Sadness and happiness of military man's life story

by David Flynn

A new autobiographical book by Athlone native Liam McGrath encompasses around 70 years of a life, told in a breathtaking, fast-paced style with the intensity of the story coming through on every page.

Liam experienced pain and loss and his story is noteworthy because he has triumphed through a lot to find love, respect, success and contentment, even through recent health challenges.

‘It Wasn’t Easy: A Life Story’ is the title of Liam's autobiography. The first line in the book, "My happy childhood memories came to an end in March, 1963", sets the scene for an adult life of difficulty and adversity.

Before that month his childhood years, firstly in Tang and later in Assumption Road, had been happy ones spending time boating on the River Shannon with his father, John.

The beginning of the end of his childhood happened with the road death of Liam’s father in the Congo, when Liam was aged just 10 years. John McGrath, who was only 46 years old, left a wife and nine children.

“I went to school in the old Coosan school, where there was no running water, only a pump out the back,” said Liam of his school-life in the early 60s.

The experiences Liam McGrath had in his teenage years could be called adventures, but it would be more truthful to call them challenges. They came at him in many different ways.

He spent around four years in an industrial school in Hampshire in the UK after his family moved to Greenwich, South London in the mid-1960s. He briefly ran away from the school, and worked in many different places, including later spending six years as a serving member of the British Army, several years before he joined Óglaigh na hÉireann. He was barely 24 years old with an eighteen-month-old son, Richard, when his first wife, Doris, was killed during the troubles in Northern Ireland. He found happiness again with Athlone native, Philomena Tumelty, whom he married in 1978, and Philomena raised Liam’s first son, Richard, alongside the couple’s three children, Lisa, John and Aaron.

However, there were many more challenges along the road of Liam’s life, spanning incidents while he was with the Irish Army (being stationed in Kildare and Custume Barracks) and in Africa where he really found his forte as a cartographer for nine years of his thirty years’ service to his country. In his latter career years, he worked in Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean.

“I was always interested in maps and going places, and I studied cartography a lot, and spent five trips in Liberia, Chad and Sierra Leone, doing six months at a time, making maps,” Liam told the Westmeath Independent.

He said that when he was in Africa in the 1990s the living conditions there were seriously under-developed. “Libera was about the best of the bunch. Many people could speak English there, and many had American accents. I loved Africa, and of course I had a link there because of my father dying there.”

Liam travelled a lot by helicopter throughout the African countryside, in 40 degrees heat, taking pictures before designing the maps.

The current challenges Liam has been facing include his battles with cancer and Parkinson's Disease, which prompted him to write his autobiography. It took him six months to write his book, ‘It’s Not Easy: A Life Story’. He worked for four or five hours a day on it, writing with one finger and one thumb on his laptop.

“I was a reader over the years, but mostly travel books. I used to be telling stories, yarns to people over the years and lots of them told me I should put what happened into a book, so after a while I thought I would go for it,” he said. “It was a way of keeping the head active as well.”

The book was released on Amazon in November on paperback, hardback, and on kindle. It can also be ordered in the Athlone Bookshop on Lloyd’s Lane, Athlone.

The little boy pictured thumbing a lift on a road, on the cover of the book, is Liam and Philomena’s grandson, Rian, who is depicting what life was like for Liam while he was on the run from school, around 60 years ago.

‘It Wasn’t Easy: A Life Story’ is dedicated to Liam’s mother, Mary Brigid McGrath, who died five years ago, aged 94 years. In the introduction, Liam also acknowledges Philomena, his wife of 47 years, and his sister, Claire Wilmore.

The reviews on Amazon of ‘It Wasn’t Easy: A Life Story’, have comments like; ‘Such a captivating read. Beautifully written with such respect to tense and traumatic memories. There were so many moments where the story shook me. From Irish wit and humour, traumatic loss, and courage that could never be contained, this story will stay with me for a very long time.’ Another review said: ‘I highly recommend this book. The author takes you on a journey of his life from a troubled childhood to serving in the army in Northern Ireland. Through everything that life threw at him, he showed strength, resilience and courage.’