Pioneering soldier Mary first female Army chief

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets Mary Carroll, who has succeeded 70 men in role of OC at Renmore Military Barracks

Rapport is a word Mary Carroll mentions several time during the course of our interview. The first woman to hold the role of Officer in Command (OC) at Renmore Military Barracks is no pushover, but she likes to know that the 448 troops of An Chead Cathlan Cois who are under her watch are doing OK.

“I want every young soldier to feel welcome and to belong,” she says. “I am a mother myself. The days of making their lives a misery is long gone.  When I ask them to do difficult things, I want them to feel this is part of what they do and do it with great pride.”

Not only is Mary a leader, she is also a ground-breaker. She joined the Army Cadets in the mid 1980s, after graduating from UCD with a degree in Social Science. The second oldest of a family of eight, she grew up in Ballinlough, Co Mayo, where her father ran a garage and her late mother was a home-maker. Both believed in education and worked hard to offer their children the best opportunities possible.

The mid-1980s weren’t exactly boom times for social science graduates and Mary went down the Army route, becoming just one of three women in a class of 47 cadets. She continued studying, with the aim of setting up personnel support services in the Army, spending five months with the US air force as part of her training. She was subsequently assigned to fulltime military duties, serving in a number of roles in infantry battalions in Collins Barracks and in Defence Forces HQ in Newbridge, Co Kildare.

As she honed her military skills in tactical, operational and strategic areas, Mary also focused on her personal education and earned several Masters Degrees, ranging from adult education to health promotion.

“Every time I would get fed up I’d do a course to keep my brain ticking over,” she says with a laugh.

Twenty-six years ago, she got married to Mayo man Vincent Henry and the couple settled in Galway. They now have two grown-up children, Conor, 21, who is studying Commerce at NUIG, and Alannah, 18, who has just completed her Leaving Cert at the Presentation College, Athenry, and also hopes to study Commerce.

The family stayed in Galway, while Mary moved around on Army duty, both inside Ireland and on overseas missions to countries including Afghanistan, Uganda and Serbia as part of UN and EU initiatives.

Now she is back in Galway, the first woman OC in Renmore since the foundation of the State – over 70 men have held the role. She is responsible for 448 troops but that will soon be 471. Vacant posts in the battalion will be filled when a new recruit platoon joins in late July.

Timing is everything, says Mary of her new position. She returned from Kosovo in December when the OC vacancy became available, as the previous incumbent had left on a tour of duty to Lebanon.

Her unit is scheduled to go overseas with the UNDOF mission to Syria in September 2016, so the position will then become free again.

As Ceannasaí, or OC, Mary is responsible for all that “my troops do or fail to do” and is also responsible for the barracks, which she runs from a modest, pleasant office, which is spacious enough for four comfortable armchairs and a coffee table as well as her desk. She prefers to have meetings with staff around the table, rather than being behind a desk.

“I have a different way of doing things. It’s not better or worse, but it’s my way.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.