Lucie is the only platoon commander in the 1st Hunter Regiment (régiment de chasseurs) in Thierville-sur-Meuse near Verdun in north-east France. The tool she works with weighs some 55 tonnes, is 3m60 wide and 3m06 high. Despite this imposing size, the working space inside the Leclerc battle tank, because this is the tool in question, is extremely tight. Having had the good fortune to ride in a Leclerc a few years ago, I speak from experience…
Sometimes parents don't realize that the news on TV can have a strong impression on their young children and even determine their career path. This is what happened to Charlotte, struck as a small child by images of the Gulf War and today a bomb disposal expert. “I really think it was these images that made me decide to join the military. Anyway, I don't remember ever wanting to do anything other than being in the military,” she says with a quick smile…
Camille Boutron, a doctor in sociology, is a recognised expert on the roles held by women in armed organisations and on their participation in conflicts. As these subjects lie at the heart of Wombat and that Camille says some of the things said by the women whose portraits appear on this website have guided her research at the Paris-based IRSEM (War College Institute of Strategic Research), I thought it would be very interesting to interview her. “I’m not used to being on the other side of the mirror,” she laughs. But she cheerfully answered my questions even if the day of our Skype conversation she was slowly recuperating from Covid…
It’s not because you fail at something once that you shouldn’t persist… and then turn out to be very good at the something in question. In Sam’s case (she prefers Sam to Samantha) it is the British Army where she will take up her rank of Lieutenant Colonel on 31 August. Currently the chief of staff of the Air Safety branch atJoint Helicopter Command, she was rejected the first time she tried to join the Army 17 years ago…
Hélène was planning to be a nurse. Instead she’s a welder at Naval Group, working on the components for the nuclear boilers of submarines. Two worlds that, on the surface, have very little in common! Except that in both cases you have to be a perfectionist and have a sense of thoroughness and a job well done because people's lives depend on you. How did she come to do this difficult job, practised by very few women, but which she finds thoroughly satisfying…
Marielle Roux happily admits that she “has always been interested in maths”, dunked in it by her parents, both maths and physics teachers. Attracted by information technology (IT), she did a Masters in that subject during which she had to do an internship. “I did it in the bank and that's where I quickly realised that Management IT was really not for me”, she laughs. So for the first decade of her professional life she worked in the space sector before moving into aeronautics. Today, at Collins Aerospace – Avionics she is Director Europe, Certification, Safety, Cybersecurity, and AI (Artificial Intelligence)…
