Security Analyst Tom Clonanmeets a Dubliner just back from combat in Afghanistan
Clondalkin man Michael O'Connor (31) has just returned home to Dublin after seven months in combat in Afghanistan. A bombardier (corporal) in the Royal Artillery's 19th Regiment in the British army, O'Connor's tour of duty - from March to October of this year - was in Helmand Province, close to the border with Pakistan.
O'Connor's story is similar to those of the many thousands of Irish men who have served and fought in the British army in recent decades. Educated in Clonburris National School and Deansrath Community College, Clondalkin, O'Connor completed his Leaving Certificate in 1994. On leaving school however, he found his job, working in logistics and supply, "unchallenging" and with an "idealistic and adventurous streak", was determined to join the Irish Army.
A keen hurler, who played in the under-21s team at Dublin's Commercials Hurling Club, O'Connor had joined the FCA, the Army's reserve force, as a teenager. However, he was unsuccessful in successive attempts to join the full-time Army, and spotted an advertisement in the Daily Mirror for careers in the British armed services.
"I sent off for the information pack and a few months later, I was sworn in to the Royal Artillery in Pallas Barracks, Belfast."
In spring 1996, he was flown from Aldergrove in Belfast to Gatwick in London to start basic training in Pirbright. O'Connor recalls that the train from London to the Pirbright centre brought them past the shattered buildings at Canary Wharf, which had just been bombed by the Provisional IRA.
"When we got to Pirbright, they were on high alert to the threat of attacks from the IRA. They were gobsmacked to find four Dublin guys queuing up to start their training at the height of an IRA attack," he says.
O'Connor's adventurous streak and initiative soon came to the British military authorities' attention. During his training, he was abandoned in Scotland without money, credit cards or ID in an "escape and evasion" exercise and instructed to make his own way back to the south of England.
Whilst the rest of his squad hitched, hiked and made their way south on their wits, O'Connor foraged for coins and telephoned the Sun newspaper. He sold them his "story" and was flown by Ryanair at the Sun's expense and chauffeured back to base, much to the bemusement of his commanding officer.
The headline in the Sun on the day of his triumphant return to barracks read: "Save our Squaddies." O'Connor remarks: "Well, they did tell me to use my initiative."
By March, 2005, O'Connor was serving in Basra, Iraq, in support of the Coldstream Guards. During his eight-month tour of duty in Basra, the situation was "nerve-wracking".
"We were mortared and bombed on most days. One of my guys was seriously injured in a roadside bomb and the Coldstream Guards lost others, killed in action," he says.
HE RETURNED TO Dublin that December and found it difficult to adjust from the combat environment of a Muslim city to Dublin at Christmas time. When asked by The Irish Times if he had difficulty telling people in Dublin that he had been fighting in Iraq in the British army, O'Connor says: "Listen, all the girls I spoke to that Christmas in Temple Bar were English anyway, so it didn't really matter. They were happy to meet a squaddie in Dublin, a win-win situation all round, really."
In March this year, O'Connor deployed with the 19th Regiment to Afghanistan. Arriving in Camp Bastion in Helmand Province in the southern part of Afghanistan, O'Connor immediately noticed a difference.
"All our conventional tactical training was more or less abandoned in Afghanistan. There was no attempt to 'hug' the terrain whilst manoeuvring. There was no real attempt out there to conceal ourselves. The Taliban know the terrain intimately and knew where we were at all times. And, unlike the insurgents in Iraq, they were not afraid to attack at any given moment.
"So we tried to keep to the high ground and use massive firepower and air support to keep them at bay. We mostly operated out of fortified strong points or Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) such as FOB Robinson near Sangin or FOB Dwyer at Garmsir."
During his seven months in Afghanistan, O'Connor was in combat every day. "The day I arrived at FOB Robinson, I went straight from the Chinook helicopter to the gun-line and did fire-missions until two in the morning." Unlike Iraq, where attacks from insurgents were typically harassment missions or skirmishes, the Taliban in Afghanistan mounted sustained attacks on British and US forces. "They were determined. They were not afraid."
Aside from defending the perimeter of his FOB from Taliban attack, O'Connor also spent months on long-range desert patrols in pursuit of Taliban forces. "We'd go for days in the desert. Shifting sands means that maps are not reliable. Features constantly change, so we'd rely on GPS for navigation. It was a hard routine, just ration packs, no latrines and at night there were snakes, scorpions and camel spiders."
O'Connor also describes how Taliban forces were capable of attack without warning. "You'd be concentrating on driving through the sand and then you'd be hit with mortars, small-arms fire and Chinese rockets. We'd have to immediately counter attack and fight our way through their positions. You just had to stand and fight and we took casualties."
According to O'Connor, the only relief available to him from these conditions were the occasional packets of Tayto crisps and Lemon's boiled sweets sent to him by his brother in Dublin.
"It was a right sight, a frightened, bearded Irishman from Clondalkin deep in the Afghan desert, one eye on my Lemon's sweets and the other peeled for the Taliban."
O'Connor explains that all British soldiers wear beards in Afghanistan to appear credible to Afghan males - soldiers in the Afghan army and villagers and elders. "Being clean shaven there for a guy would be the equivalent of appearing in public half-dressed. You'd never be taken seriously."
He finished his tour of duty in FOB Dwyer, approximately 100km from the Pakistani border. According to O'Connor "that part of Afghanistan is full of Taliban. We were hard-pressed flushing the Taliban out of the Sangin valley system and trying to push them back towards the Pakistani border."
AT HOME ON leave to visit his family and his new-born niece in Clondalkin - the first grandchild born to his extended family - O'Connor concludes this interview by recounting one incident in Afghanistan that has remained with him over time.
"One day, we had an incident where some locals were hit by ordnance - caught in the crossfire. We took in a lot of casualties that day. I was working on the gun line when I was asked to help carry a stretcher. It was a little girl, maybe five years old. She caught my eye and started to speak to me and she held my hand. I couldn't let it go and I stayed with her, right until the chopper came to take her to the field hospital in Camp Bastion. She was very badly injured. She kept squeezing my hand.
"As I lifted her on to the helicopter, I had to pull my hand free in the noise and the dust and the wash of the rotors. We kept eye contact and then she was gone. I don't know what happened to her."
While O'Connor admits he is haunted by the memory of the Afghan girl, he will return to his unit in the next week or so and expects to begin training for another deployment to Afghanistan in the coming months. Hundreds of other Irish soldiers, from both sides of the Border, and attached to the Royal Irish Regiment, will also deploy to Afghanistan next year.