Corporal Jacqueline

Sergeant Jacqueline. Personal photo.

Corporal Jacqueline always wanted “to wear a uniform.” As a teenager, her Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings were spent training as a young firefighter. So it was natural that her first choice of uniform was that worn by the Paris Fire Brigade which is actually a unit of the French Army but under the authority of the Paris prefect.

The problem was that Jacqueline wears glasses, which banned her outright. So, at the age of 19, she went instead to the army recruiting office in the Nord Pas de Calais, where she grew up, and was offered training as a parachute folder. It was a logical suggestion by the recruiting officer because Jacqueline had passed a vocational baccalaureate in fashion! It's hard to imagine anything less suitable for a soldier! “I come from a large family and my mother didn't want us to study far from home. So actually this bac was the only one offered nearby that I was vaguely interested in.”

Jacqueline, a sporty tom-boy brought up amongst brothers, quickly made it clear to the recruiter that parachute folding was not for her. So that's when her past as a young firefighter came to the rescue: she became a first aid stretcher carrier. “I chose the 13th Engineer Regiment because it’s a regiment that sees action,” she explains. As stretcher bearing is not a full time position, she also worked in the accountant's office. “But I loathe working in an office,” she shudders. “I need action, so after three years I asked to be transferred to the combat section.”

““There’s no gender in the army. 
Everyone hurts””

So far she's been deployed to Guyana and Mali. Too bad for her mother who wanted her close to home! “True, but that was only applicable when I was young,” she smiles. “Today my parents are really proud even if they worry when I'm on deployment abroad.” Curiously, her favourite military operation so far has been in the tropical heat of Guyana. “My partner, who was also in the military until a year ago, is from the Ivory Coast and I'd been there three times so was familiar with humidity and heat,” she tells me. But above all, it was the mission itself that she enjoyed. “In Guyana we spent hours walking. We were active.” As a foot soldier her job was to deploy with her team and find the illegal artisanal and small-scale gold miners in the Amazon rainforest. Each soldier carried a 48-hour survival kit containing food and water. “But often we had to drink the opaque, brown, river water which we purified with tablets. But I never got sick,” she stresses.

She's still amused at having had to dress with wet clothes in the mornings “because every evening we'd wash all our clothes but the high levels of humidity meant they never got dry overnight.” And then there were the little arguments with her fellow soldiers over who should carry the chainsaws and, more particularly, the sledgehammer. “I found that we wasted less time if I just kept it in my bag all day instead of having to tip everything out the bag to reach the sledgehammer at the bottom just so we could swap it with somebody else every two hours.” Yet Jacqueline is no Rambo. She stands 1m69 tall and weighs 54 kg but passionately believes that “there’s no gender in the army. Everyone hurts” and she finds that many of her female colleague are “too soppy and sissy.” She thinks “boys are more trustworthy.” 

Jacqueline receiving her first medal. Personal photo.

On her return she received a citation with a gold medal and a bronze star. “I wasn't expecting it at all,” she says, adding nonchalantly that she has since collected five more. “When we come back from Mali we receive three medals and then I have some from Operation Sentinelle.”

On her return from Guyana, she passed her heavy goods vehicle licence enabling her to drive the VAB (véhicule de l'avant blindé) armoured troop transport vehicle, and it was as a driver of the VAB that she deployed to Mali for a few months until February 2020.

In the course of our conversation she makes a passing reference to a son, then to two! It turns out that she'd already had her first born when she went to Guyana. “My partner was still in the military at the time, so our eldest son was basically living with his aunt. Now he's clearly punishing me: every time I'd phone from Mali he'd ask me at what time I was coming home. It was becoming unworkable with both parents in the military, so my partner found work as a civilian security guard. That's been really helpful.” Having become a trainer and not wanting to end up in an office again, she waited until the 22nd week of her second pregnancy before revealing her condition to her superiors ... who chided her on grounds she had been irresponsible both for her own health and that of the child she was carrying. Her youngest son is, nevertheless, doing just fine. 

In a military transport plane in Mali. Personal photo.

Today Jacqueline has just qualified as a gunsmith for the combat team she commands. She has learned to dismantle and reassemble all the weapons in the team and can make a first diagnosis in the event of a malfunction.

This versatile young woman has no desire whatsoever to go back to studying so is not interested in attending the Saint-Maixent non-commissioned officers' school. “My commanders already have confidence in me,” she stresses, adding that she also really enjoys the atmosphere among the rank and file. “We're like a family, we're together all the time, a bit like at boarding school,” she laughs.