In fifteen days I will be 83 years old.
I was born an oasis of peace amid a world at war.
That was my good fortune, not a matter of luck.
That peace was the fruit of the work of Connolly
and Pearse, de Valera and others, soberly calculated
and bravely carried out.
I belong to a shrinking minority, the first generation
of Irish persons born as free citizens.
Unlike most Britons, European and American
citizens my generation in Ireland were never
conscripted into armed forces.
At 15 I lied about my age to volunteer for
the part-time territorial FCA.
About the time ELVIS was called up by
Uncle Sam.
And unwitting British conscripts served
standing up as guinea pigs in open
trenches half a mile from an atom
bomb blast.
And British forces waged genocidal
warfare, euphemistically termed an
Emergency, in Malaya and funded
a British Welfare state by the theft
Malayan Rubber and TIN.
I dare the mercenary scribblers who depict the Age of de Valera as a dystopian dictatorship amid a sea of liberal democracies to contradict me.
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