Bravery award for city WWII veteran Pat (89)

A CITY man who took part in the D-day landings at Normandy in 1944 was this week given the highest military honour of France for his bravery during the operation.
Market Street native Pat Gillen (89) was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur medal by the French ambassador on Monday at a special ceremony held at the Mercy Hospital in Cork.
A brother of the one the city’s great characters – Michael ‘Chick’ Gillen – Pat joined the British Army in 1943, when he as an eighteen-year-old, and his friend Tom Togher, took the train to Belfast to enlist.
They joined ‘6 Commando’, a unit given the task of securing a bridge near Caen, but alas Tom Togher was to be mortally wounded in combat but Pat survived, making the six-mile trek from Sword Beach to Pegasus Bridge.
This week, Pat’s nephew, Cllr Niall McNeilis, told the Galway City Tribune, that all of the family were very proud and excited about the honour bestowed on Pat – the highest decoration that France can give a soldier.
“There was a family tradition of the Gillens joining the army with my grandfather having fought in World War I, so when Pat and Tom Togher got together, they decided this was what they were going to do.
“By the time the family found out where they were gone back in 1943, they had enlisted: one of them survived and the other did not, like so many friends who fought in the war,” said Niall McNeilis.
Earlier this year, Pat had planned to make the journey to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, D-day invasion, but ill-health forced the ex-rifleman to pull out of the trip and he is now being cared for at the Mercy Hospital in Cork.
He mightn’t have made the trip but Pat penned a special message for the ceremonies on a laurel wreath, handmade by his daughter Mary. The message read: “In memory of all commandos from the Emerald Island who lie in sleep in Normandy fields.”
For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.