An Cosantóir

39 BOOKS In recent decades, a new generation of American soldier- writers has emerged, as a consequence of the post-9-11 long-running military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Notable figures include Kevin Powers, author the novel The Yellow Birds, Phil Klay author of the short-story collection Redeployment, and poet Brian Turner author of Here, Bullet. Across the Irish diaspora, Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, an exploration of roles played by Australian troops as slave-labour railroad-builders in Burma during the World War II, was a recent winner of the Booker Prize. In addition to bearing witness though fiction and poetry to lives lived in warfare, the above writers also engage with the complicated lives of their characters, men primarily, and with the long tradition of Anglophone writing set among the military. Ireland's neutrality has meant that Irish troops have not engaged in overseas wars; instead, from the Belgian Congo to the present, Irish troops have served under the United Nations flag on many peacekeeping missions. Michael J. Whelan's Rules of Engagement follows his earlier volume Peacekeeper (2016): it is clear from both volumes that in Whelan the Irish Defence Forces has found its laureate. Whelan joined the Irish Defence Forces in 1990 serving as a UN Peacekeeper in South Lebanon and with the Peace- Enforcement in Kosovo. Currently, he is the Keeper of the Irish Air Corps Military Aviation Museum & Collection and an advocate for members of the Irish military forces—living and deceased, active and retired. As is the case in the United States, Irish veterans also can fall on hard times, and be easily forgotten: 'The State often basked in the glory of his deeds but the broadsheets never tried to know him. Some wondered if he realised when he tucked himself tight against the shop-front last night That it would be his last?' In addition to work chronicling his own experiences serving Rules of Engagement Author: Michael J Whelan Publisher: Doire Press ISBN: 9781907682704 Pages: 80 Price: €12.00 BOOKS overseas, are Whelan's accounts of recent Irish naval service in the Mediterranean rescuing migrants from rafts and boats, and air service in Africa. Near the book's close is a poignant elegy for the journalist Lyra McKee as a reminder of the roles played by the media, and civilians, in fostering peace. As he points out in "Rotating," an observation of Irish UN Peacekeeping troops who are waiting at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnell, to be flown to South Lebanon, Whelan's purpose as a poet writing about members of the military is to speak to and for their experience, and to recall each as an individual who serves in an army: 'In each of these uniforms was a life, a family, a story. They were going into the brutality of the world and each one was a poem never to be written, giving their all when there was always more to give. I am glad of some things my country did.' Whelan is a gifted observer of places and people, and also of the natural world. Throughout Rules of Engagement, flight is an important descriptive and metaphorical presence: flights of refugees, peacekeepers, birds, helicopters, and airplanes. It is common, as in "Hanger" for example, to find sparrows sharing space and being set in juxtaposition to airplanes, "Except for a sparrow/that came upon the scene, I am the only one …" The poetic vision, therefore, is a holistic one where the work the peacekeepers perform is explored as well as the environments they leave, when they depart Ireland, and embrace on arrival at their UN posts. The voice one hears most in these poems is that of the intelligent and empathetic outsider who strives for poetic mediation in the manner that Seamus Heaney sought in his own work when confronting conflict. As Heaney revealed in his work, Whelan also discovers that "the poor and the innocent too are taken by the sword." Though they are engaged in important work in South Lebanon and elsewhere and they see much that horrifies them, the peacekeepers' hearts are more often at home in Ireland as they recall loved- ones left waiting: 'All I wanted was to make the world a happier place, a place for her dreams but in reality she had always been creating my dreams, making the world a better place for me.' In this regard, Whelan's work is also an account of Irish diasporas—intense periods spent away from Ireland while serving with the United Nations. On a national level, Irish service with the UN is a neutral nation's effective use of soft power. On a literary level, Rules of Engagement is a finely crafted and fully realised bringing to life of the experiences Irish peacekeepers. Until Michael J. Whelan began this important poetic project, the Irish military were largely absent from contemporary writing. Review by Professor Eamon Wall

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