Donal MacCarron has a second book out on Ireland in wartime to follow his firstWings Over Ireland. This is Step Together, Ireland's Emergency Army 1939-46, and there will be a third history. The book will, no doubt, be reviewed in the normal course in this newspaper but just a few notes now from a chapter entitled "Top Brass". Very few people knew well the man who was Chief of Staff from 1940 onwards, General Dan McKenna, from Draperstown in County Derry. But one certainly did: Colonel R. A. Childers (Bobby), who for years was his right-hand man. McKenna, abrupt, often rough-spoken; Childers, with a very different accent and manner, but in his own quiet way, just as determined as his chief and quite as dedicated. It is said that McKenna often worked a 20-hour day, and demanded much of those around him. Childers's admiration for him was boundless and frequently expressed. Although never hail-fellow-well-met, McKenna, according to Mac Carron, looked after his men well.
The commander of the Second "Spearhead" Division, Major General Hugo MacNeill gets dignified mention. He had been Adjutant-General of the young Fianna Eireann in 1916, and since the formation of the Army had held the rank of Major-General. He came, of course, from a founding family of this State and those who served under him will wish that a bit more space had been given to him in this chapter. The third figure in this Top Brass section is, of course, Major-General Michael Joseph Costello, who had been a colonel at the age of 19. No figure in the Army had more stories told about him. He did not cultivate them, but an everlasting curiosity drove him on about not only his duties as a General, but about all of those who surrounded him. He wanted to know not only their names, but where they came from - and he remembered what they told him. This was not a trick of command, a trait to keep people telling stories about him. He also wanted you to know something about the man in whose hands your life might one day be placed. He would also have made a good newspaperman, for he did remember. He had great panache and humanity.
On one exercise he stood at the top of a ditch with a young officer's immediate superior. "Come up out of there and tell me all about Ballymena," he said. "I'm told that's where you come from." And years later, he remembered, when both were in civilian life. Splendid pictures too. £19.95.