COMING NEXT week to the Town Hall is Jane’s Hero which relates the remarkable and at times hair-raising experiences of Galway’s Lt Col Eamon Colclough during his service overseas with the UN.
The story is scripted by Peadar de Burca following extensive interviews with Colclough and is a radically revised version of a show which was initially staged in the Town Hall two years ago.
“The earlier version just focused on Eamon’s time in Sarajevo but on reflection I felt I wasn’t doing him justice,” de Burca tells me. “So I looked at it again and I thought why not go the whole hog and use all his stories and it seems to work a lot better.”
Colclough has seen service in many of the world’s trouble spots over the past 20 years including Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Yugoslavia, The Ivory Coast, and Chad and he certainly has compelling tales to tell of the things he saw and did.
One memorable anecdote that features in the play is his description of France’s President Mitterand flying into Sarajevo and going on a walkabout in the city in spite of incoming fire from besieging Serb forces.
“We had to walk down the runway in a line carrying our helmets and picking up bits of shrapnel so that Mitterand’s aircraft could land,” Colclough recalls. “Everyone said he was crazy to come because it was so dangerous. He came in on a chopper and when it landed we saw that it had been hit by several bullets and was unable to take off again.
“So they called in his executive jet to get him out, but as that was on the runway a drunken truck driver crashed into it and knocked a hole in the wing. We actually patched up the wing with a mattress and duct-tape and somehow the plane was able to take off.
“Sarajevo was the worst experience of my career. There were incoming shells, and snipers firing at you every day, and there were only a few dozen of each us there initially. That visit by Mitterand gave the impetus for opening Sarajevo airport and enabling vital supplies to come into the city.”
While the Irish Army may not enjoy the kind of resources that the US and British armies do, it still has a lot going for it as Colclough explains.
“We don’t have jet fighters or tanks; our main component is infantry and our personal infantry equipment is the very best,” he says. “We’re also very popular on overseas missions. That’s because we’re English speakers, which is the language used in UNIFIL, and also we’re post-colonial and not a member of a block like NATO.
“Since 2000 the Irish Army has downsized due to the peace dividend from the Good Friday Agreement, but we’ve upskilled. Before that 1.3 per cent of GNP was spent on defence now it’s 0.6 per cent which is the lowest in the EU but nonetheless the Irish Army is a very professional force.”
Colclough didn’t actually see Jane’s Hero when it was first staged as he was away on duty.
“I was in Kosovo when it was on first,” he explains. “Initially I assumed I was just providing Peadar with background research about what Irish troops do overseas. When most people go overseas it’s for a pleasant holiday but when we go overseas we’re going into a warzone and it can be very stressful.
“People generally have very little idea of what we do overseas so when Peadar first approached me I assumed I was just giving him background info for a play he would write about Irish soldiers, I never envisaged he would write one about me. I was a bit nervous about that to be honest!”
But not as nervous as he must have been encountering a crazed warlord in the Ivory Coast who had a gun to his head during an encounter which forms one of the pivotal episodes of the play.
“We were trying to set liaison teams with the various factions in the Civil War there and I led a unit up into the north of the country where this guy was operating,” says Colclough. “He was into all kinds of stuff like drugs, prostitution, and so on.
“Peadar hasn’t embellished any of that incident in the script, it all happened exactly as the play describes including me getting a phone call that morning from my wife Jane asking me to stay on base because she’d had a nightmare that I had been killed, and then encountering the warlord - and the seven-foot witch doctor who seemed to appear out of nowhere!”
So as not to spoil the denouement of that particular tale, we’ll refrain from disclosing it here. Suffice to say it’s just one of the highlights - by turns scary, moving, and funny, which go to make up the drama of Jane’s Hero.
Jane’s Hero, featuring Brian O’Gibne in the role of Colclough, runs at the Town Hall from Monday November 2 to Saturday 7 at 8.30pm nightly. Tickets are available through 091 - 569777.
