CEREMONIAL words and phrases like "pure patriot", "noble" and "absolute integrity" fall short in representing the true nature of that fine officer and gentleman, Artillery's Lt.-Col. Bobby Childers.
Scion of Ireland's most distinguished family, he was born in Chelsea, London on January 24th, 1911. His father, Erskine Childers, author of The Riddle of the Sands and gun-runner for the Irish Volunteers, served in the Boer War against Smuts and in the first World War was a navy flying officer. He was executed during the Civil War in 1922 for possession of a pistol - freakishly, a present from Michael Collins.
Childers spent the night before his execution discussing the meaning of life with his captors, and shook hands with each member of the firing squad just before he was shot. Bobby inherited his father's nobility and heroic stoicism. In principle, he refused adamantly ever to refer to that incident; he would do nothing to harbour the bearing of ill-will against a fellow-Irishman. Although born in England, he was a member of the Church of Ireland.
The onset of the second World War had been signalled with the certainty of a football fixture, so Bobby answered Ireland's call to arms and enlisted in the Volunteer Force in February 1939. He was a member of an anti-aircraft brigade nucleus, formed to protect Dublin which, like Belfast at the time, was completely unprotected against air attack. He was promoted corporal and commissioned in that same year, called out on permanent service in June 1940, and posted as a training officer to the AA subsection in Kildare. He was briefly intelligence officer, and later QM, to the AA Battalion. In 1941 he was appointed battery commander to the 1st Medium AA Battery.
The then Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera (a great friend of his father), visited him in early 1941 when he was a patient in St. Bricin's Hospital. He was posted to Special Duties in GHQ and, later that year, as staff officer to the Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan McKenna, whom he accompanied throughout the turbulent 1942 Blackwater manoeuvres and in later sensitive liaisons and tours with General Franklyn, where his staff-officer qualities, professional demeanour and tact were much appreciated.
He was promoted acting major 1945 (the title "major" was changed to lt.-col. in 1947). He was transferred to the First Line Reserve in 1946 and resigned from the Defence Forces in 1956. Outside of the Defence Forces, he had separate working existences including Irish Press management. These activities are for other pens. We remember him as one of our own; a gunner officer.
He was elected president of the Artillery Club in 1977 and graced that office as he did everything he touched. Like Chaucer's Knight, he was a "very parfit" gentleman. I bhfhlaitheas na bhFiann go raibh a anam dhilis.