THE GOVERNMENT has indicated that it will help the family of a soldier missing in action in the Congo for 50 years to visit the location where it is believed he was killed.
Trooper Patrick Mullins, from Kilbehenny, Co Limerick, was 18 years old when he left for the Congo in June 1961 as a member of the Armoured Car Group 35th Battalion serving with the United Nations mission, Onuc.
Three months later, the armoured car in which he was travelling while on patrol in the city of Elizabethville was ambushed. His body was never found. Trooper Mullins remains one of Ireland’s two missing in action soldiers.
At a commemorative ceremony in Co Limerick yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence Alan Shatter said considerable research into the circumstances surrounding Trooper Mullins’s death and the non-recovery of his body was conducted by a Defence Forces research team from September 2006 through to August 2009.
He said it was regrettable that despite these “exhaustive efforts”, his body was never found.
“I know that the members of the Trooper Mullins family would welcome an opportunity to travel to Lubumbashi, as Elizabethville is now known, to visit the location where Trooper Mullins died,” Mr Shatter said.
“The Department of Defence and the Defence Forces would be pleased to facilitate such a visit subject to the agreement of the United Nations and the prevailing security conditions in the Congo at the time.”
Among those at yesterday’s commemorative ceremony were Trooper Mullins’s brothers Thomas and Patrick and his sisters Mary Kent, Margaret Dwane and Nelly Kelly.
After Mass at St Joseph’s Church, a limestone memorial dedicated to Trooper Mullins and commissioned by the Defence Forces was unveiled. “It’s both a sad and happy occasion,” Ms Kent said.
While all the family welcomed the memorial to their youngest sibling, they said the fact his body was never recovered made his death more difficult to accept.
“It’s been a long time since he died, but still it’s not final because we never knew where his body was and it makes it much harder,” Thomas Mullins said.
Denis Mullins has fond memories of his youngest brother who loved sport, particularly hurling and football. He said it was a great comfort to the Mullins family to meet so many of his colleagues yesterday from the Defence Forces.
“It’s a day of celebration as well as a day of sadness,” he added.
Mr Shatter was accompanied by the Defence Forces Chief of Staff, Lieut Gen Seán McCann.
“Trooper Mullins made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of peace on what was our first armed peacekeeping mission abroad,” Lieut Gen McCann said.
“Tragically his remains were never recovered despite exhaustive inquiries and it’s very fitting that we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death and dedicate this monument to our fallen comrade.”
Trooper Mullins’s former colleagues and retired and serving Defence Forces personnel were among those in attendance.