Historical Figures

Nicole Girard-Mangin, doctor at the front

French doctor, Nicole Girard-Mangin (1878 – 1919) volunteered to go to the front during the First World War. Mobilized by mistake, she is the only French female doctor at the front.

An unconventional journey

Child of middle class merchants, Nicole Mangin was born in Paris on October 11, 1878. She grew up in Véry, in the Meuse, where her parents came from. Intelligent and precocious, she obtained a degree in natural sciences at the age of 18 and started in the wake of medical studies, a career already very unusual at the time for a woman. In 1899, she was admitted to the externship of the hospitals of Paris.

However, Nicole interrupts her journey to marry a wine merchant, André Girard, with whom she will have a son, Etienne. For a few years, she worked alongside him in the exploitation of champagne, but André's infidelities quickly got the better of their union; in 1903, Nicole divorced and resumed her medical studies thanks to her alimony. Three years later, she defended her thesis on cancer poisons .

Nicole specializes in the study of tuberculosis, lung disease and cancer. Recognized in her field, she represented France at the International Congress of Vienna with Albert Robin, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris. Far from being satisfied with her research work and the publications she signs, Nicole is also working to set up an anti-tuberculosis clinic.

“I had asked for the help of a doctor”

When the First World War broke out, Nicole volunteered under the name of Doctor Girard-Mangin. That we do not notice his first name, or that we confuse his surname Girard with the first name Gérard , no one suspects that a woman is hiding behind this name. The army lacks doctors, and Nicole is mobilized.

When she arrives at the Bourbonne-les-Bains cure center in Haute-Marne, which is to be transformed into a military hospital, the head doctor does not believe his eyes and prepares to send her away. "I had asked for the reinforcement of an auxiliary doctor, not a shop assistant" . Undaunted, Nicole presents her convocation and her diplomas. “You see me sorry, but I am assigned to your establishment and I feel perfectly capable of carrying out the duties that fall to me. »

Despite reluctance, Nicole quickly proved herself at the Bourbonne-les-Bains hospital before being assigned to the Verdun sector, to care for people with typhus. She would write to her family: “Everywhere, I was welcomed as you know. Then, after a while, we got to know each other. I was made excuses, they admitted that I was capable of something. »

Only female doctor at the front

The French army does not have uniforms for female military doctors and Nicole Girard-Mangin disagrees sees creating one on the British model. On this subject, she writes:“It is very likely that a few years, what am I saying, a few months after our victory, I will have an amused smile for my singular getup. (…) It will be unfair and ridiculous. I owe my cap to having kept a correct hairstyle, even while sleeping on stretchers; to have lasted for hours on a narrow seat without disturbing the driver. I owe it to my multiple pockets to have always possessed basic necessities, a knife, a beaker, a comb, string, a lighter, an electric lamp, sugar and chocolate. (…) Finally, I owe to my caduceus and my brisques the prestige that I sometimes needed among the ignorant and the stupid »

Nicole remains in Verdun, multiplying the tasks to make herself useful beyond the care of the wounded and sick, until the shells rain down from February 21, 1916. The evacuation begins. Refusing to abandon the wounded in her care, Nicole gets behind the wheel of an ambulance car and takes the lead of the convoy under the deluge of fire. A splinter shatters a window of the vehicle; injured in the cheek, Nicole's face is bleeding but continues the evacuation. Behind the lines, she operates on the wounded and goes to the battlefield to provide first aid.

Welcomed as a heroine, Nicole was assigned to the Somme, in a tuberculosis treatment unit at the Moulle hospital in Pas-de-Calais, then to Ypres in Belgium. Her skills, efficiency and energy earned her, in December 1916, her appointment as medical officer. The same year, he was entrusted with the management of the Edith Cavell hospital-school in Paris, with the rank of doctor-captain. Nicole continued her medical activities there with the sick and trained auxiliary nurses until the end of the war.

After the war

At the end of the war, Nicole Girard-Mangin continued her work at the Edith Cavell hospital-school. Invested in the feminist movement The Union of French Women , she gives lectures on the role of women during the war. She also attends meetings of the Red Cross dedicated to the fight against tuberculosis, and plays an active role in the creation of the National League against Cancer.

In June 1919, Nicole was found dead at her home, of a drug overdose, at the age of 41. Several hypotheses have been raised, whether she was the victim of overwork and depression or whether she committed suicide after discovering that she had an incurable cancer. Nicole Girard-Mangin is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, without having received the slightest decoration for her service.