Angel's Return

In dusty sneakers and oversize camouflaged fatigues, the tired-looking air-force nurse stepped down from the hospital plane at Hanoi's Bachmai airfield. Two generals waited on the runway to greet her; a noisy throng of officers and friends closed in to cheer her, and a few reached through the crush just to touch her.

Lieut. Genevieve de Galard Terraube, 29, --not four months in Indo-China, not yet one year out of nursing school--waved happily in the turmoil, then laughed. After 41 days of battle and 18 days of Red captivity, she was back from Dienbienphu.

"Stay for the Siege." Last March 26 Genevieve de Galard wrote a letter to her mother, the Vicomtesse de Galard Terraube, in Paris: "There is no reason why anything should happen to me . . . but I am about to leave for Dienbienphu. I am sure God will protect me, and the poor soldiers who are waiting to be evacuated surely deserve that every effort should be made to get them out." At 3 a.m. next morning she landed at the besieged fort, still wearing her blue uniform skirt, a lock of hair flopping loosely across her forehead.

Genevieve de Galard had flown to Dienbienphu many times before by moonlight (the planes would not tempt Communist fire by day), but this time the C-47 sprang an oil leak and could not be repaired until morning. Promptly at dawn the Communists knocked the C-47 DEGut of the war, and Nurse de Galard was marooned with the garrison. "The boys have invited me to stay for the siege," she radioed her mother via GHQ.

"A True Soldier." Last week in Hanoi the wounded told the story of her next eight weeks. "She seemed a bit demoralized for the first two or three days," said a wounded French sergeant, "but she soon got hold of herself and started working at all hours of night and day." From scraps of radio-telephone and teleprinter messages from Dienbienphu, a legend was born: in headlines around the free world, Genevieve de Galard became "the angel of Dienbienphu."

In Geneva, the Red Viet Minh delegates talked about her; in Manhattan, student nurses prayed for her; in Washington, President Eisenhower said she should be named the "Woman of the Year." Before the League of Red Cross Societies, U.S. General Bedell Smith called her the epitome of nursely virtue. "Poor little one," said her mother the Vicomtesse in Paris. "She has no clothes to put on. She must have been wearing the same dress for 20 days. She is a true soldier."

"Courage under Fire." In Dienbien-phu's underground hospital, amid the stench of death, antiseptics and rotting wounds, Nurse de Galard lost 18 Ibs. in work and worry, She cut her hair very short; she switched at last to green fatigues, changing sometimes to a paratrooper's trousers and shirt. She had her own dugout with silk sheets, made from parachutes by one of General de Castries' orderlies, but more often she would sleep on a cot beside the wounded. Often, during the bitter days, she would take the last messages of the dying. "I am glad I am trapped," she once told GHQ. "I am proud to be here." Only once did she request a favor: she wanted new underwear, cosmetics and some clean blouses. But her package was dropped, like so much of Dienbienphu's supply, behind the Communist lines.

In Dienbienphu's last week of freedom, De Castries presented her with the Legion of Honor, kissing her on both cheeks. "The entire garrison wishes it could do the same," said the general. On May 4 he presented her with the Military Cross with palms "for courage under fire." Privately, De Castries told GHQ: "It is tragic that she must live here in this manner. She never stops working until she falls on her feet." As the Communists came in for their final assault, she sent her own final message to Hanoi: "Tell my mother not to worry. All goes well."

Not until last week did the Communists start releasing the wounded in sizable planeloads: by week's end 422 of a promised 858 were safe in Hanoi. Then came Genevieve de Galard. "I am quite well," she told the crowd at the airfield, "but I have nothing to say, and I have made up my mind about that." Then, still smiling, she was driven off into Hanoi for a medical check, a good meal and a quiet night's sleep.

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