An Cosantóir

18 SOME SAY THE DEVIL IS DEAD…… INTRODUCING THE NEW HEAD CHAPLAIN a busy unit again rotating Batteries through Afghanistan and conducting training in Kenya. While based here I also had the opportunity to participate in an exchange program, Ex LONGLOOK, where I spent four months in Australia with the ADF, deploying on Ex with them, celebrating ANZAC Day and getting to grips with Aussie Rules. However, there is always payback for these wonderful experiences, I was no sooner back from Australia when I was informed that I was being posted back to the UK and to the Irish Guards, who were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. It's always a little nerve racking, turning up at a new unit and I remember vividly arriving at the gate of Mons Barracks in Aldershot where the Irish Guards were based. The young lad at the gate looked at me and said "Fr do you not recognise me?" Help me out I said! "You gave me my First Holy Communion back in Kilrush!" A small world, Ian was one of the many fellow countrymen and women I would meet over the years of service, either on tour or exercises and it was always a joy. Following those first five Unit assignments, I was selected for my first Brigade Job where as well as mentoring the unit chap - lains across the Brigade, I was to provide pastoral support and moral guidance to the Brigade Commander and his Staff. This was a steep learning curve for me, I had up until this point avoided all HQs like the plague. That was the place you only went to if you were in trouble and there was the myth that Brigade HQs exist in order to make units lives hell! I discovered that this was a fallacy and the men and women in the various HQs that I have served, have been some of the most hardworking I have ever come across, striving to protect units and their forecast of events etc. Not having any real staff experience prior to this, I was selected to attend the Intermedi - ate Command Staff Course at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham. Whilst I may have struggled with much of the syllabus, I could not help but be padre to the young newly promoted majors on the course, all of whom found the going tough at some point or another. No, I might not be the first choice for Operations Officer or indeed plan any Offensive actions, but when the chips were down, I was there with a word of encouragement and a listening ear. Other highlights of the course included a two- week stint at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and a Battlefield Study to Normandy. Following Staff College, payback came in the form of being appointed Staff Chaplain at Army HQ and official MA to the Chaplain General. It was a very busy and fulfilling time. We had centenary commemorations marking the end of WW1, Normandy 75, but also challenges in and around the future of the Chaplains' Department and what it Accompanying Troops in Iraq Pascal delivers Mass in Iraq

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