Gourmelon, now 50-years-old, got to Diana in the minutes after the crash, and was on hand to hear what would turn out to be her final words.

Apparently, the firefighter had no idea who was inside the car when he first arrived at the scene. As per the Daily Star, he said:

“The car was in a mess and we just dealt with it like any road accident.”

“For me this was simply a banal traffic accident, one of many that emergency services have to deal with and it was the usual causes, speed and a drunk driver…”

“I could see she had a slight injury to her right shoulder but, other than that, there was nothing significant. There was no blood on her at all.”

“I held her hand and told her to be calm and keep still, I said I was there to help and reassured her.”

Princess Diana’s last words

At the time of the accident, Diana sat in the back of a Mercedes S-280 with partner Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed.

Her bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was sitting in the front, together with driver Henri Paul.

When the firefighter, Gourmelon, got to the princess, she was still conscious. He says her last words were: “My God, what’s happened?”

Princess Diana was taken to Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in the French capita, she was pronounced dead several hours later on 31 August 1997.

After Diana was taken to the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital, Xavier Gourmelon went back to the nearby fire station, where he was working a double weekend shift.

Gourmelon has said to  The Sun he was sure Diana would survive.

“To be honest, I thought she would live. As far as I knew when she was in the ambulance she was alive and I expected her to live. “But I found out later she had died in hospital.“

The official report told how the princess had died as a result of massive internal injuries and a ruptured blood vessel next to her heart that led to internal bleeding.

This has been repeatedly challenged over the years, with Mohamed Al-Fayed going as far as to say that his son and Princess Diana were executed by M16 agents.

We continue to miss Princess Diana’s loving and compassionate nature today. The world would certainly be a better place were she still in it.