An Cosantóir

www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 9 A Happy Reunion BY SGT WAYNE FITZGERALD M artin Rowe was born in Ballyfoyle, Co Kilkenny, and moved to Newbridge, Co Kildare, at an early age when his father was posted to the Military College. Martin followed in his father's footsteps and enlisted into the Defence Forces in 1971, serving with the Depot Medical Corps. He served overseas as a medical NCO with 48 Inf Bn and 52 Inf Bn in Leba- non. In 1978 he transferred to No 1 Hosp Coy, and was attached to Army Apprentice School in Naas, until he retired from the Defence Forces in 1996. Martin got married in 1973 but due to a course he was unable to get leave, and it wasn't until 1975 that Martin and Elizabeth finally got their honeymoon to Butlin's Holiday Camp in Mosney, Co Meath. Martin remembers: "One morning we heard that a two-year-old child involved in a toddler competition had gone missing from the ballroom the night before and they were looking for volunteers to search for her. I volunteered straight away and we were put into teams and told where had already been searched the night before. "When we were a couple of miles out from the camp I spotted a break in a wall that led down to the train tracks." This was the very busy main railway line from Dublin to Belfast and some searchers were reluctant to go down to it. However, Martin didn't hesitate and hadn't travelled far down the bank when he spotted something red only a few yards from the tracks. "It was a child holding a red ball," Martin says. "She wasn't moving and my first concern was if she was alive. When I was checking her pulse she woke and said, 'Don't take my ball!' After she repeated that a few times, I told her, 'You're ok. I'm going to bring you to your mammy.' Then I brought her back up to the road, where we were greeted by cheers from a crowd that had gathered." Martin often thought about the incident over the years, and then out of the blue one day he got a picture text of a newspaper cutting from the time of the Butlin's incident. The accompanying text read: 'Hi, are you the man in the photo?' Martin replied that he was. The texter was Collette Ryan (formerly Maher) who had been the missing child that Martin had found all those years ago. Speaking on Cork's RedFM, Collette, now married and living in Fermoy, said her family had tried a number of times over the years to try to track Martin down. Then, one day while searching his name on Face- book, Collette came across an old army photo on Martin's profile and matched it to the newspaper clipping she had. Luckily he also had his number on his profile. Martin rang Collette that evening and they had a great chat about the episode that had united them four decades earlier. The reunion story was picked up by KFM, the Kildare National- ist, the Leinster Leader, LMFM, and then by RTÉ. Originally intend- ing to meet in Cork, the pair were contacted by researchers from the Late Late Show, who arranged for the reunion to take place on the show instead. Although she has no real memory of the incident herself, Col- lette says: "It was a 300-acre campsite, with about 5,000 people staying and an additional 1,000 coming and going as day visitors, and I was gone for nineteen hours… they could hear the cheers from the medical hospital where my mother was, so they knew I was after being found. "I have so much to thank Martin for; I've had a great life, I'm a mother and a grandmother. I still get emotional now when I talk about it." Martin is a grandfather himself; he has 3 children and 9 grandchildren. Martin says: "I also helped with the searches for Jo Jo Dollard and Deirdre Jacob, with no results. I know the fam- ily of one of those missing girls and I know what they are going through. I'm delighted to hear Collette has a marvellous life, and I wish her and her family nothing but happiness." Martin and Collette on the Late Late Show. UN Veteran Martin Rowe. Photo by Sgt Mick Burke Collette with Red ball. Newspaper clipping 1975.

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