Schoendoerffer was still injured and wore bandages when he chose to return to the battlefield. Officers told him "it's wasted, don't go!" (""c'est foutu, n'y va pas!""), but he insisted as " had to be there to testify" as he planned to give his film to the pilots, after the battle, as an homage. However, nobody saw this footage since he destroyed his own camera and all his 60-second-films on May 7, except for six of them which were confiscated by the Viet Minh during an aborted escape and ended up in the hands of Soviet cameraman Roman Karmen. As a 25-year-old corporal cameraman, Schoendoerffer was not actually a journalist, but the French Army did not interfere and let him shoot everything he wanted. His films were supposed to be sent to the rear on March 28, using a C-47 belonging to a military nurse named Geneviève de Galard, but the C-47 was damaged beyond repair by Viet Minh artillery that hit the Red Cross aircraft.