia Penichou, a spokeswoman for the French Ministry of Protection, stated in saying the loss of life 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 Nineteen Fifties within the dense jungles and soggy rice paddies of Indochina, the place the French have been attempting 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 looking for independence from France. In 1976 she was promoted to basic, the primary girl to be elevated to that rank within the French Military.
However whereas her heroism was celebrated at house and he or she wrote two memoirs in French, her exploits weren’t as well-known overseas — not less than till lately.
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 Below 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 larger 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 of 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 medication 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 learning medication 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 informed us the army in Indochina didn’t have sufficient docs,” Dr. André informed the aviation journal Vertical in 2017. He steered that she be 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 performed, to deal with them on the bottom. She later informed the Smithsonian Information Service that troopers have been awe-struck once they noticed “a lady, 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 House Museum on the Smithsonian Establishment, she was one of many first 12 ladies on the planet to obtain a helicopter pilot ranking 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 items 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 basic and a member of a presidential fee, she lobbied indefatigably to grant ladies a extra energetic function within the army. She retired in 1981 as inspector basic 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 ground of a six-story constructing close by.
“I needed plenty of sky,” she stated.
As a result of she was a petite girl — she weighed lower than 100 kilos — her helicopter with Pink Cross insignias may 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.
Effectively earlier than he died in 1997, she outranked him.
