Declan Daly - Borderline - An Oral History of the Brexit Wars 2020-2022

Perhaps seeing the danger more clearly than the Irish political leadership, the French government offered to take up the role. Whereas the UK had been able to provide the service from their own bases in Britain, the extra distance involved meant that the French sent a detachment of Rafale aircraft and two tankers to Shannon. Arriving in March 2021, the fighters alternated between different French air force and naval squadrons and used the airspace offshore to conduct some of their own training, along with some training in support of Defence Forces units. While it is clear that the purpose of the detachment was only ever intended to be air policing, the presence of French military jets based in Ireland was to have a significant impact on the course of later events and almost ended in war between the UK and the EU/ French.

The friendly and expensive gesture by France was not universally well received. Faced with no choice due to what was now an issue very much in the public eye, the Irish governement made the unusual decision to adopt without tender the quickest and cheapest option that could provide a capability in the increasingly demanding Irish air policing environment. This meant the wholesale adoption of the Swedish Air Force model via the Swedish Govt and Irish pilots of different ranks were sent to Sweden to learn to fly Gripen jets. Some were existing pilots who would fill out the staff and command role in the reactivated No 2 Fighter Wing. Others were brand new, straight from the PC 9M trainer used in the Air Corps own Flight Training School. Other still were Cadets taken early from their military training in the Curragh to be dropped into a soon to start Swedish AF basic flight training course. As with every other aspect of the Air Corps at the time, the system had a ravenous need for pilots and technicians that could not be met by existing training means.

The result was that it would be two years before the first Irish fighter jets went into combat, almost on delivery, in Ireland. In the meantime, the French were kept busier than they expected.

Early April 2021

The Sliabh Blooms

“You know this is someone else’s killzone heed?” Pte Lukasz McGrath was standing straight up in the middle of the track, but at least keeping a good watch out for his buddy, Pte Jan Nowak who was busy looking at the shell casings on the ground.

“ I know, I’m just looking”. Jan had bent down and picked up one of the shell casings on the end of a pen and was examining it. On the bottom, he read off the calibre of the round- 5.45 X 39mm. “ AK 74 maybe over here, not too many rounds fired”

“ Plenty of 7.62 short over here in a pile beside the blood, I’d say this lad fired off everything and got clipped in the reload”

The two reservists were standing on a turn in the track with steeply wooded slopes rising behind their backs and also dropping away in front. The scene was mimiced across a narrow valley, more commercial forrestry, more trails, more blanket bog on the top of everything. As part of a PDF lead patrol, the two soldiers were recceing an area where a civilian hiker had reported shell casings and blood in an area where there had been no reported fighting during the clearing out operation of a fortnight ago.

“Alright CSI Laois/Offaly, tell me what you see.” The instruction came over the earpiece of their personal radios from the patrol leader Cpl Diane Keane. Part of taking the new guys out on patrol in mixed units was teaching them things that had been cut out of the accelerated four month training. Part of that was basic recce skills and part of those was reading the ground and evidence in front of you to assess a situation and feed it back to their next level of command. Lukasz continued covering off while Jan, the bigger of the two spoke first.

“ Well, whoever hit them up ambushed them on the turn to split the group. I’m seeing plenty of dried blood back around the turn – he gestured with a head movement, they’d already learned not to point – but not many rounds fired there, all 7.62 short so either one rifleman moving between two firing positions or two guys with rifles which would match up with the blood stains we can still see.”

Lukasz took up the commentary-

“ This side, we’re seeing a bit more action. Like I said, I’d say one guy fired a full mag and then got hit on the down slope side of the turn he was firing from. The 5.45mm stuff is in two piles, one near the up slope and one in the ditch on that side. Less rounds fired so probably taking aimed shots. At a pure guess, the blood in the middle of the track is his. I’d say he was nailed going to help his buddy after he got shot reloading.”

“Good, anything else?”

Tucked back in the woods looking down on the site with the other four members of the patrol, Cpl Keane had already seen two important things they hadn’t pointed out yet.

“Yeah” Jan took up the baton “There’s drag marks here on the edge of the turn leading into the forest on the down sloping side, something heavy. Not a body, no blood and it’s too regularly shaped. Mortar plate maybe?”

“Good, what else?”

“There’s no one elses rounds here” Lukasz answered. “ We haven’t seen any 5.56 or 7.62 or even anyone elses rounds. So either they took all their own brass away or the firing points for the ambush were across the valley.” He looked across at the trees on the other side more intently.” Not bad from that distance, got to be 250, 300 metres and I’m not seeing the place here chewed up like you’d expect with machine gun fire”

“Good work, in terrain like this, you can’t always tell the difference between machine gun fire and just heavy volumes of automatic rifle fire, but I concur it looks too tidy down here. Don’t rule out coordinated sniper fire either. What does that tell you?”

“They didn’t want to damage whatever they were after here with stray bullets “

“Correct, what else?”

“We’re still standing in someone elses killzone.”

“They haven’t shot you yet, but you’re right. Back track along the trail a few hundred metres and then hop into the woods and rendezvous (RV) with us up here.”

Pte McGrath and Pte Nowak were from Monaghan and were some of the first batch of the reserves of the ‘new FCA’ that had been released into the wild of operations after four months of training. They’d spent the last six weeks since they came out of training on patrols around rural Monaghan, basically the first part of the plan to relieve the PDF members there since the previous year. As unemployed former meat factory workers, they were two of the many ‘full time’ part time soldiers that made up the 2nd Line Reserve as they were officially called. Of some note is that both were of Polish backgrounds, with Jan Nowak having moved to Ireland as a five year old and Lukasz McGrath having a Polish mother. This is only of note as the reserves came to be composed of a disproportionate number of people who had either immigrated themselevs or who had parents who had come to Ireland and stayed. Indeed, the unit raised from the area around Gort became known as ‘The Boys from Brazil’ and this was not meant in a derogatory fashion. The reasons why this might have been have been delicately debated and no clear cut answer has emerged. Perhaps the answer is that they have as many reasons for joining the military as anyone else, for some it was a way of asserting that their Irishness is as valid as anyone elses, others had a history of military service in their families. Either way, in uniform, they proved they were Irish soldiers as much as anyone who could claim ancestory back to the Sons of Míl.