Published: Wednesday, 9th December, 2009 5:00pm

An athletic life from the land to the military

Mick McCarth was a very popular soldier for over four decades in Custume Barracks. He was part and parcel of military life from the days following the Emergency (World War 2) to the late 1980's, and he has experienced a life on the land in the recessionary Ireland of the 1930's. Today he's gone back to his military roots by becoming Athlone's first ever President of the local Irish United Nations Veterans Association.

Interestingly Mick's real name is Robert Michael McCarth, but like many Irish people in the 40's, he was known by his second name.

"At home and in the barracks, I was always known as Mick, and the name Bob meant nothing to me," laughed Mick, who indeed is a man known for his great humour.

He began life in 1929, in the farming townland of Drinagh, which is between Rosslare Harbour and Wexford town.

He left school at 14 years, and in his last few months in school, he was given the job of teaching young Traveller boys.

"We worked in the corner of the classroom, and I had to teach them Catechism, so they could get confirmed, because the Travelling families moved around a lot in those days, in their four-wheeled wagons," said Mick.

The McCarth family, of seven siblings, had a small bit of land, and when Mick left school he gave his father a hand on the land, and both men also worked with other farmers during the Emergency.

"We did all kinds of work for the other farmers like nagging turnips, and pulling beef and looking after animals," he said. "There was simply no money in Ireland in the 1930's, nobody had any, it was a different kind of recession to today's one. There was no dole then. There was also a big recruiting drive by the Army after the war, and lots of farmers sons joined up."

Mick's father Thomas was a member of the Free State Army in the 1920's, and Mick followed in his footsteps by leaving the land, and joining the army first in Wexford town in 1946. Mick had already being a member of the military Local Security Forces (LSF) from the time he was sixteen years old. Following being sent to the Curragh for training, in February, 1947, Mick was stationed in Custume Barracks, Athlone, where he worked and soldiered for forty-two and a half years.

Mick cites his training in the Curragh as the best education anyone could get.

"When I was a young fellow in the Curragh, we did three nights a week in school, and I learned a lot there," he said. "We did English, Irish, Maths and History."

After meeting, a local girl, Peggy Dowling from Sarsfield Square, in the Gaelic League traditional music hall, in Gleeson Street, the couple went on to marry, and they had two sons, Tony and Dominic and five daughters Sheila, Mary, Pauline, Deirdre and Joan.

Sadly, for Mick and his family, Peggy passed away in 1992.

"The Gaelic League was a very popular place in Athlone in the 40's, and it was actually an army hut with a pot-bellied stove, and we danced around the stove," said Mick.

In his early years in Custume Barracks, Mick was involved with fighting the floods of 1954, and he was chosen to lead a group of fifteen men through the farming lands, because of his own background in farming.

"They wanted someone who knew about stacking corn and saving crops, and we worked in Clonmacnoise and Clonown and other areas for around seven or eight weeks," said Mick.

"We worked hard at it, putting cattle up on railway sleepers, and digging spuds out that was covered in water. Those floods were bad, but they weren't as bad as the ones that's happening at the moment around the area."

Throughout the 1950's, Mick pursued his interests in gymnastics and athletic pursuits, which had originally began for him in Wexford in the early 40's, when he was a member of the Drinagh Murrintown Pearsetown (DMP) Athletic Club as a teenager.

In 1949, Mick was sent for a course in Physical Education and Athletic Skills to Newman House in Dublin for five months. He got a European Diploma in Physical Education and Athletics, which put him on the road to his lifelong pursuit of fitness training.

In the 1950's, Mick was a physical training instructor at Garbally College, Ballinasloe, and also for the Fr Bennett's boys club in Athlone, and was gamesman at St Peter's Girls school in Athlone.

Mick is the holder of a Leinster Novice Cross Country medal, and also had the West Command Javelin title on many occasions. He was a basketball player, and was a member of the Western Command team, and was also on the Roscommon Inter-County team.

He won several All-Army individual gymnastic awards during those years, and got involved in shooting competitions in the army, and won the military's Vicars Machine Gun Competition in 1955. In 1957, he was on the winning Gustav Machine Gun team in the Curragh.

Ten years later, Mick was an oarsman, alongside many other army lads, on the set of the movie, 'Alfred the Great', which was filmed around the lake in Athlone.

"We got thirty shilling a day, and had to row back from one place to another, across Lough Ree, but I will always be remembered as the Viking who was wearing a wristwatch in the film," laughed Mick.

Mick did several tours of duty abroad while with the Defence Forces. He was with first Irish group, who went to the Congo in 1960, and it was his first time on an aeroplane, and he found the heat of the African country, stifling. However the lads got on with the job, and took a salt tablet every morning at 6 a.m. One month after landing in the Congo, he was sent to Leopoldsville to work as chief military clerk of military information.

"It wasn't so bad in Leopoldsville, because we could wear light shirts and trousers, and I enjoyed the spell of the few months there," he said. Mick also did three tours of duty in Cyprus, and was well thought of, among his peers, in Custume Barracks, and was the first company sergeant to be put in charge of a ranger unit, in the early 1970's. A few years earlier, at the end of the 1960's, he had brought a company of men to Camp Arrow in North Donegal, when the soldiers were moved to the border.

Mick was a Sergeant Major during his last fifteen years in the barracks, and following his retirement, he went back to the land, by working his garden in Cartron Drive to prizewinning level. He won the Tidy Towns Best Small Garden for two years, in 1997 and 2000.

He never drove a car, but has rode a Yamaha 125 motorbike for the past five years, and started off with bikes about thirty years ago, with a Honda 50. Mick was very proud recently to have been asked to not only join the local branch of the Irish United Nations Veterans Association (IUNVA), but to be their first President. He is now President of Post 9 of the IUNVA, which is the new Athlone branch.

"I'm happy for everything that has happened in my life, and I am thankful to the good Lord for that good life and career and especially for the great family that I have today," said Mick.