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Band of brothers: Tom Farrell talks to some of the survivors 50 years on

09.10.11

‘I was alone in our trench with a plastic helmet on my head and mortar rounds exploding all around, thinking of my fianc�e Angela and my family, and getting little consolation when I realised that I had actually volunteered for this."

The words are the recollections of Noel Carey, a captain who served 20 years in the Irish Army. When he wrote them, he was a 23-year-old platoon commander from Limerick who had found himself in the September 1961 Siege of Jadotville.

Around 150 Irishmen of A Company, 35th Infantry Battalion had been deployed as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force — or the Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) as it was known at the time — in Katanga, a breakaway state in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo .

Ranged against them were more than 3,000 well-trained Katangan troops, backed by white mercenaries. It was the first time the Irish Army had gone into battle against an overseas military force. Fighting started on September 13 and the Irish held out for another five days, inflicting at least 300 fatalities on the enemy and suffering five wounded.

Source: Irish Independent