A man of many parts

He's an ex-soldier still committed to the welfare of other former soldiers; a strong family man, a lover of the arts - and the third ever Mullingar president of the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen and Women.Martin Coyne is a man of many parts: and gives enthusiastically to all the roles in his life.A native of Mullingar, and sixth in a family of ten, he grew up in St. Andrew's Terrace in Mullingar, where Buckley's supermarket now stands."As a matter of fact where they cut the meat is where my bedroom was!" laughs Martin.His father was a blacksmith, and owned his own business, Coyne's Engineering in Millmount, but Martin's interests lay in a different direction - that of soldiering, like his grandfather, Ralph Warring-Howell, from Bath in England, a member of the Household Cavalry, who was killed in the Battle of Arras in France 1917.So, when he turned 18, back in 1969, Martin joined the army, going on to give the force over 26 years' service, but the connection with his military ancestor remains strong in Martin's mind, and since he found his grandfather's grave in France, he goes over to visit it every year."It's in a small little cemetery. If you were ever in the Somme in the South of France, every four miles you'll see a graveyard, and that's just on the main road."There are 54,000 names of people who were never found."Starting off"I joined the Civil Defence, then I joined the 9th FCA reserves and I was up in Columb Barracks on full time security for three years. I joined the army then and I was stationed in Mullingar."He met wife Carrie - orginally from Moate - and was then then transferred to Athlone in 1974, to the 6th Infantry Batallion, which meant a lot of border duty."I remember when we took on a new border post - Ballyconnell - and I was an amoured car driver, and you would spend a month up there and then a month back home, so you were guaranteed to be spending six months of the year on the border."It was rough and it was hard on family life."People don't realise that the wife is at home raising five kids and you're away the whole time."We were in a Republican based area all along the border and you couldn't go into certain pubs or get chips in certain places, so certain places were out of bounds"If you were lucky you might get sent to Portlaoise Prison for a month, which in some ways was hard because you were treated worse than the prisoners. We were searched and we could only bring so much in with us and you'd only have one radio between twenty men."Martin went to the South Lebanon in 1978 - as part of the actual advance party. A year later, he did his NCO scores and was promoted to Corporal. Five years later, he was posted back becoming, a year later, in 1984, a Sergeant, a role he held until his retirement in 1995."I was gutted, but I wanted out. I was young enough to get another job so I thought 'why stay on?'. I had enough time done - nearly 26 years service done in total - and I thought there were so many lads up for promotion and I thought leave them at it. People mightn't believe that but that's the way I felt. I thought: 'give somebody else a chance'. And I was young enough to start doing a bit of work myself."I went in to tax my car two weeks after coming out and the guy in the tax office was Sean Lynch [now director of Mullingar Arts Centre] and he said: 'What are you doing tonight?'. Now I hadn't seen Sean Lynch in years, even though when we were growing up, dividing our homes was Alo Gowan's."And went into the Greville that night, and there were certain guys there, Alan Conroy, Murt Ennis, Paul Doolin - and I didn't know them from Adam, because I was years gone out of Mullingar."I walked in and I was handed a script - 'Howling Moon, Silent Sun', and that was a new lease of life for me, and I got the bug then after that."Then Sean realised I could do a bit of welding, and then I started building sets, and the rest is history."In local drama circles Martin's nickname is "The Gadge", because if it could be done set-wise, Martin would be the man to do it - local theatre's "Inspector Gadget"."My main love is the theatre. Outside of the ONE, my main outlet is the theatre, the Student Players would be my big love. "I love to see them doing the show every year and I love helping them with the sets."It's great to see the younger ones involved and progressing up through the ranks, "It's next to the army I would class the Arts Centre on a Saturday morning: they are total disciplinarians down there, and the girls and boys do learn discipline.National President of the ONEOutside of Mullingar however, Martin is best known for his work for ONE.The winter of 1988-89 was bitterly cold and severe. So much so in fact, that 11 homeless people died on the streets of Ireland.What upset many serving and former servicemen was the discovery that a number of those were ex-army guys.The Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen and Women (ONE) - formed in 1950 from an amalgamation of different organisations after the war to provide comradeship for all the ex-army men who came back from World War II - decided to tackle the problem, recalls Martin."You can imagine back in those times, it was hard for guys in the army to get a mortgage: even army guys it was hard for"Mortgages weren't freely available to people in Ireland at the time, even with a good standard of living, the normal guy couldn't get a mortgage."So ten men got together and remortgaged their homes and managed to build a home in Dublin for those less fortunate than ourselves in the army."One of those men was the late Sgt. Paddy Brennan from Mullingar, which was a big thing in his day, because he had a big family and at that time repossession was repossession," says Martin.Over time, a further house was provided in Athlone, and a third in Letterkenny, and at present, there are now 30 residents living in the home in Smithfield in Dublin, seven in the Athlone house, and three in Letterkenny.Since the house was provided, ONE has rehoused over 500 former soldiers."They are all old soldiers with no family and nowhere else to go, so they're there and we look after them."People would sometimes question why we re-house ex-soldiers, because people sometimes think soldiers have big pensions, but that's a myth. "If you take the average guy in the army today, maybe three in ten have a good pension."Back in the old days, back in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, guys were in the army and they never married, and they were in the army until they were 65, and then they had to leave the barracks. These guys were institutionalised, they knew nothing else, so they went out and they had nothing."Some of them would have joined the army when they were sixteen, they gave their whole life to the army, and times were rough back then."Our main function as an organisation is to keep those three homes going. It costs in excess of €300,000 a year to run those three homes and we depend on fundraising.""We are a company with charitable status, and again everything boils down to keep these homes going."We are trying to keep our heads above water, especially now with a recession on, because these are people that have served their country."We are a very young state, since 1922, compared to England and America, where ex-army are in the structure of their country. Their country is legally bound to supply them with homes and their hospitalisation, and old military hospitals to look after these old people.A fear on the minds of ONE members if the future of the Barracks in Mullingar."They're talking about Barracks closures, and we will fight tooth, nail and breath for that Barracks out there, because it is the last military barracks that has an artillery regiment in it."It would be a serious loss to the town, plus it's one of the oldest barracks in the country, in fact it's in the Guinness Book of Records for its nine million year lease, a right of way that Lord Greville gave to the English War office to go through the barracks, which still holds today."The ONE has a number of big events coming up locally: on August 29, they have a fundraising night at Mullingar dog track; followed the next day by their annual Mass at Columb Barracks.After the Mass, ONE will parade through Mullingar with full military honours - flags and band. Anyone who want's to go into the church is welcome to come in and see what we do.Martin is the third Mullingar man to have held the position of president of ONE, the others being the late Sgt. Major Paddy Brennan and the late ex-Sgt. Edward Gibney.It's clear he's proud of Mullingar's commitment ot the organisation - and that as President, he will ensure that locally, the work of ONE goes on.Check out more about ONE on: www.oneconnect.ie.