“Lig Amach!” This command to the recruits, now fully trained and tested, in the square of Sarsfield Barracks, officially marked the ending of the 6-month training course. Tears, cheers and proud embraces followed as the 120th platoon trained under the 12th Infantry Battalion celebrated their graduation as fully part of the Irish Defence Forces (IDF). 

“If anyone throws a peaker in the air, I swear to God!” 3 Star Private Manus O’Reilly, 7th Infantry Battalion, recalled his platoon commander lovingly warning him and his comrades. “It was huge for some of them, like there were some lads there who’d like gone for it the first time, got injured during training and are now back, finally finished it. I was in the reserve for six years before getting there.” 

Ireland has been a member of the United Nations since 1955 and has maintained “a continuous presence on peace support operations” since 1958. 

Danger has always been present in these over seas missions throughout the years. In 1961 during the siege of Jadotville, a 156 man contingent of the Irish Army’s 35th battalion, serving a UN peace mission in the Congo (ONUC), was surrounded by hundreds of Katangese forces, and put into a 5 day siege, which only ended once the 35th ran out of ammo and surrendered after repelling several assaults and inflicting hundreds of casualties.

This danger continued to exist throughout 70’s 80’s and 90’s with UN Peace Enforcement missions in the Somalian Civil war between 1993 and 95 (This civil war, depicted in Black Hawk Down, is still ongoing). However, as global geopolitical situations break down, become more complex and dangerous in themselves, so too has the danger and risk in over seas missions throughout the 2020s.

Lebanon has become a particular flashpoint. In 2022, 23 year old Pte Sean Rooney, was shot and killed after the armoured vehicle he was driving was reportedly surrounded by an angry mob. After being separated from a two car convoy, and ending up in the town of Al-Aqbiya, he and fellow soldier Shane Kearney 22, were hit by small arms fire which penetrated the vehicle. The risk in this mission has grown so much over the last 5 years,  Irish troops being forced into bunkers because of regular artillery bombardments has now, even become common place. 

 

O’Reilly, awaiting to go overseas for his first deployment, described how, through simply training for every position, he was able to apply for a number of different positions. 

“You do more courses; you get more qualified on different things; those are more vacancies on the overseas trip that you can possibly fill. In the past year and few months, I’ve done four weapons courses, so the 81-mortar, the javelin, the HMG and now the GPMG SF; I’ve done regimental signallers course, so operating the radios, I’ve done a boxing competition, a shooting competition, a 30km Norwegian foot match, fitness challenge kind of thing, a 30 km rook with all your equipment, brilliant event, I was amazed well the whole company managed that, on the day just with proper fuelling and the fitness I had built up and training.” 

“It’s so interesting to just do these various things. Instructors will always say, there’s civvies out there who’d pay thousands for this sort of training and your being paid to do it. One of the big reasons I joined the army is for the skills that you can learn in the army that you wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else.”  

Expanding on this O’Reilly would go on to talk about what keeps him motivated as he continues his career in the army. “For me, I want to be in a job, where I’m in a professional environment, learning and using various sets of skills, in a physically demanding and stressful environment, as part of an actually working team; and the adventure. Going overseas and being in an operational environment, is that incarnate.” 

“Along with protecting people, even from a historical point of view, I’d be really interested in military stuff, so I see it as, being a soldier in today’s world and feeling the connection historically is a really important part of the job that I really enjoy.” 

The history of the Irish army, given the current neutral stance of this country, is extremely interesting, possibly due to conflicts fought in the country, i.e. the several rebellions and the Civil War, Irish fighters have historically been known to be excellent guerrilla fighters.

From the approximate 38% of Irish making up Washington’s armies in the American War of Independence and the Irish Brigade armed with makeshift buck and ball rounds in the American Civil War, the San Patricio Brigade in the Mexican-American war and the Connolly column in the Spanish Civil War; it’s clear to see the Irish have fought many wars, even internationally; punching well above their weight with whatever little the people were given if the fight was deemed necessary. Even the most famous guerrilla of all, Che Guevara claimed Irish Heritage.

 

Today this still rings true for O’Reilly.  “We have the M2 Browning .5 machine gun, that’s been used for over 100 years and it’s still good enough, the Americans use it, the Brits use it; same with the GPMG, the M240 Bravo for the Americans from the 50s, the Javelin, from the 80s or 90s. We don’t have tanks but from Ukraine we’ve seen a couple javelins even the field.” 

The story of Ireland’s standard issue military rifle, is a funny anecdote in itself. The rifle is the STEYR AUG A1 Mod 14, a modernised version from 2014 of the STEYR AUG A1 which O’Reilly told me he had used in training. These rifles were first adopted and obtained in 1988 from Austria through “a multi-million pound goods for guns deal”. This led eventually to another member of the IDF telling me, as I squatted in a muddy hole, playing airsoft, that he and others he knew had always called it “the butter gun”. 

 

Manus would go on to explain that the only apprehension or worry he would have, going overseas would be “are we equipped enough?”.  This bears a eery similarity to details surrounding the investigation into outdated holsters provided to members of Gardaí as seen in the recent RTE Investigates on An Garda Síochána.

“There’s a lot of missions that the Irish army can’t go on because we don’t have the vehicles for it.” He said before adding in the upbeat attitude someone would need to have if they slept in a hole in the rain and cold, “When we do get modern body armour, helmets, radios, everything like that, it’s like I’ve been operating with training weights this whole time and now they will be taken off.” He added that the standard issue flak jackets are built more for shrapnel and are overly heavyweight. 

O’Reilly is now thinking about his next deployment, which he hopes will be in one of the ongoing missions in the Middle East and Africa.  “The idea of being in such a historic place to so many people and cultures and religions, in an operational environment… I think that would just be really meaningful. Though that’s over fairly soon so… I’d love to go to Africa, just as a continent it’s so fascinating to me, culture-wise, environment-wise, just in thinking about past missions like Chad and Mali and Liberia, the environment is just all so wild.” 

Photos provided by Manus O’Reilly