Nicole Girard Mangin

The task was enormous and the evacuation was seriously delayed by bad weather. In the midst of the turmoil, a 37 year old woman, Nicole Girard-Mangin, kept a cool head. Born in Paris in 1878, she had spent her childhood in Véry and so knew the Meuse department. At 18, she decided to become a doctor, and enrolled at medical school in Paris. Shortly afterwards, she married André Girard, a wine-maker, and gave up her studies to work with him. She was devastated - but it was not to last. In 1903, after they divorced, she immediately headed back to her lectures at the school of medicine. As war loomed, she was working at a dispensary for tuberculosis patients at Beaujon Hospital in Paris, carrying out research into tuberculosis and cancer. Nicole Girard-Mangin was a modern woman and a committed and passionate doctor. But despite her experience, she had to battle against the prejudices of her era and faced numerous challenges and even injustices. In 1914, due to an administrative error at the Ministry of War, she found herself called up as a military doctor. The army thought she was “Dr Gérard Mangin”. It was a first - a female military doctor at Verdun! When she was posted to Verdun, it was a quiet sector. But when she arrived at the front in September 1914, she received a glacial welcome: “I asked for a man; they sent me a woman!” The tone had been set. But that did not prevent Dr Girard-Mangin from completing her duties: appointed to the rank of assistant doctor, she doggedly cared for typhoid patients at Hospital 13 in Glorieux, a district of Verdun. Late February 1916 came. The Germans were arriving and it was time to evacuate. In the town, panic took hold. The roads quickly became blocked with ambulances full of the wounded. Nicole Mangin completed the task entrusted to her: with professionalism, she organised for her department to be evacuated to Bar-le-Duc Hospital. But a handful of patients remained, dying and too sick to be moved. Nicole, who knew them well, refused to abandon them. The pressure of the battle was mounting. The wounded flooded into Glorieux Hospital. Traumatised by their experiences on the front lines, they spoke of what they had seen and heard. It was impossible for Nicole Mangin and her colleagues to tell whether the information was accurate. Panic grew, exacerbated by the darkness in the hospital which was now without power. The intensive shelling rapidly made the position indefensible and on 25 February, the decision was made to evacuate the medical staff definitively. Aboard an ambulance, Nicole evacuated the last patients, bound for Froidos. The road was dangerous and the journey seemed to take forever, as the ambulance weaved between the falling shells, hit by shrapnel. Nicole was wounded in the face. Fortunately, the injury was superficial and her selfless devotion remained unchanged. Despite her state of extreme fatigue, Nicole Mangin continued to work in the Verdun area until November 1916. She was present for ten months, comforting and caring for the hundreds of wounded patients brought to her each day. Given her service record and her determination, she was worthy of promotion, but the army refused to award her any honours. She died young, in 1919, probably as a result of intense overwork. She was 40 years old. Together with her contemporary, Marie Curie, she completely changed the image of women in medicine, proving that they were capable of being just as effective and brave as men.