Hair slicked to the side, a fine black mustache and a pack on his back, quartermaster Abdul of the battalion of Marseille firefighters (BMPM) left Marignane airport on February 10, heading for Turkey. Four days earlier, an earthquake had struck down the south of the country and neighboring Syria. “I left with the reconnaissance team for a four-day missionconfides the soldier. Finally, I stayed for a month.“
Sent to the Golbasi region to find the best location for the field hospital deployed by the civil security, the quartermaster proved to be essential, in particular because of his mastery of the local language. “I quickly managed to make contactsremembers the young man, aged 25. Speaking Turkish and being in the military were important to link the hierarchy and the authorities” President, ministers, prefects but also doctors from the local hospital and, of course, the population in distress, the quartermaster soon became an essential element.
In the oven and at the mill, he takes up his duty every day at 9 p.m., “to leave the day to the volunteer Turkish translators sent by the embassy”. At 9 a.m., the latter relieve him while he puts on the cap of living area manager, ensuring that the hospital is well supplied with water (10,000 liters per day), electricity and fuel (1 500 liters per day). He also accompanies the civilians and soldiers of the mission, who have two hours of rest per day, to discover the neighboring town or lake. A central role in the smooth running of the mission, which the sailor-firefighter fulfills not without a certain personal satisfaction. “That France renders a service to my native country, it’s beautiful, it’s important“, confides the one who left Turkey in 2006, with his family, for political reasons.
“It’s not a mission like the others”
Arrived in Marseille at the age of 11, quartermaster Abdul then continued his schooling at the Jean-Perrin high school. With his science and laboratory technology (STL) baccalaureate in hand, he joined the French Navy and joined the BMPM in 2018, at the Louvain barracks (8th). “I obtained French nationality in 2010continues this eldest of a family of five children. I started from nothing and I had to work for the population.“The young man did not imagine then that this path would lead him to serve in his native land. From his first mission abroad.
“It was not really a mission like the others, what happened there is not insignificant“, underlines the soldier. Before the disaster, the population of the town of Golbasi, 500 meters from which the military hospital was installed, amounted to 10,000 inhabitants. When Escrim* left the scene, he only 1,000 remained. “We received more than 100 people a day,” recalls quartermaster Abdul. People came for treatment, but also for moral support. They took refuge in the hospital, needed to be listened to and also helped on a human level.” An attentive ear that the sailor-firefighter helped to deploy, by translating the words of pain, injuries and trauma related to the earthquake. “The human side is the most complicated, he concludes. We may be professionals, we are not robots. I remember a woman who asked that her operation be postponed so that she could attend a funeral. those of his two children.“
*Element of rapid civil security for medical intervention
