"The Curragh" said our friend "means soldiers, horses, sheep. And to the first named, it recalls crawling, face-down in grass and the doubtful droppings of the aforesaid animals. Was it tactics we were supposed to be at, or just mortification inflicted on us by the sergeant? Of course, there were interludes. When we used to be marched into fields nearby to study what was called Judging Distance, and similar arts which were to go to making us real soldiers. What I chiefly remember about this particular exercise is that it took place in fields which were hedged around not only by the usual hawthorn but by abundant trees of crabapple.
"While it was somebody else's turn to judge distance and pronounce on the propinquity of the fir and the poplar and the ever-present `bushy-topped tree', you could pick your fill. All that is no doubt gone now in the name of the new agriculture Or is under concrete? But I remember those crab-apples; more like small cultivated ones. They were rosy if not red. Weren't they? And don't talk to me about rose-coloured spectacles."
All this came to mind, he said, after reading, here and there, in the latest edition of that signal Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland The Irish Sword. There is much in it, a series of papers delivered at a conference in The Military College, Curragh, but the meat of the papers will no doubt be seriously examined by the learned Military Correspondent of The Irish Times. Yet I was struck by one bizarre dilemma presented to the then Chief of Staff, General Sean McKeown, when in July 1960 the Security Council of the UN asked Ireland to send, urgently, a battalion of troops to the Congo.
"The resolution was passed by the Security Council on 14th July 1960 and our men were on their way on July 27th, 13 days later." Some feat for a first call, though earlier 59 officers had been sent to the Lebanon.
But the poor Chief's worries were compounded by what? - Bull's wool, that being the common name for the cloth used by our army. That was the aspect which, to the Chief's mind, struck the public. They "thought we were very simple to send chaps to the tropics in bull's wool. But we didn't have anything else to send them in, and the alternative was to say to the UN. OK, we'll send you a battalion in six months time when we have suitable uniform. Bull's wool was a bit of a public relations disaster."
Yet, in bull's wool or later kit, our men and women overseas have brought us magnificently into the real world.