Authors: Ralph Riegel
In November 1998, just a few weeks before her death, Pat Mullins’ mother, Catherine, had the satisfaction of seeing her son posthumously awarded the Military Star. (Photo: Paudie McGrath)
The morning dawned
cold and bright with a hoar frost belying the fact that it was almost springtime. The upper slopes of the Galtees still had small traces of snow in the gullies after one of the coldest winters in living memory. But, with the promise of spring hanging in the air, the daffodils were now cautiously poking their heads out of the ground around St Joseph’s church in Kilbehenny.
Few people in the tightknit village realised it that day, but Thursday 11 February 2010 was arguably the most significant time for the Mullins family since two pale and visibly nervous army officers had trudged up the laneway to Boher almost fifty years before to break the terrible news that Pat Mullins was missing in the Congo.
After half a century of questions, frustration and confusion, the family were finally hoping they would get some answers about the circumstances in which Pat died and, more importantly, what happened to his body. As the members of the Mullins family prepared for the special briefing with senior army personnel, they were privately praying that an Irish team would at last be sent to Katanga to search for Pat’s final resting place.
Over the previous four years, the Defence Forces had been researching an updated report on the status of Pat Mullins. The research was launched in direct response to a letter sent by Mary Kent on 20 March 2006 to Defence Minister Willie O’Dea. Writing the letter wasn’t easy for Pat’s sister, but she felt the family now had no other option but to appeal directly to the cabinet level of the government.
In the letter, Mary wrote: ‘From a family point of view, we have never been furnished with the details of his [Pat’s] death or what efforts were made to recover his body. His body has never been recovered and we, the family, were never informed of what were the actual circumstances surrounding his death.
‘We as a family feel very hurt that we have never had closure with regards to Pat’s death. If we had his remains and he was buried properly, at least that would allow us to move on. Pat was forgotten – other names were mentioned but never Pat. We find the current state of affairs very upsetting. We as a family request that you set up a board of inquiry without delay to see what can be done to recover his body and clarify the circumstances of his death.’
What hurt the family most of all was they felt Pat and his sacrifice had somehow been forgotten. The family felt that he was only remembered within a rapidly decreasing circle of family, friends and now-ageing comrades. Pat had made the ultimate sacrifice on UN duty in Africa and the Mullins family were determined that his memory deserved better recognition. Yet, amongst the general public, the mention of ‘Pat Mullins’ and ‘the Congo’ was still more often than not greeted by a confused shrug of the shoulders, even in his native south Limerick and north Cork.
The impetus for the renewed interest in the young peacekeeper’s status came from myriad different sources. But perhaps the most obvious source of fresh momentum was the fact that the then Minister for Defence was Willie O’Dea, a Limerick TD. One of the most dedicated constituency workers ever produced by the legendary Fianna Fáil organisation, O’Dea took an early and personal interest in the case. It certainly helped that Pat Mullins’ address was in the same county that O’Dea considered his personal stomping ground.
The Limerick TD, once interested in a matter, was a tireless worker who expected the same levels of commitment from his staff. The minister was sympathetic to the Mullins family’s plight and his concern was echoed by some of the Defence Forces’ most senior officers, several of whom felt there was a duty of honour owed to the family. Having received Mary Kent’s letter, Minister O’Dea agreed to a review of the matter with the Defence Forces’ top brass.
Under the new review, Col Paul Pakenham was requested to re-examine Pat Mullins’ file to determine if any new information had come to light. It was a task perfectly suited to Pakenham – a native of Dublin – who not only had a keen interest in the Pat Mullins case, but also brought to the review a forensic knowledge of military administration and UN bureaucracy. It also helped that he was one of the army’s most respected senior officers and well versed in file studies. Every aspect of the Mullins file was now re-examined and analysed, and the colonel decided to interview the remaining survivors of the 35th Battalion to determine if anything had been omitted from the original inquiry. There was also the chance that the importance of some data may have been underestimated.
It was a mammoth undertaking because the veterans first had to be tracked down. Not all were involved with the ONE (Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen) or IUNVA, which made the task all the harder. Some were also in poor health. A further difficulty was that while the Defence Forces maintained a small mountain of files from the 1960–64 deployments to the Congo, a lot of relevant files were also overseas in New York.
With Minister O’Dea’s permission, it was quickly decided to send two senior officers to UN headquarters in New York to re-examine any files on the Congo mission. Cmdt Victor Laing and Lt Col Peter Richardson were assigned to the task and travelled to New York in November 2006, just five months after the receipt of Mary Kent’s letter. Their task was to comb through all remaining UN documentation, files, orders and intelligence with regard to events in Katanga in 1961 and, in particular, the fallout of Operation Morthor.
The officers would also try to cross-reference files held back in Ireland with the UN files to determine if additional data may have been received by the UN from the Swedish or Indian battalions. The UN also had intelligence from various other sources including Europeans working in Elisabethville such as doctors, nurses, engineers and contractors.
Processing the UN data took time and it was decided to focus on this before launching the nationwide series of interviews with those Congo veterans still alive. It quickly became apparent that the clock was ticking. One Congo veteran who was interviewed by Col Pakenham and his team, died while on a Spanish holiday several months later.
Finally, three years after the review was launched, all the data was assembled and work began on preparing the final report, its conclusions and its recommendations. It was submitted for consideration to Minister O’Dea and the army chief of staff before a briefing was arranged with the Mullins family.
On 13 January 2010, Minister O’Dea wrote to Mary Kent and the Mullins family to say that the review report was now completed and would be available to them if they so wished. Minister O’Dea explained that the four years had been required because of the complexity of the review and the sheer volume of documentation. ‘The review has been exhaustive, involving the review of thousands of files in UN headquarters in New York, Ireland’s military and national archives, and files in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Interviews have also been conducted with a range of individuals including retired Defence Forces personnel and other persons connected to the events at the time,’ he wrote.
Minister O’Dea stressed that, given the potential nature of some of the review material and the fact that it could be distressing for the family, it might be best for the Mullins family to be briefed on the details by a liaison and support officer from the Defence Forces. He stressed that, after that meeting, he would be available to meet the family himself if they had any concerns arising from the review report.
‘May I take this opportunity to extend to you and your family, on behalf of the state, the government and the Defence Forces, my sincere and deepest sympathy and condolences on your terrible loss. I hope the report helps you and all of your family to bring some measure of closure to this tragedy. Patrick was taken at such a young age with his whole life ahead of him. We recognise and commend his bravery and his ultimate sacrifice in the cause of peace in a country far away.
Ar a dheis De go raibh a anam
,’ he wrote.
By February 2010, Col Paul Pakenham had been promoted to brigadier-general and was now the general officer commanding (GOC) of the 1st Southern Brigade. Were Pat Mullins to join the Defence Forces of 2010 in Limerick or Cork, Brig-Gen. Pakenham would be his most senior commander.
Brig-Gen. Pakenham – as the officer who supervised the Mullins review – was asked to personally brief the family on the report and its findings. That day of 11 February 2010, Pakenham was accompanied to the Firgrove Hotel in Mitchelstown, just five kilometres from Pat’s old Boher homestead, by the head chaplain to the Defence Forces, Monsignor Eoin Thynne, and the Defence Forces personnel support service officer, Cmdt Michael Rowan.
It was fitting that Pat Mullins’ old friend and comrade, John O’Mahony, was also present. John – like the Mullins family and Art Magennis – had never stopped campaigning for answers and it was entirely appropriate that he was present to discover whether, after fifty long years, his friend might finally be coming home. John knew a lot of the data that would be included in the report, but was still hoping against hope that something critical might have been unearthed in the UN archive search in New York.
A private room had been set aside in the Firgrove for the family and the army team. The Defence Forces had requested that the briefing be restricted to Pat’s immediate family members. Present were Pat’s siblings Mary Kent, Dinny Mullins and Tommy Mullins. Also present were Pat’s nephews, Ned Mullins, Patrick Mullins and Donie Dwane.
The meeting began at 2 p.m. and, over the course of the next four and a half hours, Brig-Gen. Pakenham took the family slowly and sensitively through what their review had found. It was a detailed report, which, for the first time, was able to hint to the family precisely what had happened to Pat and the circumstances of his final hours.
Pakenham explained that the Defence Forces would never forget Pat Mullins or his sacrifice and vowed that they would continue to support the Mullins family. He immediately tried to put the family at ease by stressing that there was no time limit on the briefing – and any questions they wanted to ask would be answered as honestly as possible.
Brig-Gen. Pakenham explained that the review had five specific objectives including: 1) to acknowledge that Tpr Mullins and Private Joyce were the only soldiers who died overseas and whose remains did not return home; 2) to modify the official Defence Forces position re Pat Mullins; 3) to offer the Mullins family a better understanding and insight into the circumstances of how Pat died; 4) to offer satisfaction to Pat’s former comrades re the events of September 1961; and 5) to expand the army files in relation to documents assembled as part of the 2006 review.
However, Brig-Gen. Pakenham stressed that, given the extreme sensitivity of the report and its findings, it should only ever be accessed on a ‘need to know
’
basis. The full report runs to sixty-one pages, though not all pages specifically relate to Pat Mullins.
According to Pat’s former colleagues, back in 1962, the army decided that there was no need for a formal court of inquiry into the circumstances of Pat Mullins’ death – and, under the regulations in force at the time, there was absolutely no legal requirement for such a formal hearing. As a result, the Mullins family was effectively left in the dark about many aspects of the case. It was explained to them that, back in the early 1960s, such information was deemed by the military authorities to be ‘inappropriate and undesirable’ to be made available to the family involved. In essence, the army wanted to spare families the pain and suffering of hearing precisely how their loved ones died. But, unwittingly, instead they sentenced families to years of doubt and confusion.
Crucially, the review ended with a forty-eight-year-old letter which was written in June 1962, following an investigation by a legal officer, which stated that the body of Tpr Mullins was no longer in existence. It was a startling revelation for the Mullins family.
In November 1963, the Defence Forces issued a death certificate for Pat Mullins giving his cause of death as: ‘Killed in Action – presumed to have died of bullet wounds on September 15 1962 in Elisabethville, Democratic Republic of Congo’. While this certificate was more than likely passed to the family in the 1960s, Pat’s brothers and sisters have no recollection of it. Crucially, the reference to ‘bullet wounds’ suggested that Pat Mullins may not, in fact, have died in the initial ambush. Because he was inside the armoured car, he could not have been struck by bullets fired from around the Radio College. Had Pat died at the Radio College, he would have had to have been hit by fragments from the anti-tank rocket.
During the course of the February meeting, Brig-Gen. Pakenham advised the family that, given the evidence available and the lack of documentary proof, it cannot be said for certain what precisely happened to Pat Mullins
. Ho
wever, the available evidence hinted at certain things – and now allows a possible outline of the last hours of Pat Mullins’ life to be drawn. The general advised the family that, on the balance of probabilities, Pat died on September 15 following a hostile engagement with Katangan gendarme forces.
Based on discussions with his colleagues and the meeting in Mitchelstown, some possible conclusions could be suggested. Foremost amongst these is that Pat Mullins was not killed outside the Radio College in the initial ambush. Secondly, the evidence also suggests that either Pat or Mick Nolan drove the armoured car away from the initial ambush site. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the Mullins family, the available evidence hints that both men died in a gun battle with Katangan gendarmes not far from one of their major barracks after the armoured car somehow got stranded on the roadside in Elisabethville.
One account, in particular, is of huge significance to Pat’s family and friends. In September 1961, Professor Daniel Despas was just a teenager. He was in Elisabethville and heard, at first hand, reports of the ambush outside the Radio College. Several of the Irish soldiers took shelter in the home of a Belgian man living nearby, Gerard Soerte, before surrendering to the Katangan gendarmes. Soerte had been extremely kind to the Irish soldiers in the hours before they were taken into custody.