Helicopter Heroine

Valérie André - Surgeon, Pioneer Rescue Pilot, and Her Courage Under Fire

De: Charles Morgan Evans

Narrado por: Nancy Peterson

Duración: 16 h y 46 m

Resumen del Editor

Valerie Andre was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1922. From an early age, she wanted to fly, but as a woman, she faced challenges. While boys could receive government-funded flight lessons, Andre had to pay for hers by tutoring. During World War II, she left Strasbourg against German prohibitions in order to study medicine in Paris, where she completed her studies under threat of arrest by the Gestapo. Assigned to an army hospital in Saigon in French Indochina in the late 1940s, Andre trained as a neurosurgeon. When the French medical corps developed mobile surgical units to be air-dropped into military outposts, she volunteered, and when the service acquired a few primitive helicopters, she volunteered for that, which meant learning to fly helicopters in combat. Flying through bullets and bombs, fatigue, parasitic illness, and mechanical issues with the helicopters, Andre nonetheless became a legend in Indochina.

After Indochina, she continued to be an innovator in military aviation and medicine as well as an advocate for women's integration into the French military. In 1975, she became the first female general in the French army, and at her retirement, she had flown nearly 500 combat missions, logged 4,000 hours in helicopters, and won the Croix de Guerre five times, the Cross of Military Valor twice, and the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit.

©2022 Charles Morgan Evans (P)2023 Tantor

Incredible story of an incredible trailblazer

What a fantastic book! This is an impressive breakthrough accomplishment to tell for the first time in English the incredible life and times of the first female helicopter pilot, who later became France's first woman general, and so much more. The in-depth discussion of her early life in occupied France and continuing a life of danger as a parachutist and combat rescue helicopter pilot, first in Vietnam and then in Algeria, was amazing and read expertly, clearly and with empathy by the narrator. Valerie Andre's accomplishments after returning to France to continue to push for full integration of women into the armed forces was also heartwarming and moving. Highly recommended!