An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir May 2016 www.dfmagazine.ie 20 | In researching the PDF's contribution to four years with the Con- go operation, many facets of this history were intriguing: some more so than others. One of the more intriguing facets was that of the speed of the entire process of selection and formation of 32 Inf Bn: a period of just ten days from the UN request for troops on 17th July 1960 to the departure of the first chalk on the afternoon of 27th July 1960. A mere ten days from decision to dispatch – at a time before the Internet, email or mobile phones existed! To send a fully equipped and armed battalion on UN service was some- thing that had never been rehearsed: no manuals existed; it had never been the focus of, or practiced in, exercises. Troop transport to the Congo was carried out by the USAF's Military Air Transport Service: nevertheless, the administrative and logistical processes alone were daunting, given the very short time-frame and the ap- parent absence of pre-planning. These factors kept snagging the attention of the writer during his research: in that period, no documents were discovered in Military Archives to shed light on these factors. And yet, despite the undoubted abilities of staff officers of the time, there had to have been some form of plan. To take just one example of logis- tics, the unit history of 32 Inf Bn records that 'the battalion carried with them 21 days supply of Irish-made pack rations, the quality of which was excellent'. (These pack rations contained such compar- ative luxuries as tinned Irish stew and tinned Irish fruitcake.) There were three types of pack, A, B and C; each packed in a stout card- board carton. The contents and their packaging aside, armies and defence departments don't devise, design and effect from scratch the purchase and supply of such packs in less that two weeks. This was not the only factor to snag attention: it was also all of the organisation and planning. There had to have been some sort of pre-devised plan. In historical research, it is sometimes the case that accidental discoveries lead to previously undiscovered mate- rial. In this case, the writer was following the Congo mission recol- lections that the then chief of staff, General Seán McKeown, deliv- ered at a UN-themed summer school at CTC in 1996 and reported in The Irish Sword, Summer 1996 issue. During his recollections on the formation of 32 Inf Bn, Gen McKeown referred to 'a study that had been carried out some time earlier by some of our people'. by DR JAMES MCCAFFERTY DSM, BA (HONS), PHD PHotoS COURTESY OF MILITARY ARCHIVES & WWW.UNMULTIMEDIA.ORG Some of the 12 merchant vessels trapped in the Suez Canal near Ismailia since the beginning of the hostilities. 1st December 1956. Photo: UN Photo #127888 R eceived wisdom suggests that the selection, formation and dispatch of 32 Inf bn to join Un forces in the Republic of the Congo in July 1960 was the first occasion upon which deploying a detachment of armed Defence Forces personnel to Un peacekeeping operations was considered. (the selection of officers for the UnoGIL mission to Lebanon in June 1958 is excluded as this was an unarmed observer group.)

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