On a Wednesday afternoon in May 1978, Capt Ken Kelly was minding his own business and getting on with his work as a cavalry instructor at the Defence Forces training school in the Curragh. But then everything changed.
"I got a call from my boss to say you are replacing a man who has withdrawn," recalls the now retired Kelly. "I thought I was replacing someone in the training school, but I was being sent to Lebanon. "
On the Thursday morning, the then 35-year-old Kelly, a veteran of earlier peacekeeping missions to the Congo and Cyprus, had a medical fitness examination. He passed, and that afternoon he was promoted to commandant. The next day he was off.
“On Friday evening I was sitting on an American Galaxy, a huge transport plane, in Dublin Airport taking off for Tel Aviv, and then by road to south Lebanon.”
Would the Israelis have gone and if not what was he to do? If they had gone would there be anything left behind to disrupt the incoming Unifil troops?
The speed of his deployment, joining Ireland's first contingent to Unifil, the UN peacekeeping mission to oversee the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, was "a shock to the system at the time", he recalls. "On the way I was reading up on the mandate and the mission I was about to carry out."
In charge of several armoured cars and Panhard M3 armoured personnel carriers, Kelly’s first task was literally to oversee the Israeli withdrawal. As soon as he could he got into a 4x4 vehicle with his operations officer, and set out to where the Israelis had been ensconced – and which he now hoped to find vacated.
Trepidation
“It was a journey we undertook with some trepidation,” he says, wondering at the time what awaited them.Would the Israelis have gone and if not what was he to do? If they had gone would there be anything left behind to disrupt the incoming Unifil troops?
In the event, the relevant buildings in which the Israelis had been installed since their invasion were vacated, but then at a crossroads Kelly and his ops officer came across some Israeli vehicles parked outside a house that had a small awning with grape vines climbing over it providing some shade from the sun.
Kelly walked inside the house only to find himself standing in front of an Israeli army officer – neither man expecting to see the other.
The Israeli looked up and stared at Kelly. “Where have you come from?” he asked.
"I looked at him, and it was all a bit tense," says Kelly. "So I said 'Ireland! ' He laughed and it broke the ice."
The house was the Israeli withdrawal centre of operations and, pleasantries and formalities exchanged and mutual positions respected, the Israeli officer finished his business and was off within an hour. “I think we took the wind out of his sails with my answer,” says Kelly.
Irish involvement
And so began Irish involvement in Unifil, the mission that was born 40 years ago on Monday, which the Defence Forces, including newly-prompted Kelly, joined in May 1978 and have contributed to every day since.
Kelly later served in Untso, the UN truce supervision organisation that oversees observance of the 1948 ceasefire agreement between Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and later still was based in Naqoura, southern Lebanon.
In 2001, he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel after what he remembers fondly as a “satisfying career”.
“If you like soldiering it’s a great place to be.”
