Syrian tour of duty has lent Eoin Larkin some perspective

You may covet the silver Eoin Larkin possesses but you don’t want to see what he’s seen. Early in August, he acknowledged just how difficult he found it to get back up to speed — that is Kilkenny speed — after his six-month tour of duty with the Armed Forces in the Golan Heights.

What he mightn’t be so open about admitting was the experience in Syria took as much if not more getting over than the time away from the Kilkenny camp. He does, though, provide insight into how traumatic it was working there.

“It was tough to see because when you come back home and see all the lovely things around, you come into Langtons and get lovely grub and things like that, those people over there, they have nothing. They can’t come out of their houses. There were very little children around, even the streets and things like that. They were all still in their houses but they are going through turmoil.