Its a bit more complex than merely doing that.
If you have a look at the various rc files you will see K and S symbol associated with the scripts. The ones with K initiate a kernel driver and S scripts initiate a service. What is happening in this instance is that the networking is starting before the pcmcia. The higher the number associated with the S script the later it starts. You need to start networking later. So look at the number associated with pcmcia and then increase the number of the network script in rc.S so that it starts after pcmcia.

Thanks for your help Tiger. Good news, I tried switching the S20pcmcia script from rc2.d to the rcS.d file and it worked. When I tried what you suggested I found that the value for pcmcia was at 20 (S20pcmcia) while the networking value was at 40 (S40networking). So the pcmcia value was already lower than the networking value. That also confirmed my guess that rcS.d was loaded before rc2.d because if the value was lower than it should have loaded first. After moving the file I rebooted and eth0 came up as I hoped it would, this was confirmed by ifconfig after debian loaded. I can happily say that the problem has been solved. Again thanks for all your help.