You may be familiar with the old stereotype of old men telling war stories to any young person willing to listen. As if they enjoy filling their heads with ideas of the brutality and horror of war, probably as some way of criticising them for playing a first-person shooter video game. The Gentleman I had the pleasure of speaking to had plenty of stories from his time in the army, but he never took part in any war, nor was he in the Irish army despite being a Dublin native.

Billy Bonner (82) hails from the Kildare Road in Crumlin in South Dublin but has lived in Kilbarrack on the Northside with his family since the early seventies. He left school at 14 to work in the Boland’s Mills in Dublin City before deciding to join the army reserves in 1957, then known as the FCÁ. “I went up there at age 15, you had to be 16 but I just gave them my brothers date of birth, and they didn’t follow it up,” he said.

He completed basic training and made a choice. “There were flyers to join the British army with the usual slogans like ‘see the world’ and all that, I won’t lie to you and say it didn’t convince me you know,” he said. “I went up to a camp just outside Derry, at the time obviously there was all the trouble brewing but, in that barracks, there were Catholic and Protestant alike.” “Two topics always barred from being talked about were religion and politics, only time it ever happened one of the lads punched the other straight in the face.”

His time in the British Army took him to foreign shores in the early sixties. “I spent a good few months in what was West Germany at the time around erm Mönchengladbach and Düsseldorf, unfortunately the only German I ever picked up over there was things like ‘guden morgen’ or even ‘ein bier bitte.”

He hated dealing with the drunken Irishman stereotypes, especially considering he has only ever been drunk once. “Now I’d only ever have a single glass of wine or a small whiskey now but that would be it, sometimes in the army you felt you had to have one or two when you were out with the other lads you were stationed with, he said. He was even there for some historical events, “I remember I was on leave one time, and we all got called back in a hurry because the wall was going up in Berlin, I wasn’t thrilled to tell you the truth but what can you do,” he said.

The provocative question you are all thinking is why the British army of all things, especially as an Irish man from Dublin. “I only ever saw it as an opportunity to do something that was unique and might take me around the world, I always sent a few bob home to the mother to help her out as well.” “I took part in things like marches for the Queen’s birthday I think it was but that was part and parcel of it, it’s not made me any less Irish than I was when I was born.”

He left the army and returned home in 1963, not long after he met who would become his wife, Mary. They married and lived in Brighton, England for a short time before coming home to Dublin where after a stint in the old Ballymun flats they would move to Kilbarrack and spend their married life there, raising 5 children who would go on to give him 14 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren

Even stranger is despite his army history and lengthy career in security thereafter, he is a devoted pacifist. He says “when my father was alive you would see the scars he had from the First World War and they were just awful, and now when you see the footage on the news from Ukraine and Gaza it’s just horrible, I would love to see all this fighting end and for talks to take place to end it all because anything is better than the violence I think.” “Men like Trump and Putin are what the world needs less of.”

He approaches his 83rd birthday with an unusual amount of activity being done by a man of his age, still insisting on carrying out his own daily tasks including cooking and shopping despite living with his youngest daughter and her family. “I have to get out for me walk during the day, something about it helps clear the mind and keeps me going, now that the weather is getting warmer, I can get out, plug in the radio and muck around the garden for a few hours.”

There are those that say retiring is what gets you at that age, but after 23 years it is fair to say that Mr Bonner is quite keen on relishing his glory years after a certainly extraordinary career.

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Mr Bonner here enjoying his retirement

Image Credit : Billy Bonner