Mr MacCarron's interest in the Defence Forces dates from his schoolboy days in the Local Security Force of 1940. With an ear for anecdotes and an eye for the incongruities of rapid expansion he describes developments, corps by corps.
In August 1939 there were 7,600 regular troops and 12,000 reservists (including the invaluable Volunteer Force - the precursor of the FCA). The Treaty ports, without which an independent foreign policy was impossible, were in Irish hands. Land Annuities were no longer paid. The economic war, which preceded these gains, had serious economic effects, but the country's morale was high.
MacCarron mentions the lack of urgency, here or in Britain, in the winter of 1939/40. Nobody helped the Poles. Britain's manpower contribution to France was small. Ireland released some student reservists to return to their studies. The Epsom Derby was held with full morning dress and grey toppers at the "time of France's agony".
But reality set in, as MacCarron says, "When the `Sitzkrieg' turned into the `Blitzkrieg', with the defeat of the French and the rout of the British".
On June 5th 1940 the German army crossed the Somme. On June 6th the Government and Opposition "on one platform" appealed for recruits. Within 24 hours "representatives from every section of the community flocked in their thousands to join up". With a light touch, MacCarron describes the influx, the "kitting out" and the training. Many of the book's excellent pictures are new.
How realistic was the training? It varied, as this book indicates. A German invasion was hardly possible. Parachute landings could be trained for and were containable. An armoured blitzkrieg from the North, supported by the RAF, was probably the most serious danger. Set-piece battles in the Boyne area could have lost us thousands of young men, although not without cost to the attackers.
But "the real fight would begin only after conventional warfare had ended". That was the spirit of the time - despite the austerity and the narrow horizons caused by the narrow availability of secondary and university education. About 1,700 boys and 1,500 girls sat Leaving Certificate examinations in 1939 and 1940 - a tiny, privileged elite. The past is another country. Hardly a just society - but a staunch one.
E. D. Doyle joined the army as a soldier during the Emergency and retired as a Colonel and Director of Signals in 1984