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Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Valérie André, first woman to fly a helicopter into combat zones, nicknamed ‘Madame Ventilator'
Valérie André, who has died aged 102, was a brain surgeon, parachutist and pioneering helicopter pilot – the first woman to fly helicopter missions in combat zones, and also the first woman to become a general in the French army. She had taken flying lessons in the late 1930s and after graduating in neurosurgery from the University of Paris in 1948, she volunteered for the Paratrooper Medical Team serving in French-occupied Indochina, where the French were trying, ultimately without success, to repulse Viet Minh communist guerrillas. She made 121 parachute jumps under combat conditions to treat wounded men on the ground before they were transported to hospital along bumpy roads, recalling that ground crews were astonished by 'a girl, of all things, falling out of the sky'. In early 1950, however, impressed by a demonstration in Saigon of a helicopter's manoeuvrability, she persuaded her superiors that it would be better to evacuate the wounded by air and went on to train as a helicopter rescue pilot. 'Madame Ventilator', as she was known, flew 129 helicopter missions in her Red Cross-marked Hiller 360 helicopter and rescued 165 soldiers, mainly French but also some Viet Minh. Braving enemy gunfire, including direct hits, she landed in the jungle or in paddy fields, picked up the wounded and flew them to hospitals, where she transformed into surgeon André, performing many life-saving operations. 'I weighed less than 45kg, which meant we could even carry an extra wounded man if necessary,' Valérie André recalled. 'She was a one-woman MASH unit,' a colleague added. In 1953, after surviving a crash, she returned to France, where she established medical units at military helicopter bases. But in 1957 she was deployed to north Africa as chief medical officer and pilot of a squadron flying Sikorsky helicopters, ferrying French commando platoons to combat Algerian anti-colonial fighters. She flew nearly 400 missions during the Algerian war which ended in 1962 when Algeria gained independence. She became 'Mme le général' in 1976, and altogether spent 33 years on active duty, becoming a commander of the Légion d'honneur and receiving seven citations for, and five awards of, the Croix de Guerre. She retired in 1981 as Inspector General of the Army Medical Corps. One of nine children, Valérie André was born on April 21 1922 in Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France near the German border. Her father was a music teacher at a boys' high school. Her mother was determined that her four daughters would have the same opportunities as her five sons and Valérie was quick to set her own path in life: 'As a child, looking at airplanes in the sky, I used to say, 'I shall be a pilot.' Some time later, I asserted, 'I shall be a physician.' The only thing I had not thought of was to become a servicewoman.' She gained her pilot's licence aged 16, after being taught to fly by a veteran of the First World War at a local airfield. While male trainees were paid for by the French state, however, she had to raise her own funds to pay for lessons and tutored students in French and maths. In 1941 after the German invasion of Alsace, she fled first to to Clermont-Ferrand in southwestern France and later to Nazi-occupied Paris, where she enrolled at the Sorbonne after the Liberation. At the end of the Algeria War, Valérie André returned to France to continue her career as a medical officer and at the time of her promotion to general was chief medical officer at the Villacoublay air base near Paris. Throughout her career Valérie André promoted the role of women in the military, serving as a member of a presidential commission. 'I wanted women to be real combatants, not just air club pilots,' she said. Women are now able to serve in every role in the French military, including combat infantry and submarines. Valérie André was appointed to the French National Order of Merit in 1987 and the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1999. She was a charter member (Member No 6) of the Whirly-Girls, an international association of female helicopter pilots founded in 1955. She published two volumes of memoirs: Ici, Ventilateur! (1954) and Madame le général (1988), and was the subject of an English-language biography, Helicopter Heroine: Valérie André – Surgeon, Pioneer Rescue Pilot, and Her Courage Under Fire (2023) by Charles Morgan Evans. In 1963 she married Alexis Santini, an air force colonel who had taught her to fly helicopters. He died in 1997. There were no children of the marriage. Valérie André, born April 21 1922, died January 21 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Boston Globe
31-01-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Valérie André, first woman to fly helicopter rescue missions in combat, dies at 102
Helicopters were still relatively new contraptions for widespread military use when France sent some in 1950 as air ambulances to support its troops in Indochina, the French colonial protectorate in Southeast Asia that included Vietnam. The French military was in a pitched battle against Vietnamese anti-colonial communists, including Ho Chi Minh. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enter Email Sign Up General André (then a captain) arrived in the French colonial protectorate of Indochina in 1949 and was assigned to a women's infirmary and then to a military hospital, both in Saigon. She had taken flying lessons as a young woman in Strasbourg, had a civilian copter license, and tried to make the case that she could save more lives by going to field hospitals near the front lines. Advertisement She said she initially met resistance to her plan from the Ministry of Defense. 'I besieged my superior,' she recounted, then showed her mettle by making dozens of parachute jumps from French aircraft to treat the critically wounded. In an interview decades later with the Smithsonian News Service, she described the sight of herself to the men on the ground as 'a girl, of all things, falling out of the sky.' She returned to France in 1950 to get a military pilot license to fly two-and three-seater helicopters and was back in Southeast Asia later that year. She flew a Hiller 360 that bore Red Cross markings and, because of the weight limit, she flew alone so she could strap a stretcher onto each skid. (It was to her advantage that she was petite and weighed less than 100 pounds.) Advertisement She flew more than 120 chopper missions in Indochina, often landing on jungle airstrips or near rice paddies amid enemy fire. Local Vietnamese civilians, who had never seen a helicopter, gave her the nicknames 'The woman who comes down from the sky' or 'Quekat' — Vietnamese for 'Madame Ventilator' — or cooler fan, because that's what the chopper looked like to them. Military records show she flew 168 wounded men from the battlefields to hospitals in Hanoi. Most were French soldiers, but there were also many enemy communist fighters, the Viet Minh, whom she insisted on taking if she had space. Ultimately, the French withdrew in 1954 after losing a 55-day battle at the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. 'She was a one-woman MASH unit,' Jean Ross Howard Phelan, one of the earliest American women to receive helicopter accreditation, in 1954, told the Smithsonian News Service in 1987. Like Phelan, General André was a member of the Whirly-Girls, an international organization of women helicopter pilots that Phelan co-founded in 1955. After Indochina, where she earned the French Croix de Guerre, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the US Legion of Merit, General André served as a Sikorsky helicopter pilot in Algeria in the late 1950s. She ferried French commando platoons 'armed to the teeth,' as she said, to put down Algerian anti-colonial fighters who would later, in 1962, win their independence from France. By the end of the war, she had completed 365 combat missions in Algeria. The sixth of nine children, Valérie Marie André was born on April 21, 1922, in Strasbourg, in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France that borders Germany. Her father was a high school music teacher, and her mother, an art-loving homemaker, encouraged all of her children to pursue higher education. Advertisement When the Germans invaded and occupied Alsace-Lorraine and most of France in 1940, she was a high school student at Strasbourg. The Germans ordered no one to leave the occupied area but, with the help of her well-connected father and the French Resistance, she slipped through German lines and managed to continue her studies in Clermont-Ferrand, in south-central France, where she narrowly escaped a raid by the Nazi Gestapo. With the help of the resistance (contrary to many press reports, she was never an active member), she was able to get to the University of Paris, commonly known as the Sorbonne, to graduate with a medical degree in 1948. 'At the end of my medical studies, the dean of the faculty of medicine told us the military in Indochina did not have enough doctors,' she told the helicopter publication Vertical. 'He suggested us to join the army under a fixed-term contract to see whether we liked it.' In 1963, she married retired French air force Colonel Alexis Santini, whom she first met in Indochina. He died in 1997. They had no children. Details of her surviving family were not immediately known. In 1976, she became the first female general in the French armed forces. Five years later, after her military retirement, she was appointed by the defense minister to lead a commission on the future of women in the French military. On that panel, she told Vertical, she fought to open up roles for women that went beyond administrative tasks. 'I wanted women to be real combatants, not just airclub pilots,' she said, adding that her work began a long process that eventually helped equalize roles. Advertisement She was the subject of a biography, 'Helicopter Heroine: Valérie André ― Surgeon, Pioneer Rescue Pilot, and Her Courage Under Fire' (2022), by aviation historian Charles Morgan Evans. She wrote two volumes of memoirs, 'Ici, Ventilateur!' ('Down Here, Ventilator!'), published in 1954, and 'Madame le Général' (1988), and she spent her retirement in suburban Paris, living on the top floor of a six-story building. Of her choice of apartments, she told Vertical, 'I wanted a lot of sky.'
