Major Madeleine

Madeleine in her blue uniform of the Paris Fire Brigade. Photo credit: personal collection

Madeleine is a career officer with two uniforms: a khaki 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 explains. 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.

The reason for her two uniforms is that the Paris Fire Brigade (BSPP or Brigade des Sapeurs-pompiers de Paris) is an engineering unit of the Army, placed under the authority of the Paris Police Prefect.

It was serendipity that introduced her to the blue uniform. “I wanted to command a unit in an engineering combat company. In 2015 I was offered an opportunity to command the infrastructure support company at the Paris Fire Brigade. Our job was to maintain and repair the city’s 80 fire stations.” Madeleine commanded this company between 2016-18.

““This is a job that has a very strong impact on our personal life””

She liked what she saw at the BSPP so much that she’s asked to return there, which – if all goes well – could happen in 2027 or 2028, probably to do two different jobs over a period of four years.

And Madeleine wearing her khaki uniform on deployment in Afghanistan. Photo credit: personal collection

The main advantage for her: "It's in Paris and it gives me professional visibility." Because as the young mother of two children, born in 2020 and 2022, who’s just finished her two-year senior officers’ course at the École de Guerre in Paris, she’d like to limit geographical moves so that her husband can also develop his own professional activity.

She readily admits that her "youthful choice" to join the Army was made without any real understanding of what that decision would actually entail.

She was a good student at school but, like many youngsters, didn't know exactly what she wanted to do. So, as she loved literature, she undertook a literary preparation for the École Normale Supérieure competitive entrance exam which, had she succeeded, would have led to a university career. "The world of work seemed to me to be flat and boring; becoming a professor really didn’t appeal; and I wanted a job where I would be of service.” So, she turned to the army and the competitive entrance exam for the Special Military School of Saint-Cyr (ESM St Cyr) which provides the ab-initio training for Army officers.

As an active member of an athletics club, Madeleine was not worried about the physical endurance and sports tests. Nevertheless "I underestimated the volume of sport involved and I had to catch up on the job!”

The first few weeks at Saint-Cyr were "a real shock to the system," she laughs. “I was discovering absolutely everything about military life and it was so weird. The main issues are to get accustomed to the daily routine in the community and accept that you have no control over your time,” she explains. “Everything is timed: getting up, washing, eating, resting.” She began to have niggling doubts about her choice of career. So Madeleine approached her commanding officer “who knew how to address my doubts and was able to re-motivate me.”

But she admits there are still "a lot of times when I have doubts because this is a job that has a very strong impact on my personal life.” She’s done the arithmetic. “During the five years I was stationed at the 3rd Engineer Regiment in Charleville-Mézières I was away from home, that is I didn’t sleep in my house, for 699 nights.” In other words 38.25% of her time “but that's completely normal,” she insists.

Fortunately her husband, a former soldier, is familiar with the institution. So he knows what to expect. Madeleine observes that “women, and in particular officers, are very often in relationships with soldiers or former soldiers.” Still, she stresses that the “question of absences is a real question.” As an officer changes job every two years and their spouse often has their own career so doesn’t want to be moving all the time, “the result is that very many military personnel are geographically celibate.” In other words their family settles somewhere to allow the spouse to develop their own career and the children to have a normal school life, while the one who is military does their job and only comes home at the weekends.

Madeleine has wangled it so that’s she’s been in the Paris region for several years now. Before her mission at the BSPP she’d spent three years at the Saint-Cyr military lycée, 2km as the crow flies from the Grand Canal of the Château de Versailles. She wasn’t a teacher but commanded a company of 130-180 students in preparatory classes and studying for a cyber technical diploma. “I was in charge of their military training and traditional activities, I supervised their daily routines and ensured there was a balance between respect for the rules and a bond of trust.” And she taught them that in the military "you don't have to be friends but you have to be good comrades with everybody.”

And then she passed the competitive exam for the École de Guerre (at the end of the Champ de Mars opposite the Eiffel Tower) where the military leaders of tomorrow are trained. Only a third of candidates succeed. “However, far better to sit the exam and fail than not to sit it at all,” she advises “because not even trying is frowned upon by the hierarchy.”

Madeleine in the army’s beige dress uniform last June when she was awrded the National Order of Merit. Photo credit: personal collection.

Before their course begins, the successful officers must undertake a six-month mission abroad which, in Madeleine’s case would have been from July 2020 to January 2021. But she’d given birth to her first child in July 2020 so didn’t want to leave her baby to go abroad. So, on the advice of her commanding officer and thanks to her BA in history and MA in international relations and strategy earned at the ESM, she was offered instead a five-month internship in Paris as a research officer at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). She believes “this experience stretched my mind.”

So far she’s undertaken two missions abroad: in 2012 she spent four months as commander of the deconstruction and depolluting section on Hao, French Polynesia, which served as the rear base for the Mururoa nuclear experimentation centre. She later spent six months with NATO forces in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she commanded mine-clearance activities and advised her commanders on operations that involved explosives of all kinds (unexploded munitions, suspicious objects, old munitions uncovered by accident).

Her ambition: “In the medium term, I want to command the support and relief group of the BSPP.” We’ll see in around 2030 if she’s managed!