FROM THE ARCHIVES:Some six months after the end of the second World War up to 700 southerners a week were going to Belfast to join the British armed forces, mainly the RAF, according to this report by an anonymous "special representative" – JOE JOYCE.
ROUGHLY, HALF of the 700 are men who have recently been demobilised from the Defence Forces in Eire. Four out of every five choose to enlist in the R.A.F. in preference to the British Army.
In certain cases their training in the Defence Forces helps them to become very useful members of the R.A.F. Medical officers, for instance, take up similar jobs in the R.A.F., and members of the Signals Corps are suitable candidates for initiation into the mysteries of “Radar,” Britain’s closely-guarded war-time secret. So closely-guarded, in fact, was it that during the war no man who had relatives in Eire was allowed to work at it unless his antecedents had been thoroughly investigated, and one Irishman was banned because his family had once employed a German domestic servant!
Every month about 2,000 men write from Eire to inquire about conditions of service and volunteering to join. That less than fifty per cent of this number eventually travel to Belfast is due to many reasons.
If from a man’s letter, which must be written by himself, he appears to have the makings of a suitable recruit, he receives a call-up notice (which also serves as a travel permit). He pays his own fare (which is afterwards refunded) to Goraghwood, where he gets his ticket from that station to Belfast. There they enlist, subject to a satisfactory interview and medical examination.
Prominently displayed in the recruiting office is the following notice: “If you are in the Free State Army (or on the reserve) and enlist in the R.A.F., two things will happen – (1) The R.A.F. will find out, discharge you and send you home: (2) When you re-enter the Free State you will be arrested as a deserter. This warning is for your information and benefit – not ours.”
There is a canteen where food and tea is provided for recruits before and after they have undergone their examination and interviews. Sitting there chatting cheerfully I found five who had just been passed as A1, all ex-Army men. Four of them came from Dublin, which, by the way, has been supplying about half of the recruits. I asked them their reasons for joining.
“I’m ambitious, I want adventure, and I think there are great opportunities in the R.A.F.,” said Charles T. O’Reilly, Bridge street, Cappamore, Co. Limerick, who had been working as a draper’s assistant. Charles J. McPhelimy, 66 Jervis street, Dublin, who was in the Army for four years and then worked in the G.P.O. parcels section simply said “I want to be a flyer.”
Subsidiary reasons advanced by the five men were the loneliness of civilian life after the Army – one of them spoke of the almost terrifying silence when he was sleeping in a single bed in a single room.
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