Cooraclare man seriously injured in Afghanistan

A 25-year-old Cooraclare man sustained serious facial, chest and hip injuries while serving with the British army’s Irish Guards regiment in Afghanistan on Tuesday. Ciarán O’Sullivan, from Brisla, was injured at 6am on Tuesday morning when he was caught in an improvised explosive device (IED) blast.

Guardsman O’Sullivan was on patrol in a frontline area of Afghanistan after being transferred there only days earlier from a base camp when the IED was triggered.
His condition has been described as serious but not life threatening. A former Cooraclare National School and Kilrush Community School pupil, Ciarán joined the British army less than a year ago and has been deployed in Afghanistan for six weeks. His parents, Lionel and Geraldine O’Sullivan, were visited on Tuesday evening by two female British army officers and Kilrush gardaí to advise them of the incident.
The British army officers travelled from Lurgan and remained for about three and a half hours. Lionel, who works as a deliveryman in Super Valu, Kilrush, was told the news in Kilrush Garda Station, having been contacted while at work.
“I was in work and there was a message left for me to ring Garda Burke. He told me at the station and I was glad because I was able to go home with them and the officers and we told Geraldine,” Lionel told The Clare Champion on Wednesday.
He is expecting his son to be flown back to Birmingham on either Wednesday evening or this Thursday morning, where he will undergo further operations. He was due to complete his tour of duty in March.
It is understood that Guardsman O’Sullivan was initially treated for his injuries at Camp Bastion, which is situated North-West of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province in Afghanistan.
He spoke to his parents by telephone on Tuesday evening. “That was when the officers were there. They can only give you so much information because they’re not told exactly. They just gave us the details of the injury and said it was serious but not life-threatening. When the officers read the injuries out from the sheet they sounded very bad but when he rang us up, he told us that he still had everything there. But they are serious injuries. He sounded as best he could,” Lionel added.
The family were not told where in Afghanistan their son was injured. “The officers couldn’t tell us what they don’t know themselves. Even when he’s talking to us, he can’t tell us where he is,” he added.
“I’m very, very proud of him. He tried to get into the Irish army and although he tried for two years, he couldn’t get into it,” he explained.
The O’Sullivan family moved to Brisla in Cooraclare from Dublin about 20 years ago as part of the Rural Resettlement Scheme.