Injured soldiers rebuild on the Dakar Rally

By Alexandre Marchand

After an experiment in 2023 with a duo of war wounded, the Frères d’armes stable, an association set up by active military personnel, took two crews of wounded in 2025. A female crew on a Renault Kerax truck and a male crew at the wheel of a Peugeot P4 4×4 are engaged in the “Dakar Classic”a parallel race to the sporting Dakar.

Restore the taste for adventure

On the bivouac of the most famous rally-raid, the limp of Séverine Lehoux, non-commissioned officer at 2^e army equipment regiment, betrayed her femoral amputation of her left leg following bone cancer in 2018. The thirty-year-old became involved in this associative project more than a year ago . Since then, she says, “I can tell myself better ‘You can leave overnight, just take the essentials for you, you’ll adapt.’ It’s not easy to put on the prosthesis in the tent. But I found it and I’m getting there!” Participating in this two-week race in Saudi Arabia is a way of giving back to the members of the team a taste for adventure, for the unknown, by taking them out of the routine into which the dramas of life have sometimes forced them. to retreat.

Confronting one’s limits, one’s anxieties

However, embarking on a rally as grueling as the Dakar also means confronting your limits and your anxieties. Aurore Valaize, 37, prepared for this moment for a long time with her psychologist. A member of the army health service, she was deployed in theaters of war such as Mali and Afghanistan. Challenging missions that came back to haunt her: four years ago, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “For me, the first stages (of the Dakar) were complicated. Because the landscape looks a lot like Afghanistan, so it brings back memories that are not necessarily happy,” she says in a faint voice.

Solidarity in times of difficulty

Whether in the heat of the race or in the evening at camp, these brothers and sisters in arms support each other through the ordeal. “Among injured people, we can say things to each other. We all have different experiences but we’ve all been there. Something that people can’t understand until you’ve been there.” explains Ludovic Failly, 54 years old. Ten years ago almost to the day, on January 26, 2015, this chief mechanic was on the runway at the Albacete air base (Spain) when a Greek F-16 crashed during an exercise. NATO. The accident left eleven dead, including nine French soldiers. He suffered 38% burns, suffered multiple fractures and spent a month in an induced coma.

The hazards of the race

But, as the Dakar progresses, the apprentice drivers also discover the hazards of the race. When theAFP meeting them at the bivouac, during the rest day in Haïl, Ludovic is chomping at the bit. His car has not been able to participate in the rally for several days, waiting for a cylinder head to break at the end of the first stage. “The vehicle is on a trailer over there and we’re on foot. We’re hitchhiking on the trucks for now. Every time the caravan leaves, we get on a truck,” he said.

A process of resocialization

In 2023, some 120,000 people received a military disability pension in France. The number of injured people suffering from PTSD was estimated at 3,000 by the Ministry of the Armed Forces. For the Frères d’armes team, the Dakar is only the culmination of a process of resocialization of the injured. To raise the 180,000 euros necessary for the team’s participation in the Dakar, those interested themselves had to approach sponsors, participate in trade shows, charity events, etc. “We don’t take them at the beginning (of their reconstruction), nor in the middle, we take them more towards the end,” explains Ludovic Gateau, one of the team managers. “In fact, we are here to help them cross the last threshold of the ladder.”

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