A life of service

A life of service

MAYO MAN IN IRAQ
Patrick Walsh

I grew up in the Cushlough area of Westport. My parents owned a pub which at the time was called the ‘Half Way Bar’ and is now called ‘Darby’s’.  I attended Carrakennedy National School and completed my first year of secondary school in Rice College, Westport. Then, when I turned 14, my parents decided to move to America after receiving one of the Donnelly Visas, so they sold the bar and in the summer of 1989 we packed up and moved to Boston. I attended High School in Lynn, Boston and after graduating in 1993 I Joined the US Navy.
I attended boot camp in San Diego and job training for pipe fitting and working on boilers in Los Angeles. After that I was stationed in Alaska, way out in the Aleutian Islands. I was then transferred to a battalion stationed in California where I made two six-month deployments to Guam (a US island territory in the Western Pacific ocean) and one deployment to the Presidential retreat, Camp David. During one of the Guam deployments, my battalion participated in the recovery of a Korea Air jetliner that crashed in the area.
Following these missions, I was delighted to be accepted into a one-year training programme in power generation and distribution.
I then moved back to California where I spent the next six years travelling the world working on large generators. I was deployed to Spain, Italy, Guam, Cuba, Singapore, Diego Garcia, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, Virginia (again), Japan and Pakistan. I was sent to Florida right after it was hit by a hurricane, my job being to restore power to the Pensacola area. I was also deployed to Guam right after it was devastated by two terrible typhoons. The whole island was without power when we got there, but as a result of a lot of hard work we managed to get power running in time for Christmas.
In 2005 I returned to a battalion and in December of that year I was deployed to Northern Pakistan for Earthquake relief. We went to the epicentre of the quake where I was in charge of the maintenance and construction of a 100-bed army hospital. There were 40 of us working on this project. We also demolished damaged school buildings and built new schools for children there.
I have very strong memories of this time. Most people in the area had never seen any westerners before. The amount of destruction I saw there was unimaginable. What I remember most from being there was talking to the young children who knew perfect English. Another big job entailed the construction of a water line down the side of a large mountain to provide water for a village that lost their water supply in the quake. The people there could not have been more thankful.
This March, I deployed to Iraq. I can’t reveal too much about what I do here as it is classified, but I am basically in charge of maintenance and construction for a joint military base. I am not outside the wire and most days I don’t even carry a weapon – nevertheless, I am still in danger from mortars.  I will be here until mid-October. The main downside to being here is the heat: during the day the temperature regularly reaches 48 degrees Celsius. Even at night, the temperature hovers around 30 degrees. This stifling desert heat mixed with the dust makes it pretty unbearable. But it’s my job and I’m happy to do it.
In the Navy, we have what is known as a ‘hometown news release’ – this is basically a way for people to let their friends and relatives know how they’re getting on, wherever in the world they may be. A couple of years ago, the rest of my family moved back to Westport (my parents live in Islandeady, and my 3 sisters live in the Westport area), so I contacted The Mayo News with a view to providing them with a ‘hometown news release’ of my own!
Some people are surprised to hear that there are Irishmen stationed in Iraq. They needn’t be – I have already met a Limerick man in the army, a Dubliner retired from the navy and two Cork men who work for the Exchange service (our store), so it shows how small the world is.
People sometimes ask me how I feel about the war. The truth is, it really doesn’t matter. I joined the Navy voluntarily and even volunteered to come here to Iraq. This is my job and I am happy to do it. There are times, certainly, when I would rather be some place else, but I have no regrets. The people here really needed this and for the most part they support us. The people attacking us are usually foreign fighters and not Iraqis.
Readers may be surprised to learn that even though I am in the Navy, I have never been on a boat – we are known as ‘dirt sailors’. I am a US Navy Seabee – the construction batallion of the navy. We are best-known for building bases, roadways, airstrips and numerous other construction projects. Our motto is; ‘we build, we fight’. Most of my work has been in disaster relief and reconstruction.
I plan on visiting Westport again next summer. I have been married to a Boston girl named Keri (whose grandparents were from Co Cork) since 1999 and we have a four-year-old son named Colin, and he has already been to Ireland twice. We spent our honeymoon in Ireland and even had a second reception at my uncle’s bar, Julian’s in Midfield.

In conversation with Olof Gill