From Balla to Windsor Castle via Afghanistan

ON DUTY?Declan Lynn pictured in uniform in Afghanistan.

From Balla to Windsor Castle


Unable to enlist in the Irish Army, Balla native Declan Lynn joined the British Army and last week was presented with a MBE by the Queen for services in Afghanistan

Interview
Edwin McGreal

It was a long and winding road which brought Balla man Declan Lynn to Windsor Castle last Tuesday. The 37-year-old Major in the British Army was there to receive a MBE from Queen Elizabeth II and his journey is a remarkable one.
The honour was for Major Lynn’s key role in helping the Afghan National Army get off the ground as the Asian country continues to rebuild under the Karzai government.
More of that anon but firstly just how did a Balla man end up at Windsor Castle collecting such a honour last Tuesday?
One of four children of SeΡn and Eileen Lynn, both deceased, from Station Road in Balla, Declan Lynn went to national school and secondary school in Balla and always wanted to be in the army.
However attempts to enlist in the Irish Army were unsuccessful. Admitting he ‘didn’t have a great Leaving Cert’, Declan Lynn was advised by the Army to go to college and get a degree first. However upon graduating with a Business Studies degree from Letterkenny IT, he was then too old to join the cadets. The Irish Army’s loss was to become the British Army’s gain.
He worked for a couple of years, went to Australia for a year and when he came home his father was terminally ill with cancer. That was 2003. Declan became his carer and whilst looking after him he started the enrolment process to join the British Army.
“Part of the attraction was everything that was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and it would be a chance to play a part in world events,” Declan Lynn told The Mayo News this week.
Being in the British Army and receiving honours from the Queen is something which is still met with a mixture of opinions in Ireland. Declan Lynn offers a measured response to the issue.
“When it came to thinking about joining the British Army, I did consider the Anglo-Irish history and all of that sort of stuff.
“My overriding thought was there was only so long personally that I thought I could live in the past for. I joined the Army because I wanted to carve a future for myself. That was my own personal decision, I’m not saying it’s the right decision but that was my particular rationale.
“People are entitled not to forget their history but for me it was the right thing to do, not to be bound by it either,” he said.
Declan Lynn was commissioned into the British Army on December 15, 2005 to the rank of Second Lieutenant. He was commissioned into the Education and Training Services Branch. Effectively Lynn is one of the Army’s teachers. They provide classes on the ground on tours, and in army bases in the UK and Europe, for soldiers and officers seeking advancement.
He may not be out in the trenches but the job does not mean he is cocooned in the safety of the UK either, as nearly 31 months on tours in Iraq and Afghanistan prove - he has been awarded the Accumulated Tour Campaign Medal for serving over two years on operational tours.
He was first sent to Iraq within two months of finishing teacher training and relished going in at the deep end. His second tour in Iraq was where Lynn encountered the greatest level of danger to date.
“The base I was in the second time was much closer to Basra city and the insurgents were always firing mortars and rockets out of the city into our base location. In the seven month tour there our base was regularly the subject of rocket attacks.  
“I remember one incident where we had a really close call where we had a large bombardment one morning and one of the rockets landed within ten metres of where we were.
“At the time your training kicks in and takes over. You don’t realise that you’re scared, maybe it’s the adrenaline that gets you through it but the next time the rocket alarms went off, I felt scared then. It was almost like delayed fright,” he recalls.
He has absolutely no regrets about his decision to enlist though, even with the element of danger involved.
“I love it. It is the best decision I’ve made. It took a lot of time to think about it and whether or not it was the right thing for me but I am so glad that I did it. It’s been a fantastic experience,” he admitted.
Promotions from Second Lieutenant to First, then to Captain and then to Major have come over the years as Declan Lynn has risen through the ranks. He was deployed to Afghanistan for the second time in May 2013 with responsibility as the course designer for the Afghan National Army Officer Academy.
Attempting to get such an Academy off the ground in the worn torn country was ‘a mammoth undertaking’, he admits.  
There were no buildings for the course to be delivered in, no cadets had been selected and there were not enough Afghan staff to teach the course. Major Lynn’s team of three had to deal with all of these issues and find training areas which were safe to train on, design the course and develop a fair selection system which could not be manipulated. Cultural differences were a big challenge too.
However by the time he left Afghanistan in June 2014, the Academy was up and running at full operational capacity with just under 1,000 cadets in training. It’s still going strong and produced its first commissioned officers last September.
Lynn’s work was so highly regarded that he was called into his superior officer’s office last February to be told he was being awarded an MBE.
He describes last Tuesday as ‘absolutely overwhelming’, especially when he was informed that the royal family member presenting the award would be the Queen herself.
He was accompanied by his sister Susan, his cousin Martin Lynn and his wife Sarah.
“I had family around me and there’s something that makes you uniquely proud when you are surrounded by people who are uniquely proud of you. Going into Windsor Castle coming from a small village in the west of Ireland is a set of circumstances that you never quite imagined for yourself,” he admitted.
Major Declan Lynn MBE hopes to visit Balla later this year. His father SeΡn was from Moygownagh and his mother Eileen from Straide. He has aunts and uncles and cousins all over Mayo. He and his sister Susan both live in England, his brother James is in the USA while sister Helen is in Ireland.
He said last Tuesday itself was ‘a bit of a blur’ until he found himself standing in front of the Queen with ‘her pinning the honour on me’.
“We had a brief conversation and she was very well informed about what I had been doing and what I got the award for. It was very humbling.”

What is an MBE?
Major Declan Lynn was one of 139 members of the British Armed Forces who was named in the Operational Honours and Awards list. He was presented with a MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) which are awarded for ‘significant achievement or outstanding service’. Another Mayo man to receive a MBE in recent years is Castlebar man Michael Feeney was awarded a civilian MBE in 2010 for his achievement in founding the Mayo Peace Park and Garden of Remembrance in Castlebar.