…All of the men in this war torn land/Salute the nurses of Vietnam.
– Barry Sadler
Very often a new column brings together a number of threads from previous ones, weaving them together into a new tapestry with a unique pattern forming yet another swath of the grand tapestry of sex work. Today’s column is one of them; it is a very small section, just a tiny detail in a very large picture that is ignored, glossed over or at best mentioned in passing in most conventional histories. I’ve linked the other columns from which the threads come, so you can explore them at your leisure.
The story begins somewhere in antiquity, with the rise of the Ouled Nail, a Berber tribe whose women often worked as prostitutes in order to establish themselves before marriage. Though the custom clearly predates their conversion to Islam about the year 700, it is unknown exactly when it started (though in my story “Dance of the Seasons” I imagine it as already established in Carthaginian times). Like the Javanese people I described in Thursday’s column, they saw no conflict in continuing their traditional sexual practices, and their Muslim rulers allowed them to do so for over a thousand years. The French, however, had other ideas; after their conquest of Algeria in 1830 they treated the Nailiyat just as badly as they treated their own home-grown whores,
…[subjecting] them to arbitrary travel and residence restrictions, heavy taxation and ruinously expensive licenses, fees and fines. By the First World War they were reduced to working in specially-licensed cafes (owned, as usual in such regimes, by the politically-connected) whose management devised ways of extorting even more money from the increasingly-exploited Nailiyat. Thus deprived of their traditional means of livelihood, many of them jumped at the chance to earn good money in the new Bordels Mobiles de Campagne (BMCs), mobile brothels housed in trailer-trucks which were used to bring whores to soldiers at the front lines or in isolated outposts…
One of the songs in my first hooker songs column is about a French soldier who has a bad experience in one of these BMCs, which were used by the regular army until the concluding events of today’s column and by the Foreign Legion until about 15 years ago; the term is still used by some French people for the white vans which French prostitutes have used since 2003 to circumvent new anti-streetwalking laws.
The First World War ended 94 years ago today, and the occasion was celebrated as Armistice Day until the Second World War, after which it was known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the US. It’s been my custom for the past two years to commemorate the day with a “hookers in war” theme which purely by coincidence has involved the French each time: two years ago I presented a biography of Mata Hari, and last year I explained how the French revenged themselves upon prostitutes for their humiliation at the hands of the Nazis. This anti-whore campaign led to the increased repressions which gave rise to the sex worker rights movement and eventually developed into the current insanity of attempting to impose the Swedish Model on France. Just as they did in 1945, French politicians have chosen a female figurehead for this crusade, this time in the person of a North African woman; I’m sure that isn’t a coincidence, given the association of the Ouled Nail with prostitution in the minds of many French.
That association became, if anything, stronger after World War I; due to French repression the Nailiyat could no longer make a living in the cafes as they once had, and so increasing numbers of them went to work in the BMCs. Whereas before the only Frenchmen who encountered them were those who travelled to Algeria, for almost four decades any man who had been in the French military had probably had sex with one. After World War II they were often joined by Vietnamese girls, especially in those BMCs sent to care for the troops in Indochina; thus it was that when about 14,000 French troops were airlifted into the town of Dien Bien Phu, more than 150 km behind the Viet Minh lines, they were accompanied by two BMCs staffed with a total of 18 Vietnamese and Ouled Nail prostitutes (the latter usually described as simply “Algerian”).
Though conventional accounts mention the fifteen nurses who flew in and out to evacuate casualties, these eighteen women who stayed with the men around the clock are often ignored or, if mentioned at all, treated as a kind of joke. Considering that the French hid their existence from American journalists and military advisors for fear of offending their prudish sensibilities (and thus endangering American support for their war), it is very likely that nobody would even remember them were it not for war correspondent Bernard Fall, who devoted a chapter of his book Street Without Joy to them. Fall spoke highly of their heroism, especially after the battle began in earnest. One of the flight nurses, Geneviève de Galard, was stranded when her plane was destroyed on the airfield by enemy fire; she gave the whores a crash-course in assistant nursing and they helped her to care for the sick and wounded and comfort the dying all through April of 1954. After the fall of the French garrison on May 7th Galard and the Nailiyat continued to care for the wounded until the Viet Minh allowed the French to evacuate them a few weeks later, but the Vietnamese women were arrested. For her courage and effort Galard was awarded the Légion d´Honneur and the Croix de Guerre TOE; the press dubbed her “L’Ange de Dien Bien Phu” and she was invited to the US, where she was given a ticker tape parade in New York and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for being a “symbol of heroic femininity”. Meanwhile, the Ouled Nail who had displayed the same courage, resolve and concern for the soldiers were forgotten, while their Vietnamese sisters were carted off and incarcerated in brutal “re-education” camps of the sort which are still being used in Vietnam to this day (though the National Assembly voted this past July to close them for good next year and replace them with simple criminalization punished by fines).
Obviously, I have nothing against Galard, who certainly deserved the honors which were heaped upon her. However, it is equally certain that her assistants, women who probably were not really told the danger they were being flown into and yet rose to the occasion anyway, deserve far more honor than they received (doubly so for the Vietnamese women). So I hardly think that, in the absence of any power to confer posthumous knighthoods upon them, anyone has valid cause for complaint if I extend Galard’s title of “angel” to the valiant harlots of Dien Bien Phu.
Beautiful! Thank you so much for such an elegant history lesson.
Thank you for researching and telling us about this — another bit of history that got unsurprisingly glossed over …
I always LOVE these columns, Maggie.
As a retired military guy – I like to see it when working girls get some credit for the role they’ve played supporting the military because I know they helped me when I was having tough times and I saw them help many others.
There have been a lot of people “behind the scenes” who’ve helped our guys in uniform out. Nurses, foremost among those for sure. Military WIVES. Military contractors who develop some kind of new technology that saves lives … etc.
They all get credit for their service though. Whores? Never. And – that’s just wrong.
No one wants to acknowledge that our “honorable boys” in uniform (of which I was one) have a sexual life that sometimes doesn’t agree with the opinions of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public.
One of my collateral duties in the military was as a Casualty Assistance Calls Officer (CACO). When a Sailor died, I’d grab one of his buddies and we’d go through his belongings. We had to ship those things back to his next of kin but we went through everything the deceased Sailor had in his possessions and SHITCANNED anything that might paint a negative picture of him morally. Porn? Usually always found it and we shitcanned it – if the Sailor had a laptop – we went through that and deleted it too. Business card from a massage parlor? Of course – shitcanned. “Who does this telephone number on this napkin belong to?” I’d call it up to see. “Hi Maam … you’re an escort agency – thank you very much?” Number – shitcanned. One number I found once belonged to an independent girl – and she broke down and cried when I told her that a Sailor who had her number had died. I shitcanned her number after the convo.
I mean – we did these things to protect the memory of the Sailor in the minds of his family that survived him. At the same time – we were keeping this aspect of the “human” side of good men buried to everyone.
Thanks Maggie. A beautiful tribute to unknown heroines. Veterans if there ever are.
You’re very welcome, gentlemen! I appreciate the extra kudos on columns like this because, as you might expect, they’re some of the most difficult ones to write; I generally have about a dozen windows open at once, pulling pieces from all over. So it really feels good to get the extra back-pats. 🙂
Wonderful article – thankyou for writing it and posting it for Remembrance Day. And thanks also to ‘krulac’ for his moving and insightful comment.
Agreed. Sometimes krulac and I have our differences, but he’s a good guy, and I’m glad he’s here.
What a remarkable story, yet another one I’d no idea about; thank you.
Thanks Maggie,
Always interesting and poignant to learn what happened behind the scenes in history.
I absolutely loved this column! I feel that assistants are generally ignored when the kudos come around, whores or not. Regarding the French treatment of whores post-WWII, have you seen Malena, starring Monica Bellucci? Though it was based in Italy, her prostitute character was brutally beaten by the townspeople in the movie after the Allies liberated Italy. One of the most difficult scenes I’ve ever watched in a movie.
Heute ist Karnival!
Hello,
I just discovered this site and I think it is wonderful! This is a great yet sad story. It really is a pity that so much of the world has some sort of irrational hatred for prostitutes. I wonder how many of the French servicemen who lost their lives in Indochina spent their last moments of joy being pleasured and comforted by these women. I expect many men throughout world history have had the same experience.
Thanks you for this, Maggie. This is important. Imagine, for a moment, that it is mechanics who are ignored, abused, erased from history. Why those Jeeps and airplanes and tanks keep running only known to historians who make a point of seeking such things out. Some mechanic who loses his life fixing the helicopter so that the wounded can be evacuated never being honored. We would all agree that this was horrible, unjust, unfair in the extreme.
So why is it OK with whores? It isn’t. And you, Maggie McNeil, are doing something about it.
[…] somehow pathological. The Vietnamese and Ouled-Nail prostitutes who served as nurses during the siege of Dien Bien Phu have almost been erased from history, as have the women of Honolulu’s tolerated brothels who […]
I wrote a poem (sestina) Titled “Angels of Dien Bien Phu” inspired and agreeing with you column that the Vietnamese and Ouled-Nail maligned ladies deserved better. I hope my poem does them justice. Is it possible to have it seen in your column?
Please, do post it here!
The Angels of Dien Bien Phu
The plane jounced as it alit in Dien Bien Phu;
Entire camp ringed in iron of screaming shells;
The whole of valley under foe’s concealed guns
Continuously raining their death in tons;
Announcing army’s demise in booming knells.
Twas to be the final flight of nurse and crew.
The plane’s rear punctured oil tank distressed the crew:
They were stuck in the fell mire of Dien Bien Phu,
Where world commanders said, “Rang the fatal knells,”
Of bastion, under horde of screeching shells,
That were abortively dropped on foe in tons,
By own planes braving his anti aircraft guns.
Day and night heedless of the incessant guns
The nurse tendered care along with dauntless crew:
Surgeons, medics and scarlet automa-tons-
(Bordel Mobile de Campagne of Dien Bien Phu.)
Numb to the eternal din, barrage of shells;
Found calling, to comfort, through infernal knells.
The doomed valley echoed with hell’s dark knells;
Shrouded in a pall of smoke by hidden guns
That rained their malefic and unerring shells;
Whelming hospitals, wounded, dying, nurse and crew:
Courtesans trained by sole nurse in Dien Bien Phu,
Mothered hurt and dying as bombs fell in tons.
Their selfless compassion would eclipse the tons
Of the continuously exploding knells
Tolling the whole crucible of Dien Bien Phu
From the mountain entrenched and surrounding guns;
Dismayed naught the nurse nor her fallen crew
Who kept, tended, to suffering in rain and shells.
Wounded, maimed, and dying, some, but empty shells,
Following months of battle and bombs in megatons,
Were captured along with nurse and miscalled crew,
As bells round the valley rang victory knells;
Hailed end of combat and cessation of guns
In lost valley debacle of Dien Bien Phu.
Forgotten are the shell and hell’s dark knells.
Larks call from earth, turned in tons by incessant shells,
As nurse and BMC crew halos flaunt over Dien Bien Phu.
Thank you Ms. McNeill
Hi
I’m just starting some research on the Ouled-Nail and Viet Namese women at Dien Bien Phu. The idea is to publish an English-language book recognizing the invisibility of particular categories of women women in hypermasculine war (and peace) culture, and the tendency to deny their existence for the reasons you outline above. I will travel to France to read diaries and so on as far as they exist; but I wanted to ask you where the quote you use came from. Would you mind sharing your source?
Many thanks
David Roberts
Loughborough University (UK)
I have read different accounts of the women at Dien Bien Phu. One said that the Vietnamese women were led away and executed by the Viet Minh after the battle. I tend to doubt that although I am sure the Vietnamese women were very badly treated.
I have read that they did help as nurses during the battle. I wonder if there are any accounts of this, including by the women.
I also read that one of the women got married to a soldier and they had two children and seemed to live a decent life after the battle. I do not know if she was Vietnamese or Algerian.
At Dien Bien Phu I doubt they lived and or worked in large trailers. I should think they used some tents. The trailers would have made ready targets for very accurate Viet Minh artillery.
Thanks very much for your account.