The wartime memoir of former Labour Party senator Jack Harte, the only politician from the Republic decorated for service as an Allied soldier in the second World War, was launched last night in Leinster House.
To the Limits of Endurance: One Irishman's War, tells of Mr Harte's experiences in the war, beginning with the day he ran away to join the British army as a 16-year-old in 1937.
His regiment was posted to Palestine to quell an insurrection the following year, he was in the garrison at Malta during the ferocious German siege of 1941 and 1942, and was picked for duty with the Special Boat Service and landed behind enemy lines in Italy from a submarine. He later fought in Greece, was captured by the Germans and was close to starving in a prisoner of war camp on the day the war ended.
Returning to Dublin at the age of 24, after eight unbroken years away, he got a job in Guinness, became an active trade unionist and was elected a Labour senator in 1973. He served in the Seanad for the following 20 years.
"I've often been asked: 'were you scared to death?' It's funny, but the truth is that I wasn't," he says. "I had a persistent apprehension, but not once during those six long years of fighting did I even feel homesick. There were times when the anxiety built up, but you kept it in check. In later years, the pent-up stress and anger experienced by front-line soldiers often comes to the fore - today they call it post-traumatic stress - to us, it was an everyday part of life."
