THERE are only a few of us left out of some 56,000, and most of us are in our seventies. There might be some in their sixties, but that would be the limit unless somebody had added a few years to his (or her) real age back then, so as to get in.
Over the past year we survivors have got angrier and angrier as our more prominent citizens, in print and on public platform, praised foreign soldiers, alien armies, ignoring the home products.
Our anger, however, really was a mistake, according to Comdt Peter Young, archives section, up in GHQ; so cool down, survivors, for the E-men (and women) are to be remembered and honoured next September 2nd, the 50th anniversary of the standing down of the wartime army, formed to defend Irish neutrality during the 1939-45 war.
But wasn't that the best kept secret of 1995?
What kind of celebrations may we expect? A military tattoo, perhaps, rather like the one staged on Royal Dublin Society premises in or about the mid 1940s. A book of reminiscences? A history of Irish military activities to go with the stamps?
Comdt Young cannot say just yet but plans are likely to be completed soon, within a few weeks. The Military History Society of Ireland might have a say or two.
For me, the first indication that the war had been declared in 1939 was the Sunday Independent poster on the Rosslare quayside, as I returned with a school comrade from a cycling tour of Wales, following my Leaving Certificate examination.
In Wales, on our way home, we had passed through villages blacked out except for one street lamp under which people were trying on gas masks.
Neutrality consensus
There was a very wide consensus for Irish neutrality. I am told even the IRA had favoured that course. The consensus included the pro German and the pro Allies.
I was one of many young men to join one of the wartime services. According to Comdt Young, some 7,000 joined the Construction Corps, which helped maintain fuel supplies the Local Security Force (about 100,000), which helped An Garda Siochana; and the Local Defence Force (about 200 000) designed to help the Army.
In early 1939, the Defence Forces had consisted of various Army branches, the nursing service, the Air Corps, the Naval Service, the Reserve, the Volunteer Force (part time soldiers), and An Slua Muir (part time sailors).
Part timers were called up soon after the declaration of war, to become an integral part of the Army. Volunteers after the declaration were known as E (for Emergency) men. I became one of them, having served for a brief period with the LDF (now the FCA).
Towards the end of my first day in bullswool in Portobello (now Cathal Brugha) Barracks, the NCO in charge asked if any of the new recruits had had previous military service. I stepped forward.
"You will remain in barracks tonight," the NCO told me, "and in this room, for you are room orderly, responsible for every item of kit here."
It was my first real military lesson.
For months we were engaged in square bashing", getting to know instinctively the difference between one's fancied left, and the Army left, wheeling about, forming fours, and all the rest of it, being programmed, if you like.
We were a great mix. Among those who remain still in my mind were two who had arrived hurriedly from France, and whose French was considerably better than their English.
One of these was the Comte Fitzgerald, still with us, I hope.
There were also good Irish speakers. We had a great chance to practice our three school tongues. But this was the time when relatively few advanced past primary school and I have a little story about all that.
Naturally enough, we made friends with those who had similar interests. Mine were literary and so were those of a few others.
I was posted to McKee Barracks, to Signals, and in the huts some of us talked about the poets we had discovered after leaving school, the likes of F.E. Cummings, Walt Whitman and T.S. Elliot. The "hard chaws", some of them ex members of the Animal Gang, would listen and comment, not always favourably.
Years later, now on "civvy street", I met one of these hard chaws. I wondered how life was treating him.
"I'm a teacher, now," he said.
Our friend had been one of those whose schooling had stopped at primary level; but, he told me, the "yap" of the poet soldiers in the hut, having passed the sneering stage, had resulted in some meditation.
"So, when I got out," he said, "I went back to school, studied, passes examinations, and eventually became a teacher."
Soldier journalists
It was in the Army that others of us cut our teeth in journalism, among them one of the most accomplished of those who wrote this column, Seamus Kelly.
Douglas Gageby, former editor of this paper, was an officer in that Army but I do not know if he practised journalism in it writing for the Spearhead, perhaps? or An Barr Buaidhe?
Among other ex soldiers who worked for publication of their Irish Times Ltd were Ozzie Dowling and Noel Conway. Liam MacGabhann (ex Irish Press and Sunday Review was with An Slua Muiri (and, before that, the IRA). And, of course, the former Washington Correspondent Sean Cronin one time IRA chief of staff.
The Army borrowed the wall newspaper idea from the US. The first Hot Press was the wall newspaper of the 18th Infantry Batn., Sixth Brigade, Second Division, and in which I served as a junior officer.
As editor, I remember still in gratitude the help of Ozzie Dowling, Noel Conway, Sgts Spillane and Trueman. These wall newspapers were the only publications of the time not to come under either the military or civil censor (or both).
As far as I know, the only book to come out of the Emergency Army was Proudly the Note, by Jasper Tully, long out of print. Donal Mac Amhlaigh wrote about his army days in Saol Saighdiura.
However, the Irish Sword (vol. 19, nos. 75, 76) has printed material of interest to our historians; and no doubt has not published the last word on the period.
A much greater weight of material came from or about those interned on the Curragh of Kildare, including the IRA. Among the contributors was a (much) later columnist in The Irish Time, and Professor of Irish, University of Dublin: Mairtin O Cadhain, the man who led the raid on the Magazine Fort, Phoenix Park, just before the outbreak of war.
The IRA, incidentally, offered the Government of the day to defend Irish neutrality during the 1939-45 war, but the offer was rejected and its volunteers (or very many of them) interned.
We will hear more about that in coming months when the architect, Uinseann Mac Eoin, publishes his much awaited research, The IRA in the Twilight Years.
Comdt Young was able to lay one of the more sensational wartime rumours to rest, that fully armed Canadian troops had crossed the Border in 1941 and been repelled by machine guns fired by a Kerry contingent of the Army.
"No such firing took place," he assured me.