Defence Forces Review 2008

Healer of the Nation
Healer of the Nation
Kevin Myers
Nations are not natural, spontaneously-generated things: they are the bondings of groups of
people around common loyalties and shared affections which, one way or another, have to
be created. This act of creation requires a mental effort, whether deliberate or otherwise. The
Ireland which joined the UN in 1955 was remarkably short of both common loyalties and
shared affections, as bitter memories of the Civil War endured amid the chronic poverty and
ruins of what was effectively a failed state. It is my belief that the service in the UN, especially
the Congo, had a central role in creating a revitalised and modern sense of pride in being
Irish. In that sense, the Army really did help build the Irish nation that we know today. Less
positively, UN service – and the generally warm feelings it has evoked – has diminished the
popular understanding of what the Defence Forces are in existence for: though of course, the
only definition one needs is in the name.
The Army first had some limited experience of foreign service in Beirut. It was a useful lesson,
for it was here that the 50 Army officers on Lebanese duty began to discover for the first time
that though their equipment was obsolete, and their island was provincial and backward, as
soldiers they were at least the equal of their fellows from other countries. The author is not
knowledgeable enough to identify every factor which was responsible for the quality of this
military culture, but it would be hard not to give some credit to Richard Mulcahy, in the Army’s
early days, and more latterly, to the awesome Mickey Joe Costello, whose martial rigour and
intellectual energy reverberated within the Army for decades after he departed in 1945.
It is almost impossible for us to understand today, as one of the richest countries in the world,
what the Congo experience meant to little Ireland then. By 1959, insane economic policies
had reduced us from being in the top twenty richest countries of the world in 1911 to around
the 70th. Newspapers of the time carried weekly reports on chartered emigration-ships leaving
Dublin, Cork and Galway, bearing thousands of passengers away for ever. Not merely was
the country in a state of economic ruination - culturally, it had reversed into a cul-de-sac of
philisitinism and ignorance. By 1956, the Minister for Justice was able boast to the Dail that
the state had banned more than 6,500 books; by 1959, the figure was over 8,000.
This isolationism profited Irish culture not a whit. Irish music was just about dead: incredibly,
until 1958, it was impossible to buy any recordings of Irish music at all. That year Gael Linn
issued its first six records – and in recognition of the technology of Irish homes, they were
all 78 rpm singles, for playing on wind-up gramophones. Guinness still delivered its stout
by horse-drawn dray to Dublin pubs. In Kerry that year, the second Rose of Tralee opened –
“bigger than ever” declared the newspapers - with all of nine contestants. One of the highlights
of the festival was a children’s-tricycle competition. Another was a tug-of-war; a third was a
round-the-houses cycle race. Ireland really was the model for Craggy Island.
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