Paris (VNA) – On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu Victory (May 7, 1954), reporters of the Vietnam News Agency in Paris have visited 99-year-old Geneviève de Galard, the only female flight nurse of the French force in the historic 56-day campaign.
During the campaign, Geneviève participated in several emergency flights to bring injured soldiers out of the battlefield. On March 28, the Dakota plane that took her to Dien Bien Phu to pick up wounded soldiers broke down, unable to take off and then destroyed by artillery shells, leaving her stranded in Dien Bien Phu.
At that time, Geneviève de Galard was the only French woman in the Dien Bien Phu battlefield, because the other female nurses were evacuated as soon as the war began.
She and two surgeons together took care of wounded French soldiers for more than a month. When the campaign ended, after 17 days of being taken as a prisoner with other French soldiers, on May 24, 1954, she was granted freedom by President Ho Chi Minh and returned to France at the beginning of June.
At the age of 80, Geneviève de Galard released her memoir named "Une femme à Dien Bien Phu" (A woman in Dien Bien Phu), featuring her life and special fate in the campaign that shook the world that day. This memoir was evaluated by the French press as being meticulous in every detail and rich in humanity, helping generations of the public better understand a tragic page in the French history.
Geneviève is now living with her husband, Jean de Heaulme, at a nursing centre in Toulouse city./.
