Regimental Sergeant-Major Delphine
I'd always wondered why the beret worn in France's mountain regiments is much bigger than those worn in other regiments. “That's because it was designed to be stuffed with straw so that you could then put your feet in there and keep them warm,” Delphine laughs.
Brought up in Grenoble at the foot of the Alps, Delphine was naturally drawn to a mountain regiment, although it wasn't the one she began her career in. She has earned her military mountaineering certificate but not yet the skiing one, although she is a competent leisure skier. “I adore being paid to do sports,” this earnest young woman tells me, brushing aside any idea that tramping through snow, carrying skis and 30kgs on your back is hard. “We are trained with progressively heavier loads and whether you're a man or a woman it's all the same. We're really all together and everyone has to prove their worth.” But she does concede that being 1m77 tall “does make it easier for me.”
Delphine is a regimental sergeant-major in the 93rd Mountain Artillery Regiment where she’s about to complete training as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller, better known as a JTAC.
Her task is to be in a forward position on the theatre of operation to direct the action of combat aircraft supporting the troops on the ground or engaged in other offensive air operations. “It's an extremely demanding job that requires one's full commitment,” she says. Once she has completed her training in April 2021 she will be one of only two female JTACs in her regiment and will join the elite team of some 60 French army JTACs.
“We're very short of JTAC's” she tells me in a WhatsApp conversation “because there aren't very many candidates.” The reason, she says, is that an extremely good command of English is vital and that overall “this is one of the hardest and longest courses in the army.” The English she learnt at school has been honed through travel but she's currently taking private lessons to ensure that her language skills are up to scratch. She has to get an average 80% in all the credits which include things like topography and terminology.
A number of the women I've portrayed on this website owe a great deal to a single school teacher. So does Delphine, in a backwards sort of way. “By the time I was 15 I'd gone from wanting to be a vet to a soldier. I got a scientific baccalaureate but one teacher said I didn't have the skills to prepare the maths option competitive exam to get into the St Cyr officer training school so pushed me into doing the literary option. It didn't work out,” she states simply.
So instead she went to the non-commissioned officers' training school at Saint Maixent. “But,” she adds hastily, “I really have no regrets at all because as a non-commissioned officer I can stay in my speciality much longer than as an officer who would only stay in their speciality for four or five years.”
Delphine isn't sure what drew her to the army. She's the only child of doctor parents and nobody else in the family was in the military, although she discovered quite recently that her mother had had dreams of being a combat pilot! “But I was always passionately interested in the army, it seemed to correspond to my personality, there seemed to be a wide variety of jobs available, I would get to travel and I would be serving my country, which was important to me.” Just to make sure, when she was 16 she spent a week doing an 'army discovery course' and loved it.
When a youngster walks into an army recruitment office, a lengthy process starts to establish which of the 350 or so specialities they will be good at. “There is really something for everyone,” Delphine remarks. Selection tests hone it further so that by the end of the eight months at Saint Maixent the young, non-commissioned officer has a speciality. In Delphine's case this was as an artillery observer which means she serves as the eyes of the guns by sending target locations and if necessary correcting them. She has command authority and can order fire including the type and amount of ammunition to be fired. So moving on to JTAC was the natural next step up for an artillery observer..
She was 20 when she signed a five-year contract to join the army 10 years ago. She followed it up with a six-year contract, but, now, having passed the Army Technician Higher Certificate, a pre-requisite to becoming a career non-commissioned officer, Delphine has decided to make the military her career and hopes to sit the exam to become an officer in the next few years.
She's married to a soldier from a different regiment “which makes things easier because we understand what each other's jobs are about. But there's no army in the house, apart from in the laundry!” she laughs. Delphine is grateful for the constant support from her parents although she is aware that her mother worries “although she'll never let on.” There are times, she says “when everyone is assailed by doubts and then it's important to have the support of people to tell you that you're in the right place.”