“As a doctor, she had already faced misogyny in the French medical corps. But she persevered. It would be no different for her as a rescue pilot.”

By Charles Morgan Evans

AT A remote French army outpost near Nam Dinh, Vietnam, in November 1952, a group of soldiers waited with one of their wounded. They were told by radio that a chopper from Hanoi was on its way.

Helicopters were introduced to the war in Indochina only the year before. No longer would troops in the field have to move a wounded man in a truck or jeep across kilometers of almost non-existent roads, always exposed to ambush, to get to an airstrip where a fixed-wing medevac plane waited. Often just transporting a casualty to a runway for evacuation was more than a wounded soldier could bear; many died en route. The helicopter changed all of that.

As the helicopter made its approach on this day, the soldiers noted its strange, somewhat delicate insect-like appearance. They had never seen one before. But that wasn’t the only thing that struck them as odd.

As the copter touched down in the outpost compound, the men noticed the pilot: It was a woman. Petite in stature, but very self-assured in her bearing, she executed a precision landing. Time was always of the essence to get the wounded loaded onto one of the Stokes litters on each side of the flying machine, a Hiller 360. The young woman motioned to the men to help her secure the wounded soldier, not wasting a second. The enemy Viet Minh were always lurking in the shadows. They would not hesitate to fire at such an inviting target, even despite the large red crosses painted the fuselage.

With the casualty loaded, the mysterious pilot made her way back into the cockpit and signalled that she was ready to lift off. The soldiers stood back and watched in awe. In moments, the helicopter lifted off and disappeared over the horizon. Who was this angel of the battlefield, they wondered. The helicopter itself seemed like something out of a future fantasy. But also to be piloted by a woman? It was beyond comprehension.

She was Valérie André, a captain in the French medical corps, a gifted surgeon and one of the founding members of France’s recently inaugurated military helicopter rescue squadron. By the time André picked up the wounded soldier at Nam Dinh, she had already served as a surgeon in Vietnam with the French military medical corps for five years. But it was her work as rescue helicopter pilot that would make her a legend.

André’s story began in Strasbourg, France on April 21, 1922. Her destiny as an aviator was sealed when at age 10 she met the acclaimed aviatrix Maryse Hilsz, who had just completed a nearly 13,000-mile journey from Paris to Saigon and back. Young Valerie was hooked on aviation and became a regular fixture at the Strasbourg aerodrome, eventually getting her first flying lesson in the summer of 1939.

“Boys were trained to fly free as part of national defense,” André said. “I had to pay for my lessons.”

Flying wasn’t André’s only passion in life; she also hoped one day to become a doctor. To that second end, she planned to enroll in medical school.

Her dual pursuits of aviation and medicine were both upended with the outbreak of war in 1939, and then the German invasion of France in 1940. With Strasbourg occupied by the enemy, 18-year-old Valerie chose to leave and pursue her studies elsewhere. It was a decision that would place her life in danger.

Residents of Strasbourg were forbidden by the Germans to leave without authorization. Even when she was attending a university in Claremont-Ferrand, the Gestapo raided her university, searching it for resistance operatives and saboteurs, along with Jewish students and faculty. André narrowly evaded arrest. Afterwards, she fled to Paris where she lived underground with the threat of capture by German authorities until the summer of 1944.

Valerie witnessed the liberation of Paris in August 1944 by the Free French; she compared the exile army to an incarnation of “modern knights.”

When she finally graduated from medical school in 1947, she volunteered for service in French Indochina as a doctor in the French army medical corps. The colony of Indochina—made up of what’s now Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam—had been a French possession since the mid-19th century.

France had been battling Vietnamese nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh who sought independence for Vietnam for a year by that point. Amid the intensifying fighting, the French Army was suffering massive casualties. Doctors were in short supply.

When André arrived in Vietnam, she was put to work treating casualties. At times she performed over 100 surgeries per month. However, her intense interest in all things related to aviation never left her. When she had an opportunity to volunteer as part of a medical team that parachuted into remote French military outposts throughout Indochina, she jumped at the chance.

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.”

André’s career would take a turn in 1950 with the arrival in Vietnam of an English pilot named Alan Bristow. A wartime flier and founder of Bristow Helicopters, he flew into Saigon by chopper to sell the French military on the new Hiller UH12/360. He’d been hoping to close a deal in Indo China since the year before. This time however, Bristow was able to convince the French air force of the helicopter’s utility as a flying ambulance, one that could land at even the remotest outpost that could be hours from the nearest airfield or days from the nearest hospital.

The air force were impressed and bought two Hillers, ushering in the first use of helicopters for medical rescue in Vietnam. André was among those who witnessed a demonstration of the Hiller in Saigon in 1950 and immediately lobbied her superiors for a chance to become a rescue pilot.

“I had medical training to stabilize the wounded,” she said. “And I weighed less than 45 kilograms (99 lbs), which meant we could even carry an extra wounded man if necessary.”

André’s argument may have had merit, but it was not easy to convince her superiors. As a doctor, she had already faced misogyny in the French medical corps, with some branding her threat to the “prestige of men.” But she persevered. It would be no different for her as a rescue pilot. Fortunately, she had an ally in the commanding officer of the nascent helicopter squadron. A Corsican named Alexis Santini, he was tough, but also fair-minded, and told Valerie that if she could perform equal to a male pilot, he would put her into service.

Following her flight training back in France, and several months of practice flights in Vietnam, André flew her first rescue mission on Jan. 22, 1951. She would go on to fly 127 more.

As a rescue pilot, danger was André’s constant companion. It often took more than an hour to reach a remote French outpost, and once there, she often had to be escorted by fighter aircraft that strafed and napalmed the surrounding areas to disperse the Viet Minh. The transfer of a wounded soldier had to be accomplished in a few minutes, or the insurgents would regroup and target André’s helicopter, despite the red crosses painted prominently on its fuselage.

Enemy groundfire wasn’t the only danger; the helicopter itself was mechanically temperamental. In one case, her Hiller overheated leaving her stranded in no man’s land. Fortunately, a French mobile group found her before the Viet Minh.

On another mission, her wounded patient regained consciousness mid-flight and, in a panic, tried to wrest control of the helicopter from André. Fortunately, the wounded soldier fell back into a coma before the helicopter crashed.  

Andre proved her mettle as a pilot, both in health and in sickness. There were times she was plagued by amoebic diseases, common to Westerners who served in the Far East, but she managed to carry on.

Despite these hardships, indeed because of them, she earned the respect of all who served with her. And to the men whom she rescued in the field, she was an angel of mercy who descended from the heavens.

André would also go on to serve in Algeria as both a medical rescue and troop transport pilot and chief medical officer for Reghaïa airbase near Algiers. By this time, Valerie had graduated to piloting more sophisticated Sikorsky H-34s and SUD Alouette IIs.

When she returned to France in 1962, Valerie continued in the French army as a medical officer assigned to air bases throughout France. She never lost her fascination with helicopters, however. When André was assigned as a medical inspector, she was issued her own Alouette II helicopter to cover the wide distances between locations.

In 1963 André and her old commanding officer, Alexis Santini, were married. She described the man who had faith in her ability to fly the one who “mattered most in her life.”

Valerie Andre remained in the French army and rose through the ranks, becoming a colonel in 1970 and then a brigadier general in 1975—a first for women in the French military.

In 1982, Valérie André was promoted to full general/medical inspector. During the latter part of her military career, Andre was also a catalyst for change in the French military medical corps, lobbying for gender equality based on merit for women pursuing medical careers in the military. She was able to garner the support of members of the French National Assembly to level admission standards that had favored male applicants over women. As a result of her efforts, women now represent more than 50 per cent of the corps’ personnel.

In April 2024, Valérie André celebrated her 102nd birthday. Today she lives quietly in her adopted town of Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Valerie has always been a modest person but one who has also fought fiercely for the causes she believes in.

“I have always been a rebel,” she once said. “I rebelled against outdated injustices or outdated traditions. But I was always a rebel who liked order…and risks.”

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Charles Morgan Evans is the author of Helicopter Heroine—Valerie Andre—Surgeon, Pioneer Rescue Pilot, and Her Courage Under Fire, published by Stackpole Books, 2023. He is also the founding curator of the Hiller Aviation Museum in Northern California. His e-mail is: charlesmevans@hotmail.com