Rebels to Reels Joe McCabe Gallowglass €19.99
n September 1999, reporter Joe McCabe got a call from local librarian Marita Hughes in his home town of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan. “I have an American gentleman down in the library that you simply must meet,” she told him.
The gentleman turned out to be Dan ‘Mack’ McGovern, a combat cameraman who had flown numerous bombing missions over Europe, before being assigned to the Far East.
There he was one of the first US Air Force personnel to arrive in the devastated city of Nagasaki in the wake of the atomic bomb.
As they talked, another story began to emerge that was nearer home, but is rarely acknowledged, even today.
Dan McGovern had lived through the War of Independence in the border town of Carrickmacross. His father, a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) sergeant, who brought up his family in the local barracks, was on the losing side in that conflict.
Young Dan witnessed the boycott of RIC families, IRA attacks on the barracks where they lived, and remembered travelling in a Crossley Tender with the notorious Black and Tans.
Like many other former RIC families, the McGoverns emigrated from the new Free State, in their case to the Bronx, New York. ‘Mack’ eventually joined the Air Force. It was a road that not only brought him to the theatres of war, but the film studios of Hollywood.
After training in the latest photography and movie-making techniques and a spell in Hollywood with the Air Force’s First Motion Picture Unit, McGovern was assigned to the 8th Air Force, based in Britain.
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He flew his first combat mission on July 14, 1943, on a B-17 bomber named Moonbeam McSwine, filming a raid against aviation targets in Germany. McGovern recorded as the “carpet of bombs exploded all over the target below”.
It was the first of many hair-raising missions. McCabe’s meticulous account recalls the bravery and innovation of combat cameramen, whose job was to get aerial film for newsreels and films (including William Wyler’s documentary Memphis Belle) to keep the American public informed about the war.
In this moving story of one man and his war, Joe McCabe has written a fitting memoir of a remarkable life of courage and adventure.
