He most notably commanding the "Mobile Surgical Unit" during the prolonged Battle of Dien Bien Phu, after which he was taken prisoner and briefly held captive by the Viet Minh.
[1] After the Viet Minh siege began in early March, Grauwin was kept busy with large numbers of casualties that flooded his surgical bunker.
Supplies dropped from the air included the contents of a United States field hospital with pyjamas, sheets, beds and vials of antibiotics.
He also received two new aides: Private Fleury and Geneviève de Galard [5] In the last week of April, with the airstrip no longer usable, Grauwin's hospital contained more than one thousand wounded, and he had begun using some of the women from the base's brothels as medical orderlies.
[6] By the end of the battle in May, Grauwin had more than 1,300 wounded in the makeshift wards of his hospital, and deprived by the shelling of electricity, was forced to operate by candlelight.