Lawnmowerman

In a fit of leniancy today i granted my slave permission to speak, he told me that one of his friends was in the Irish army and that he had served in Chad.

This got me thinking the Irish Army abroad, i had heard that they had sent 1,000 men to fight in the First Gulf War; the poor Mexicans didn't know what to do with them.

Anyway after doing a bit i research i found that Irish peacekeepers had served in the Congo during the Kantangese uprising. 2 incedents of note were " ", and the . Also the Lebanon where 47 Irish peacekeepers have been killed in the 23 years they were atcive there.

Ireland is part of the UN and does send its soldiers abroad as part of UN missions (Chad). and Lebanon where a staggering 47 Irish peacekeepers have been killed in the 23 years they were atcive there.

They appear to have had a very quiet run of things, or am I missing something??? How do these figures compare to other small European counrties such as Belguim or Holland???

irishcrusader95

i guess it depends on where you get posted, the irish rangers have been active in a number of places, the chad mission for instance i hear was very uneventful

Mohammed the Persian

Well, I did hear North Korea contributed 16 pilots to the Yom Kippur War on the Arabs' side

Lawnmowerman

Really!!! Oh those North Koreans, i don't know if being helped by North Korea is a good or a bad thing. Your getting help but if it's coming from North Korea?????

Nemowork

Belgium is in a seperate situation because they were in active combat in colonies such as the congo and mounting major paratroop assaults like Dragon Rouge in leopoldville although the have been quite restrained since then.

Likewise the Dutch have come through their ex-colonies independence wars, for example Indonesia. Despite their reputation as a bunch of laid back pot smoking liberals the Dutch like to have a quite effective ans well armed military around.
When it comes to counter-terrorism the Dutch were among the pioneers, back in 1977 a bunch of South Mollucan terrorists had taken over a train and a school outside Rotterdam, its the Dutch marines who took them out with, it has to be said, notable violence while saving all of the hostages except one.
They also got involved with notable success in Afghanistan.

Roughly speaking, the Irish prefer their idea of neutrality and the lack of ex-colonies allow them to maintain it, they also make a point of keeping their military under-equipped so they dont get any funny ideas.

Unfortunately for the Dutch and Belgians their military reputaions have been tarnished, in the Dutch case by UN indecision leading to the fall of Srebrenica, in the Belgian case by the weakness of their home government allowing the soldiers not to fight back and save lives in Rwanda.

irishcrusader95

on a side note those irish troops killed in the Niemba ambush i think never had their bodies recovered, it wasn't expected that they would be found as it was well known that those tribes were cannibals. in the siege of jadotville the irish force held off a large and well armed forces which was supplemented by a group of mercenaries. they inflicted huge losses on the enemy and never lost a man themselves, just one man wounded. they only surrendered when out of ammo, the UN command is to be blamed for this for not reinforcing them and braking the siege. the irish commander who had ordered his men to dig defensive positions before the start of the siege which is what saved them in the attacks was blamed for it and had his reputation destroyed, he died before his name was cleared just a few years ago

Davidius

There were two passengers killed in the crossfire at the De Punt train siege, probably by machine gun fire after trying to run. The other passengers were prone, as ordered by the marines before they opened fire on the train. The two casualties probably panicked. The marines considered the operation a partial failure on account of these deaths.

The Royal Netherlands Marine Corps seem like a very professional unit and apparently one of the oldest currently serving military units in the world.

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