Irish Ranger | Kevin "Mack" McDonald | Ep. 345

The Team House

dee takos

History, Documentary, Society & Culture, Government

4.7 • 929 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2025

⏱️ 125 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Commandant Kevin McDonald served 7 years with Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCA) and 33 years with the Permanent Defence Forces. He discusses his military career, focusing on his extensive service overseas. Most of his interview relates to his service in Lebanon and he speaks about the 2006 Lebanon War when he was serving with Observer Group Lebanon (OGL). He speaks about the deaths of some of his United Nations Military Observer colleagues at an OGL patrol base at El Khiam during that war.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	Special Operations
0:04.0	Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park.
0:22.0	Hey, everyone, this is episode 345 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. And I'm here with our
0:28.2	guest today, Kevin McDonald. He's the author of A Life Less Ordinary. Kevin served in the
0:35.6	Irish Ranger Wing and then continued with his military career
0:40.1	involved in a lot of peacekeeping operations in the Golan Heights in Lebanon and then later in places
0:46.9	in Africa and he's joining us tonight from the warm-ish, South Sudan.
0:56.6	Yep.
0:57.4	Newest country in the world.
0:59.6	Yeah, yes.
1:02.0	So we, you know, thank you for joining us, Kevin.
1:05.2	You're the first Irish Ranger we've had on the show, and I'm excited to do this interview
1:09.3	with you.
1:11.6	I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.
1:13.6	Kevin, you'd mention that you'd like to throw out a little disclaimer before we get started.
1:17.6	Yeah, I think it's important by nature of the fact that what we'll probably most like to be discussing is, first of all,
1:25.6	that I don't want anyone to think that any
1:28.4	views I may express can be seen as the views of a retired senior officer in the Irish
1:32.9	Defence Forces through my personal views and likewise any of the views I express cannot
1:39.1	be construed or seen as the views of someone who's working in the United Nations. These are entirely my personal
1:46.3	views and, you know, please take them at that value. Thank you, Kevin. So let's start off
1:55.9	talking a little bit about growing up in Ireland and you had some pretty amusing stories about being a young man
	...

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