THE BRAVERY of a Limerick soldier who, despite being barely able to swim raced into a rip tide to save a young girl from drowning, has been celebrated with an award.
Commandant Liam Halpin was enjoying a day off, walking the beach in Doonbeg with his parents and wife, Nicole, when they noticed a group of young people struggling in the high waves and receding tide.
A boy managed to swim to shore but yelled for help, as his sister was being swept further away on the tide.
“I could see she was being taken, so I ran down the beach about 800 meters and borrowed a board and paddled out to where I thought she was,” Liam told the Limerick Post.
“I discovered she had been swept much further out. The conditions were very difficult. The waves were huge and the tide was going out. There were even fishing boats that couldn’t get in, it was so rough.”
He located the girl, Alice, who is from Offaly and in her late teens and both of them grabbed on to the board and kicked for shore.
“She grabbed the board with me and we both made our way back,” he said.
Alice was taken from the beach to hospital by helicopter and has now made a full recovery.
Liam is in regular contact with her to see how she is getting on.
But he also admits that he’s not a great swimmer and can just about manage a couple of lengths of the local swimming pool.
“That’s why I needed the body board, something to give us a float and luckily, someone had one. I had originally been running to get the lifebelt but it was just too much further down the beach and the board was nearer.”
The brave Limerick man was singled out for the Presidential Award for Physical Courage last week.
“I just did what anyone would have done,” he said.
Liam, from Woodview Park in Limerick City, is currently serving as a Training Officer at the Defence Forces Training Centre in the Curragh in Kildare.
“With being a soldier, you have to be physically fit and I think that helped a lot,” he said.
