LOCK & LOAD
Troops to ship out 280,000 pieces of equipment as Irish leave base in Syria
THESE two Irish soldiers are spearheading a massive operation to get €23million worth of Defence Forces gear back from Syria in one piece.
The large-scale Irish presence in the war-torn country comes to an end next month – and it is the responsibility of Captain Andrew O’neill and Battalion Quartermaster Sergeant Colm Donnelly to make sure all usable equipment is sent back to Ireland.
That’s everything from €1million Mowag armoured personnel carriers to nuts and bolts. There are around 280,000 individual items – and each one has to be listed, packed and shipped.
“It is a mammoth task,” Captain O’neill, from Dublin, told the Irish Sunday Mirror in Camp Faouar, where some 133 members of the Defence Forces’ 68th Infantry Group have been based since last October.
The 68th is the 20th Irish contingent to be based at the camp as part of Ireland’s contribution to UNDOF, the United Nations mission that polices a 40-year truce between Israel and Syria. We first sent troops to UNDOF in late 2013 and our soldiers have served more than 2,600 individual tours in the camp in that time.
HEADQUARTERS
But Ireland has now decided to withdraw most of its soldiers from Syria, leaving only a handful of officers as part of the force headquarters – partly because the Defence Forces struggles to fill that and our commitment of 330 troops to UNIFIL, the UN mission in neighbouring Lebanon.
Capt O’neill and BQMS Donnelly, from Co Monaghan, have been working 12-hour shifts for weeks to make sure the logistics operation to ship gear home runs smoothly.
Capt O’neill told us: “It was daunting when we first thought about it. But this isn’t just something that we started a couple of weeks ago – this has been a long drawn process from the very start, when we first got together in our form up back in July.”
The officer said the first thing he and BQMS Donnelly did was decide what gear could be sent to help our troops in UNIFIL.
A special convoy, including this armoured earthmover, a Mowag APC and three containers of equipment, will leave Faouar today and make the three-hour journey to Ireland’s main UNIFIL camp, called Shamrock, in southern Lebanon.
He said: “The first thing we did was look at UNIFIL to see what equipment they needed, especially when it comes to spare parts... For the likes of transport spare parts which are large, heavy at times, costly to ship, it was more beneficial for us to send the stuff from here to there, rather than send it home, for it then to be requisitioned from Lebanon to be sent out again.
“We worked with our colleagues over in Lebanon to draw a plan of
Armed troops need all their equipment, weapons, night vision – the whole lot
what they needed – that’s what is going to go in a convoy now on Sunday.”
The Irish soldiers will patrol the UNDOF area in Syria until a date next month – which means the logistics unit cannot pack up any of the vital military equipment they use to defend themselves, including Mowags, .5 heavy machine guns, Steyr assault rifles and ammunition, until the mission comes to an end. He said: “Once we go non-operational, everything can be packed.
“Up to that time, you have to have all your equipment for operational purposes, ready to go at all times.
“Armed troops need all their equipment, their weapons and night vision equipment – the whole lot.”
Capt O’neill said that every single item – from a bolt to a Mowag – had to be individually itemised, or manifested, to the satisfaction of Syrian and Lebanese authorities before it could complete the journey.
“It is a lot of time-consuming paperwork,” he said. “Everything must be customs checked before it goes across – there has been a mammoth amount of work, not just by our little logistics section, but by the entire group.”
Meanwhile, although the Irish operation is winding down, the 133 soldiers still have to be fed.
Three cooks in the camp –
Sergeants Alan Farrell from Dublin and Trevor Moloney from Longford as well as Private James Mcglynn from Athlone – cook for the Irish, as well as Indians, Kazakhstanis and other European soldiers. Sgt Farrell said the team usually starts work around 5.30am – and finishes towards 7pm. “It’s a long day,” he said.