Madeleine is a career officer with two uniforms: a green one (Army) and a blue one (Paris firefighters), but you won't find her water-hose in hand "because I'm not trained to fight fires," she says. But you may see her providing first aid at the scene of an accident whilst awaiting the doctor’s arrival because she has undergone extensive first responder training…
Morena follows through with her ideas. When she was three years old this funny, lively woman - feminine to the tips of her varnished nails – who is today the Secretary General of the European defense group MBDA, announced to her family that she would be an aerospace engineer or an astronaut when she grew up. “I don’t know where I got this idea from because my parents weren’t in this sector at all. I guess I was just born like that,” she laughs…
Caroline, born and bred in Paris, is the first member of her family to join the Armed Forces. “I'd been attracted since I was little by security professions,” she recounts in a calm, deep voice. “When I was thinking about what I wanted to do I was attracted by the academic side of the special Military School of Saint-Cyr (ESM St Cyr) because I wanted a rounded education….
You see that under Justine's name it says "Navy"; if I’d interviewed her a few years ago, it would have read “Air Force”. She smiles, acknowledging that "it's very rare" to change force but that, in her particular case, it made sense. "Navy command came to get me," she says, four years after she joined the Air Force. But that doesn't mean she's no longer interested in things that fly…
By the time she turns 28, Honorine will already have 10 years of professional life under her belt, enough experience to easily find work in the civilian world when her contract with the French Navy ends. Pragmatic, this bubbly young mother of a two-year-old boy, already knows that she’ll leave the institution in 2026. “In the Navy we are transferred every three years. My husband is also in the Navy, so with a child, we considered that it was preferable for one of us to leave…”
What is a 22-year-old former jazz dancer from Reunion, who used to struggle against authority and who suffers from vertigo, doing in the army? Manon laughs, well aware that her career path so far may seem improbable. “It’s true that when I first heard that I had to do a commando initiation course I had real doubts. I mean, I get dizzy just standing on a table so I thought I’d never manage! But in fact, the military environment makes you surpass yourself all the time,” she remarks…
