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Category Archives: Irish Republican Army


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Death of Charlie Hurley, OC of the IRA’s 3rd Cork Brigade

Charles Hurley (Irish: Cathal Ó Muirthile), Officer Commanding of the 3rd Cork Brigade (West Cork) of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), is killed by British Army troops on March 19, 1921. 

Hurley is born in Baurleigh, County Cork, near the village of Kilbrittain, on March 20, 1893, and is educated in the national school and subsequently passes the civil service examinations at age fifteen. According to his brother James, he is one of seven siblings, “born and reared in a farm of 35 acres.”

In his adolescence, Hurley becomes a clerk working for the government. In 1915, he is offered a promotion and a transfer to Haulbowline Island but declines on the grounds that this entails enlisting in the Royal Navy, albeit in a purely administrative role. Returning to Cork, he becomes friends with Liam Deasy who introduces him to the Irish republican movement. In 1917, he takes a job at Castletownbere and it is there that he joins the Irish Volunteers in 1917. He is also a member of Sinn Féin, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge).

In 1918, Hurley is sentenced to five years penal servitude for possession of arms and plans of the British military fortifications at Bere Island. However, he is released in 1919 following a hunger strike. In the same year, his brother Willie, also an IRA Volunteer, dies of typhoid fever. He first becomes vice-commandant of the Volunteers or IRA Bandon Battalion and then in August 1920, after the arrest and imprisonment of Tom Hales, he becomes commander of the Third Cork Brigade of the IRA. One of his most important decisions is to establish a full-time guerrilla unit or flying column, under Tom Barry.

The 3rd Cork Brigade (also known as the West Cork Brigade) goes on to be one of the most active IRA units during the guerrilla war against the British in 1919–21. According to Barry, Hurley leads an ambush of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) at Ahawadda in April 1920, killing three policemen, wounding one and taking their arms and ammunition. In July of that same year, he leads a successful attack on the Coastguard station at Howes Strand, capturing a large number of weapons and ammunition. Barry remarks that Hurley is “a remarkable man and a lovable personality” and “continually urged a fighting army policy.” 

Hurley is present at the Tooreen ambush in October 1920 and subsequently is part of an assassination attempt on a judge who gives “harsh sentences” to IRA members. From December 1920 until January 1921, he takes command of the 3rd Cork Brigade’s flying column while Barry is ill. He also tours IRA units to assess the impact of the decree of excommunication on the guerrilla movement issued by Catholic Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan.

In February 1921, Hurley leads the disastrous Upton train ambush on February 15, 1921, an attack on a train carrying British troops. In the action, the attacking IRA party is heavily outnumbered and the firefight results in three IRA men and six civilians being killed. He is also badly wounded in the face and ankle. Barry writes of the aftermath of the ambush that “he (Hurley) mourned deeply for his dead comrades and for the dead civilians, whom he did not know.”

Hurley is killed in action by British troops just before the Crossbarry ambush on March 19, 1921. He is staying in a house with a pro-republican family, where he is recuperating from the serious wounds he had received at Upton a month earlier. When he realises that he is surrounded by the British forces, he flees the house, as Barry comments in his book, to reduce the danger to those in the house, and is shot dead by pursuing troops. Barry remarks that he “died in the manner in which we expected.” 

The British Army places Hurley’s body at the workhouse in Bandon. However, members of Cumann na mBan surreptitiously take his body and he is given a secret republican funeral in Clogagh. A local ballad exists that commemorates him. In addition, the Gaelic Athletic Association grounds in Bandon is named after him in 1971.


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The Pearse Street Ambush

The Pearse Street Ambush takes place in Dublin on March 14, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. Dublin awakes to the news that six Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers, captured in an ambush at Drumcondra two months earlier, have been hanged. The gates of Mountjoy Gaol are opened at 8:25 a.m. and news of the executions is read out to the distraught relatives of the dead. As many as 40,000 people gather outside and many mournfully say the Rosary for the executed men.

The Labour movement calls a half-day general strike in the city in protest at the hangings. The clandestine Republican government declares a day of national mourning. All public transport comes to a halt and republican activists make sure the strike is observed.

By the evening, the streets clear rapidly as the British-imposed curfew comes into effect at 9:00 p.m. each night. The city is patrolled by regular British troops and the much-feared paramilitary police, or Auxiliaries, as people scurry home and await IRA retaliation for the hangings. This is not long in coming.

Pearse Street is just south of the River Liffey, running from Ringsend, an old fishing port, to the city centre. Number 144 Pearse Street houses the company headquarters of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade 3rd Battalion at St. Andrews Catholic Hall. It has been used for this purpose since before the 1916 Easter Rising.

On the evening of March 14, Captain Peadar O’Meara sends the 3rd Battalion out to attack police or military targets. As many as thirty-four IRA men prowl the area, armed with the standard urban guerrilla arms of easily hidden handguns and grenades. One young volunteer, Sean Dolan, throws a grenade at a police station on nearby Merrion Square, which bounces back before it explodes, blowing off his own leg.

At around 8:00 p.m., with the curfew approaching, a company of Auxiliaries, based in Dublin Castle is sent to the area to investigate the explosion. It consists of one Rolls-Royce armoured car and two tenders holding about 16 men. Apparently, the Auxiliaries have some inside information as they made straight for the local IRA headquarters at 144 Pearse Street. One later testifies in court that “I had been notified there were a certain number of gunmen there.”

However, the IRA is waiting. As soon as the Auxiliaries approach the building, they are fired upon from three sides. What the newspapers describe as “hail of fire” tears into the Auxiliaries’ vehicles. Five of the eight Auxiliaries in the first tender are hit in the opening fusillade. Two of them are fatally injured, including the driver, an Irishman named O’Farrell, and an Auxiliary named L. Beard.

The IRA fighters, however, are seriously outgunned. The Rolls Royce armoured car is impervious to small arms fire (except its tyres, which are shot out) and the mounted Vickers heavy machine gun sprays the surrounding houses with bullets. The unwounded Auxiliaries also clamber out of their tenders and return fire at the gun flashes from street corners and rooftops.

Civilian passersby thow themselves to the ground to avoid the bullets but four are hit, by which side it is impossible to tell. The British military court of inquiry into the incident finds that the civilians had been killed by persons unknown, if by the IRA then they were “murdered,” if hit by Auxiliaries the shootings were “accidental.” This, aside from demonstrating the court’s bias, shows that no one is sure who had killed them.

Firing lasts for only five minutes but in that time seven people, including the two Auxiliaries, are killed or fatally wounded and at least six more are wounded. Eighteen-year-old Bernard O’Hanlon, originally from Dundalk, lay sprawled, dead, outside 145 Pearse Street, his British Bull Dog revolver under him which has five chambers, two of which contain expended rounds and three of which contain live rounds, indicating he had gotten off just two shots before being cut down.

Another IRA Volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald, is also killed outright. Two more guerrillas are wounded, one in the hip and one in the back. They, along with Sean Dolan, who had been wounded by his own grenade, are spirited away by sympathetic fire brigade members and members of Cumann na mBan and treated in nearby Mercer’s Hospital.

Three civilians lay dead on the street. One, Thomas Asquith, is a 68-year-old caretaker, another, David Kelly, is a prominent Sinn Féin member and head of the Sinn Féin Bank. His brother, Thomas Kelly, is a veteran Sinn Féin politician and a Member of Parliament since 1918. The third, Stephen Clarke, aged 22, is an ex-soldier and may have been the one who had tipped off the Auxiliaries about the whereabouts of the IRA meeting house. An internal IRA report notes that he was “under observation… as he was a tout [informant] for the enemy.”

Two IRA men are captured as they flee the scene. One, Thomas Traynor, a 40-year-old veteran of the Easter Rising, is carrying an automatic pistol, but claims to have had no part in the ambush itself. He had, he maintains, simply been asked to bring in the weapon to 144 Great Brunswick Street. The other is Joseph Donnelly, a youth of just 17 years of age.

As most of the IRA fighters get away through houses, over walls and into backstreets, the Auxiliaries ransack St. Andrew’s Catholic Hall at number 144 Pearse Street but find little of value. Regular British Army troops quickly arrive from nearby Beggars Bush Barracks and cordon off the area, but no further arrests are made. Desultory sniping carries on in the city for several hours into the night.

March 14, 1921, was bloody day in Dublin. Thirteen people had died violently in the city by the end of the day – six IRA Volunteers executed that morning, two more killed in action at Pearse Street, two Auxiliaries killed in action and three civilians in the crossfire. It is the worst day of political violence in the city since Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920, when 31 had been killed.

(From: “The Pearse Street Ambush, Dublin, March 14, 1921” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, January 26, 2015 | Pictured: British Army troops keep crowds back from Mountjoy Prison during the executions, March 14 1921.)


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Death of Seán Cronin, Journalist & IRA Chief of Staff

Seán Gerard Cronin, journalist and former Irish Army officer and twice Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), dies on March 9, 2011, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Cronin is born on August 29, 1922, in Dublin, the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the IRA, and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County Kerry Gaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.

During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre director Alan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.

Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.

Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.

Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.

Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).

Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.

Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.

In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.

By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.

In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.

Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.

After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.


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The Irish Army Mutiny

The Army Mutiny is an Irish Army crisis that begins on March 7, 1924, provoked by a proposed reduction in army numbers in the immediate post-Civil War period. A second grievance concerns the handling of the Northern Boundary problem. As the prelude to a coup d’état, the decisions made by influential politicians and soldiers at the time have continuing significance for the Government of Ireland.

In the early weeks of the Irish Civil War, the National Army is comprised of 7,000 men. These come mainly from pro-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) brigades, especially the Dublin Guard, whose members have personal ties to Michael Collins. They face around 15,000 anti-Treaty IRA men and Collins recruits experienced soldiers from wherever he can. The army’s size mushrooms to 55,000 men, many of whom are Irishmen with combat experience in World War I – 20,000 National Volunteers had joined the British Army on the urgings of Nationalist leader John Redmond.

Likewise, Irishmen who had served in the British forces account for over half of the 3,500 officers. W. R. E. Murphy, second-in-command (January–May 1923), had been a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, as had Emmet Dalton. Two more of the senior generals, John T. Prout and J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell, had served in the United States Army. Collins promotes fellow members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) but is slow to put Squad members in high positions.

In December 1922, following Collins’s death, Liam Tobin forms the Irish Republican Army Organisation (IRAO), taking in Dublin Guard and other Irish Army officers who share his view that “higher command…was not sufficiently patriotic.” President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State W. T. Cosgrave, head of the government, attempts to appease the IRAO. He meets with them several times before the 1923 Irish general election and persuades the opposing IRB faction of generals under Richard Mulcahy to keep quiet.

With the election over, Mulcahy now ignores the IRAO as he starts the process of demobilising 37,000 men. In November, sixty IRA officers mutiny and are dismissed without pay. The IRAO now pressures the Government into establishing a committee to supervise future demobilisation. The committee, consisting of Eoin MacNeill, Ernest Blythe, and IRAO sympathiser Joseph McGrath, effectively undermines the authority of the Army Council.

On March 7, 1924, a representative of the IRAO hands a demand to end demobilisation to W. T. Cosgrave. The ultimatum is signed by senior Army officers, Major-General Liam Tobin and Colonel Charles Dalton. Tobin knows his own position is to be scrapped in the demobilisation. Frank Thornton and Tom Cullen are also involved. That morning 35 men of the 36th Infantry Battalion refuse to parade, and the preceding week officers had absconded with arms from the McCan Barracks in Templemore, Gormanston Camp in County Meath, Baldonnel Aerodrome in Baldonnel, Dublin, and Roscommon. The immediate response is an order for the arrest of the two men on a charge of mutiny. This causes alarm throughout Dublin when announced.

On March 8, General Mulcahy makes an announcement to the Army:

“Two Army officers have attempted to involve the Army in a challenge to the authority of the Government. This is an outrageous departure from the spirit of the Army. It will not be tolerated…officers and men…will stand over their posts and do their duty today in this new threat of danger in the same wonderful, determined spirit that has always been the spirit of the Army.”

Leader of the Opposition, Thomas Johnson, issues a statement of support for the Government. In contrast, Minister for Industry and Commerce, Joseph McGrath, whose home Mulcahy orders to be searched, resigns because of dissatisfaction with the government’s attitude to the IRAO officers and support for their perception that the Irish Army treats former British officers better than former IRA officers. Fearing an incendiary speech by McGrath, Cosgrave first offers the IRAO an inquiry and an amnesty before then taking sick leave thus making Minister for Justice, Kevin O’Higgins, de facto head of the Government.

(Pictured: Major General Liam Tobin, a leading figure in the Army Mutiny)


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Birth of Tom Hales, IRA Volunteer & Fianna Fáil Politician

Thomas Hales, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer and Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Knocknacurra House, Ballinadee, near Bandon, County Cork, on March 5, 1892.

Hales is born on a family farm owned by his father, Robert Hales, an activist in the Irish Land War and a reputed member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and his wife, Margaret (née Fitzgerald). He is the sixth of nine children (five sons and four daughters). He is educated at Ballinadee national school and Warner’s Lane school, Bandon. After leaving school he works at Harte’s timber yard, Bandon.

Hales joins and is involved with the Irish Volunteers movement from its inception in November 1913. Elected a delegate at the Volunteer national convention in the Abbey Theatre in 1915, he is among the majority who vote for the election of the national executive.

Hales is a part of a group of volunteers who are mobilised and plan to rise up in Cork during the 1916 Easter Rising. He sends a number of dispatches to Cork requesting further instructions. However, they receive last minute orders to stand down and there is no uprising in Cork to match that in Dublin. The Volunteers give up their arms and are later arrested.

By May 1916, Hales and his brothers, Seán, Bob, and William, are fighting with the IRA in west Cork during the Irish War of Independence. Terence MacSwiney is arrested in Hales’ home on May 3, 1916, and Hales himself escapes and goes on the run. He states that he was listed as “wanted” in the Hue and Cry police gazette.

In 1918, Hales takes part in a raid on a British gunboat and holds 25 armed Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) members prisoner at Snugmore Castle. He takes part in a decoy in assisting his elder brother, Seán, to escape after his arrest in connection with the German Plot. He is elected Battalion Commandant of the 1st (Bandon) Battalion (1917–19), and Brigade Commandant of Cork 3rd Brigade, IRA, in January 1919.

In December 1919, Hales takes part in an ambush against the RIC at Kilbrittain and Bandon and is involved in the manufacture of gunpowder for IRA munitions. By this point he is the commander of the Third Cork Brigade of the IRA. In July 1920, he along with Harte is arrested by soldiers from the Essex Regiment.

The pair are taken to a nearby military barracks, where they are severely beaten while being interrogated by officers of the regiment. Hales has his fingernails pulled out, an event that later inspires a scene in the film The Wind That Shakes the Barley. However, neither Hales nor Harte give up any information and are eventually sent to a military hospital to recuperate. Hales is tried and is eventually sentenced to two years’ penal servitude, which he serves in Pentonville and Dartmoor prisons in England. He is commander of the Irish prisoners at Pentonville, but is released following a general amnesty after the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. According to Tom Barry, Harte suffers brain damage and goes insane before dying in Broadmoor Hospital.

A fifth Hales brother, Donal, settles in Genoa from 1913, and is appointed Irish Consular and Commercial Agent for Italy in February 1919. In this capacity he plays a leading propaganda role. Several letters from Michael Collins to Donal Hales still exist which are used by Hales to promote international awareness of the Irish conflict in Italian publications. Donal oversees a failed attempt to import a substantial number of Austrian weapons and ammunition captured from World War I, from Genoa in the spring of 1921, through the person of Gabriele D’Annunzio.

During the Irish Civil War, Tom and Seán Hales fight on opposite sides, with Hales fighting against the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the Anti-Treaty IRA while Seán joins the newly formed National Army of the Irish Free State. While the bothers end up on opposite sides of the war, they never openly criticise one another for their rival political stances.

Hales is elected to the anti-Treaty IRA executive in March 1922, but resigns in June over a proposal to prevent the Free State’s first general election in June 1922. He resumes his old rank during the Irish Civil War as commander of Cork 3 Brigade.

During the Irish Civil War in July 1922, Hales takes part in the raid and capture of Skibbereen Barracks and Ballineen by anti-Treaty forces. He is also involved in a skirmish with Free State troops at Newcestown. He is arrested in November 1922 and imprisoned first in Cork and then at the Curragh. He is released in December 1923, having taken part in a hunger strike for fourteen days. He mentions in his application for a military pension that he was a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB at this time.

In December 1922, Hales’s brother Seán is assassinated by the anti-Treaty IRA in Dublin, in reprisal for the Free State government’s execution of IRA prisoners. Hales later applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934 and is awarded nine years’ service in 1935 at Grade B for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1917, and September 30, 1923.

Hales is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork West constituency at the 1933 Irish general election. He resigns from Fianna Fáil in June 1936 stating he cannot support their policy on interning IRA members. He fails to retain his seat as an independent candidate at the 1937 Irish general election. He also unsuccessfully contests the 1944 Irish general election as an independent candidate and the 1948 Irish general election as a candidate for Clann na Poblachta, receiving 2,287 votes (7.93%).

Hales makes his living as farmer. A member of the Mallow area board of the beet growers’ association from 1934 to 1942, he is also connected with other farming organisations. He marries Ann Lehane from Tirelton, Macroom, on April 30, 1927. They have five children, Seán, Robert, Thomas, Eileen, and Margaret.

Hales dies on April 29, 1966, at St. Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork, and is buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Bandon.


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The Coolavokig Ambush

The Coolavokig ambush (Irish: Luíochán Chúil an Bhuacaigh) is carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on February 25, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. It takes place at Coolavokig, on the road between Macroom and Ballyvourney, County Cork. A 60-man flying column of the IRA’s 1st Cork Brigade under Seán O’Hegarty, ambushes a 70-man convoy of the Auxiliary Division under Major Seafield Grant, sparking a four-hour battle. Ten Auxiliaries are killed, including Major Grant, and others wounded. The IRA column leaves the area when British reinforcements arrive. After the ambush, British forces stop carrying out raids and patrols in the area.

The IRA flying column had been attempting to ambush the Auxiliaries for two weeks but had always missed them. As they occupy the ambush position over a few days, their position becomes known and a force of seventy Auxiliaries and seven Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constables move against them, heavily armed with rifles, machine guns and grenades. The sixty-two IRA volunteers include units from the 1st, 7th, and 8th battalions of the 1st Cork Brigade, and are divided into four sections. Apart from commander Seán O’Hegarty, the main IRA officers are Dan “Sandow” O’Donovan and Dan Corkery. The IRA is armed with sixty rifles, several shotguns and revolvers, and two Lewis guns, but significantly, no grenades. The British forces, traveling in eight lorries and two cars, also carry four Irish hostages with them.

Around 8:00 a.m. on February 25, IRA scouts signal the approach of the British force. The British are forewarned about the IRA position however, and approach with caution, when a republican leaving his post turns to run back and is seen from the leading lorry. When half of the lorries come into the ambush position the IRA opens fire. According to An Cosantóir, one lorry immediately turns around and speeds back to Macroom.

Rifles and a Lewis machine gun from the IRA’s No. 1 section, and ten rifles from the No. 4 section, open fire, as they are the only republican units that have a field of fire on the lorries. They then drop to the ground to avoid return fire. Sections No. 2 and No. 3 swing around to the east, on a hillside, in an attempt to encircle the British northern flank, but they can get no closer than 500 yards.

The Auxiliaries are quickly losing ground and taking casualties. Major Grant is killed while rallying his forces. The British forces retreat into two nearby cottages. The IRA closes in and as they are preparing to bomb the cottages, large numbers of RIC reinforcements approach and begin encircling the area. After fighting a half-hour rear guard action, the IRA flying column retreats toward the northwest. The engagement at Coolavokig lasts four hours, until soldiers of the Manchester Regiment arrive.

It later transpires that the Auxiliary forces are just part of a large round-up operation planned for that day which includes 600 British Army troops from Cork, Ballincollig, Bandon, Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Bantry, Dunmanway, Millstreet, Macroom, and Killarney. After the ambush, British forces cease raiding and patrolling the area west of Macroom, effectively handing it over to IRA control. They are reluctant to enter the area and only do so later with a strong force of 2,000 men.

The IRA suffers no casualties. However, the number of British casualties has been disputed to this day. The British claim that only Major (Auxiliary Commandant) James Seafield-Grant was killed during the ambush, and that two other Auxiliaries later died of their wounds. The IRA claims that between 14 and 16 members of the British force were killed. The Digest of Service for the 1st Battalion, Manchester Regiment, records that on March 18, 1921, a party proceeds to Coolavokig to destroy houses believed to have been used by the IRA.


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Death of Stephen Fuller, IRA Volunteer & Fianna Fáil Politician

Stephen Fuller, Fianna Fáil politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry North constituency from 1937 to 1943, dies on February 23, 1984, in Tralee, County Kerry.

Fuller is born on January 1, 1900, in Kilflynn, County Kerry. He is the son of Daniel Fuller and Ellie Quinlan. His family is from Fahavane, in the parish of Kilflynn.

Fuller serves in the Kilflynn Irish Republican Army (IRA) flying column during the Irish War of Independence. He is First Lieutenant in the Kerry No.1 Brigade, 2nd Battalion. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and continues to fight with the anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War. Military records from the 1930s show, in his own hand, that he is in communication with Dublin regarding confirmation of membership in July 1922 and therefore eligible for war pensions. He becomes the most senior Kilflynn member upon the death of Captain George O’Shea.

In 1923, Fuller is captured by Free State troops and imprisoned in Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee by the Dublin Guard who had landed in County Kerry shortly before. On March 6, 1923, five Free State soldiers are blown up by a booby-trapped bomb at Baranarigh Wood, Knocknagoshel, north Kerry, including long-standing colleagues of Major General Paddy Daly, GOC Kerry Command. Prisoners receive beatings after the killings and Daly orders that republican prisoners be used to remove mines.

On March 7, nine prisoners from Ballymullen Barracks, six from the jail and three from the workhouse, are chosen with a broad geographical provenance and no well-known connections. They are taken lying down in a lorry to Ballyseedy Cross. There they are secured by the hands and legs and to each other in a circle around a land mine. Fuller is among them. His Kilflynn parish comrade Tim Tuomey is initially stopped from praying until all prisoners are tied up. As he and other prisoners then say their prayers and goodbyes, Fuller continues to watch the retreating Dublin Guard soldiers, an act which he later says saved him. The mine is detonated, and he lands in a ditch, suffering burns and scars. He crosses the River Lee and hides in Ballyseedy woods. He is missed amongst the carnage as disabled survivors are bombed and shot dead with automatic fire. Most collected body parts are distributed between nine coffins that had been prepared. The explosions and gunfire are witnessed by Rita O’Donnell who lives nearby and who sees human remains spread about the next day. Similar reprisal killings by the Dublin Guard follow soon after Ballyseedy.

Fuller crawls away to the friendly home of the Currans nearby. They take him to the home of Charlie Daly the following day. His injuries are treated by a local doctor, Edmond Shanahan, who finds him in a dugout. He moves often in the coming months, including to the Burke and Boyle families, and stays in a dugout that had been prepared at the Herlihys for seven months.

A cover-up begins almost immediately. Paddy Daly’s communication to Dublin about returning the bodies to relatives differs significantly from Cumann na mBan statements, which Daly complains about as simple propaganda, and later that of Bill Bailey, a local who had joined the Dublin Guard, who tells Ernie O’Malley that the bodies were handed over in condemned coffins as a band played jolly music. Fuller is named amongst the dead in newspaper reports before it is realised that he had escaped. Daly then sends a communication to GHQ that Fuller is reported as having become “insane.” The Dublin Guard scours the countryside for Fuller. The official investigation into the killings is presided over by Daly himself, with Major General Eamon Price of GHQ and Colonel J. McGuinness of Kerry Command. It blames Irregulars for planting the explosives and exonerates the Irish Army soldiers, and this is read out in the Dáil by the Minister for Defence, Richard Mulcahy.

Contrary statements to the Irish Army’s submissions are effectively ignored. Lieutenant Niall Harrington of the Dublin Guard, describes the evidence to the court and the findings as “totally untrue,” explaining that the actions were devised and executed by officers of the Dublin Guard. He contacts Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Justice and Vice-President, a family friend, to deplore the findings. O’Higgins speaks to Richard Mulcahy, who does nothing. In a separate incident, Free State Lieutenant W.McCarthy, who had been in charge of about twenty prisoners, says that five of them had been removed in the night. They were reportedly shot in the legs then blown up by, in his words, “…a Free State mine, laid by themselves.” He resigns in protest. A Garda Síochána report into the events is also dismissed and is not made public for over 80 years.

Fuller leaves the IRA after the Civil War and follows a career as a farmer in Kerry. He joins Fianna Fáil, the political party founded by Republican leader Éamon de Valera in 1926 after a split from Sinn Féin. He is elected to the 9th Dáil on his first attempt, representing Fianna Fáil at the 1937 Irish general election, as the last of three Fianna Fáil TDs to be elected to the four seat Kerry North constituency. He is re-elected to the 10th Dáil at the 1938 Irish general election, when Fianna Fáil again wins three out of four seats, but loses his seat at the 1943 Irish general election to the independent candidate Patrick Finucane. He returns to farming thereafter.

Fuller never once mentions the Ballyseedy incident from a political platform and states later that he bore no ill-will towards his captors or those who were involved in his attempted extrajudicial killing. He does not want the ill feeling passed on to the next generation. He speaks publicly about the events in 1980, a few years before his death, on Robert Kee‘s groundbreaking BBC series Ireland: A Television History.

Fuller dies in Edenburn Nursing Home, Tralee, on February 23, 1984. He is buried near the Republican plot in Kilflynn where colleagues O’Shea, Tuomey and Timothy ‘Aero’ Lyons are buried.

Fuller’s son Paudie establishes the Stephen Fuller Memorial Cup for dogs of all ages, contested annually on the family farm.

Fuller’s fame largely rests on one night at Ballyseedy. To trace him through the rural society from which he and his fellow Volunteers originated and in which his life was spent, however, gives a fuller understanding of the devastating effects of the conflicts of 1916–23 on a tightly knit rural and small-town society, dominated by extended families of farmers and their service-industry relatives, and of how that society remembered and forgot those traumas.

(Pictured: Stephen Fuller’s grave in Kilflynn, by St. Columba’s Heritage Centre)


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The Murder of Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey

Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey, Irish republican paramilitary leader who moves from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to become head of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group in the early 1980s and self-confesses participation in more than thirty killings, dies in a hail of bullets while making a phone call in Drogheda, County Louth, on February 10, 1994. No one is ever convicted of his murder.

McGlinchey is one of eleven siblings born into a staunchly republican home in Ballyscullion Road, Bellaghy, in rural south County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. His father owns a garage and some of his father’s police customers later die at McGlinchey’s hands. His mother Monica is a devout Catholic. He is educated at the local school. When he was sixteen, he begins an apprenticeship in his father’s garage. About this time, he is joining the numerous civil rights marches that are taking place in the county. His precise reasons for doing so are unclear, but speculation is that he is reacting to events around him and the idea of participating in marches offers glamour and a close identification with his own community.

In 1971, McGlinchey is interned without charge for ten months in Long Kesh Detention Centre. Not long after his release the following year, he is imprisoned again on arms charges. On July 5, 1975, during his imprisonment, he marries Mary O’Neil, daughter of Patrick O’Neil from Toomebridge. Together they have three children.

Following his release, McGlinchey joins Ian Milne and future Provisional IRA hunger strikers Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee and wages a campaign of shooting and bombing throughout the county and beyond. Together, they later join the Provisional IRA. The gang spends the late 1970s on the run, carrying out operations and evading both the British Army and the Garda Síochána. Following a mailvan robbery, the latter force arrests McGlinchey in County Monaghan in 1977 for carjacking a Garda patrol vehicle and threatening the officer with a pistol, although he claims that the gun is actually a wheel brace. He fails to make bail at Dublin‘s Special Criminal Court after a Garda Superintendent argues that McGlinchey would fail to attend court if bailed. He is convicted and sent to the maximum-security Portlaoise Prison. In 1982, while serving his prison sentence, he clashes with the prison’s IRA leadership and is either expelled by them for indiscipline or leaves the organisation due to strategic differences.

Following his departure from the IRA and his release from prison, McGlinchey joins the INLA. Due to his experience, he rises through the ranks, becoming chief of staff by 1982. Under his leadership, the INLA, which had previously had a reputation for disorganisation, becomes extremely active in cross-border assassinations and bombings. These include many individual assassinations and woundings, but also massacres such as the Droppin Well bombing of 1982 in which both civilians and soldiers die. There are some failed operations, and McGlinchey, who believes this is the result of an informer within the ranks, devotes much time and energy to finding the cause. Those suspected of betraying the organisation are treated brutally, often by McGlinchey personally. As a result of this resurgence of activity and his high profile, the press nicknames him “Mad Dog.” Under his tenure the Darkley massacre is carried out, ostensibly by another group but using a weapon supplied by McGlinchey. In late 1983, while still on the run, he gives an interview with the Sunday Tribune newspaper in which he condemns the Darkley killings but also lays out his political philosophy and plans for the future.

By 1984, McGlinchey has fallen out with members of a powerful Republican family from South Armagh over what he considers missing funds. Men loyal to this family are subsequently killed by McGlinchey’s unit, which includes his wife. In March of the same year, he is captured in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, following a gunfight with the Gardaí. At this time, he is wanted in Northern Ireland for the shooting of an elderly woman, but republicans have traditionally been able to avoid extradition by claiming their offences were political. The bloody war in the north is leading the Republic of Ireland to re-evaluate its position, however, and he becomes the first republican to be extradited to Northern Ireland. Although convicted and sentenced there to life imprisonment, this is overturned in 1985. As a result, he is returned to the Republic, where he is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment on firearms charges. While he is incarcerated, his wife is shot dead at her Dundalk home.

McGlinchey is released in March 1993 and claiming to have no further involvement with the INLA, moves to Drogheda. He survives an assassination attempt soon after his release from prison, but in February 1994, his enemies catch up with him. At around 9:30 on the evening of Thursday, February 10, 1994, he visits and dines with friends of his in Duleek Road, near his home. He leaves about forty minutes later, intending to take a video back to a shop in Brookville, on the north side of town. At around 11:00 p.m. he and his 16-year-old son Dominic are returning home, when he pulls up to make a phone call from a public kiosk on Hardman’s Gardens, near Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. Almost immediately and despite the presence of four witnesses, a red Mazda pulls up alongside him. While his son watches from the car, three men get out and beat McGlinchey. Once he is on the ground the men, who are armed with three pump action shotguns and a pistol, fire into him fourteen times. The attack finishes with a coup de grâce to the head, although he is already dead. His last words are reputed to be “Jesus, Mary help me.” His son yells for an ambulance.

The following day, an autopsy is carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, which indicates McGlinchey had been hit in the neck, skull, the left upper chest, the left arm, and both legs. His inquest is held in Drogheda two weeks later, suspended and then reopened in November 1996. Gardaí forensic officers tell the coroner that they had compared the shell casings they had found with the database, but no matches have been made to other known weapons. The officer notes that no such information has been received from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The shotguns used are impossible to trace ballistically, but it is ascertained that the Mazda was registered in the north. His and his wife’s killers have never been found.

McGlinchey’s funeral is held on February 13, 1994, in Bellaghy, with no republican accoutrements. There is no INLA colour guard, and only an Irish tricolor draped over the coffin. Over 1,500 people attend and are watched closely by 200 RUC. Police armoured vans are held on the perimeter. He is buried alongside his wife and their young daughter Máire. His coffin is carried from the McGlinchey family home to St. Mary’s Church by pallbearers who are swapped out from the crowd every 40-yards or so. Martin McGuinness is among them, as is Bernadette McAliskey and her daughter Róisín. His sons carry the coffin for the final yards.

McGlinchey’s posthumous reputation ranges from being a “psycho” to his enemies to being an inspiration to those who followed him. Commentators have speculated on what he would have contributed to Irish politics had he lived. Some have suggested that he would have contributed to the Northern Ireland peace process, while others have argued that dissident republicans, opposed to that process, would have found him a willing rallying point. He remains an influence on Irish fiction and music, with both Edna O’Brien and Martin McDonagh producing acclaimed pieces based on his life and career. He is also featured in popular songs.


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The Dromkeen Ambush

The Dromkeen ambush takes place on February 3, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, at Dromkeen, County Limerick, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambushes a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) patrol, killing eleven policemen.

In late January, Richard O’Connell, commander of the Mid Limerick Brigade flying column, along with Captains Sean Lynch and Morgan Portley, begin planning an ambush of an RIC convoy from the Pallas RIC headquarters. Observing their activities for several months, local Volunteer John Purcell, of Caherconlish, finds that the first Thursday of each month they send a convoy to Fedamore with the payroll for RIC constables there, about eleven miles away. They also seem to use the same route each time. Such predictability is often a fatal flaw in a guerrilla war. The ambush is set for February 3.

The ambush is carried out by the flying columns of the East Limerick and Mid Limerick Brigades of the IRA, some forty riflemen, under the command of Donnocha O’Hannigan, commander of East Limerick Brigade flying column, and Richard O’Connell, commander of the Mid Limerick Brigade flying column.

The ambush location is well selected. The lorries are to come from the west. There is a severe right-hand turn at Dromkeen House, where the road turns east for several hundred yards in a straight line, to an intersection that splits to the north and south. O’Hannigan puts D. Guerin, Sean Stapleton, and Maurice Meade, all of East Limerick Brigade, at the corner to be the lookouts for the convoy. There are low stonewalls along both sides of most of the road. About halfway down its length there is a cemetery and an old, ruined church on the south side.

O’Hannigan spreads his men along both sides of the road, behind the walls and in several homes along the road and sets up barricades on the forks on the eastern end of the ambush, set back so the driver will not see them until they get to the intersection. He takes up a command position in an old, ruined cottage at the intersection. In addition to O’Hannigan, John MacCarthy, David Clancy and a few other East Limerick Volunteers are in the ruined cottage.

At approximately 2:30 p.m. the lookouts near Dromkeen House let them know the lorries are approaching. The plan is to let the lead lorry reach the barricade before they open fire, expecting them to be widely spaced. They are closer together than expected, however, and the men lining the road and near Dromkeen House open fire first at the second lorry when it is near the ruins of the old church to prevent it being getting beyond them. Michael Hennessy, of the Kilfinane Company of the East Limerick Brigade, in a spot near one of the walls, later says he killed the driver of the second lorry, Constable Sidney Millin, on his first shot. Millin may have had his foot on the brake at that moment, as the lorry almost immediately stops in the middle of the road.

The sound of the firing causes the lead lorry to speed up. Turning to the left and seeing one barricade, the driver tries to turn to the right, but is going too fast. He runs into the wall and then slams into a donkey cart with a bog of flour in it, sending a cloud of flour into the air and coming to a halt.

The cloud of flour, along with the fact that they are the only RIC members in civilian clothes, apparently saves the lives of two RIC men, Constable Cox and District Inspector Sanson, who was in charge of the convoy, who are thrown clear of the cab. By the time the cloud of flour clears, two men in civilian clothes are seen running through the field. Given that Crown Forces have been known to have civilian hostages in their lorries, O’Hannigan had his men hold their fire for fear of killing a hostage, and the two escape. Many of the Volunteers later speak of Sanson with scorn for abandoning his men.

All the Volunteer participants say the firing only lasts about ten minutes, with the RIC and Black and Tans able to mount very little resistance before all eleven left in the two lorries are either dead or wounded. Of the three remaining in the first lorry, one is apparently killed very quickly by rifle fire and several grenades. The other two manage to get out and take cover but are quickly hit.

Two constables managed to get underneath the second lorry. They put up a short resistance before both are hit and killed by Volunteers Johnny Vaughan and Seán Carroll, who move into positions along the road. The only Volunteer casualty is Liam Hayes, who is later a general in the Free State Army. He has part of his left thumb and part of a finger shot off, probably by friendly fire. As the firing ends, the Volunteers come out from cover to collect the arms from the dead and wounded.

It has been claimed that three of the RIC dead were executed after they had surrendered. Particular suspicion for this alleged killing of prisoners has fallen on Maurice Meade, a former British soldier who was captured by the Germans in World War I and had joined Roger Casement‘s Irish Brigade. In reprisal, British forces burn ten homes and farms in the area.

In February 2009, up to 2,000 people turn out for the unveiling of a memorial to the ambush.

(From: “The Dromkeen Ambush: Down Into the Mire in County Limerick” by Joee Gannon, The Wild Geese, http://www.thewildgeese.irish, November 2017 | Pictured: The East Limerick Flying Column)


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Death of Paddy Daly, IRA Volunteer & National Army Officer

Paddy Daly, sometimes referred to as Paddy O’Daly, dies at his home in County Dublin on January 16, 1957. He serves in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) and subsequently holds the rank of major general in the Irish National Army from 1922 to 1924.

Daly is born in Dublin in 1888. He fights in the 1916 Easter Rising under the command of his namesake Edward Daly, leading the unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park. He is later wounded in the particularly vicious fighting near the Linenhall. He is subsequently interned in Frongoch internment camp for his part in the rebellion until 1918, when he is released as part of a general amnesty for Irish prisoners.

During the Irish War of Independence, Daly serves as leader of the “Squad,” Michael Collins‘ assassination unit.

On December 19, 1919, Daly along with Dan Breen lead an abortive ambush, at Ashtown railway station near the Phoenix Park, on the British Viceroy, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Supreme Commander of the British Army in Ireland, Lord French, as he returns from a private party which he had hosted the previous evening at his country residence in Frenchpark, County Roscommon. Lord French escapes the ambush, but Martin Savage is shot dead.

Daly and the men under his command are responsible for the killing of many British intelligence officers, in particular District Inspector Redmond, who had been putting increasing pressure on the Squad. Daly himself personally kills several people, including Frank Brooke, director of Great Southern and Eastern Railway, who serves on an advisory council to the British military, in June 1920. He does not directly lead any of the attacks on Bloody Sunday but is on standby in one of the Squad’s safe houses. In the aftermath, November 23, 1920, he is arrested and interned in Abercorn Barracks in Ballykinler, County Down.

Daly is released on parole from Ballykinler in March 1921, the British apparently being unaware of his senior position within the Dublin Brigade of the IRA. After his release, he, along with Emmet Dalton, is also involved in the attempt to free Seán Mac Eoin from Mountjoy Prison on May 14, 1921. He and his men hijack a British Army Peerless armoured car in Clontarf at the corporation abattoir, while it is escorting a consignment of meat to a barracks and shoot dead two soldiers in the process. The plan involves Dalton and Joe Leonard impersonating two British army officers and using forged documents to “transfer” MacEoin to Dublin Castle. They gain entry to Mountjoy but are discovered before they can free MacEoin and have to shoot their way out. They later abandon the armoured car after removing the Hotchkiss machine guns and setting fire to what they can. Toward the end of the war, in May 1921, the two principal fighting units of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, the “Squad” and the “Active Service Unit” are amalgamated after losses suffered in the burning of the Custom House. Daly is named Officer Commanding (OC) of this new unit, which is named the Dublin Guard.

Daly’s own account of his activities during the Irish War of Independence is held at the Bureau of Military History in Cathal Brugha Barracks.

After the Anglo-Irish Treaty splits the IRA, Daly and most of his men side with the pro-treaty party, who go on to found the Irish Free State. He is appointed to the rank of brigadier in the newly created Irish National Army, which is inaugurated in January 1922. When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, he commands the Free State’s troops who secure Dublin, after a week of fighting.

In August 1922, during the Irish Free State offensive that re-takes most of the major towns in Ireland, Daly commands a landing of 450 troops of the Dublin Guard at Fenit, County Kerry, which goes on to capture Tralee from the anti-treaty forces. Acting with severe brutality in Kerry, he comments that, “nobody had asked me to take kid-gloves to Kerry, so I didn’t.” As the Civil War develops into a vicious guerrilla conflict, he and his men are implicated in a series of atrocities against anti-treaty prisoners, culminating in a series of killings with land mines in March 1923. Daly, and others under his command, claim that those killed were accidentally blown up by their own mines. Statements by the Garda Síochána, two Free State lieutenants on duty, W. McCarthy and Niall Harrington, and one survivor, Stephen Fuller, maintain the claims are fabricated.

Daly resigns from the Free State army in 1924 after an incident in Kenmare, County Kerry, concerning the daughters of a doctor. A court martial is held but collapses as no one is prepared to give evidence. He volunteers his services for the Irish Army again in 1940 and is appointed as a Captain to the non-combatant Construction Corps.

Daly is a carpenter by trade. He marries Daisy Gillies in 1910. His brother James (Seamus) marries Daisy’s sister Nora, a Cumann na mBan activist, in a joint wedding ceremony. After Daisy’s death in 1919, Daly marries Bridget Murtagh, also a Cumann na mBan activist, in 1921. Murtagh and Nora O’Daly carry out intelligence gathering for the planned attack on the Magazine Fort in 1916. She is a sister of Elizabeth Murtagh, the first wife of Commandant Michael Love who serves with Daly in the Collins Squad of the IRA, in the Irish Free State Army of the 1920s and during the Emergency period. Murtagh dies in childbirth in 1930. Daly subsequently marries Norah Gillies, his first wife’s niece.

On his death on January 16, 1957, Daly is buried with full military honours in Mount Jerome Cemetery. He is survived by his brothers, Comdt Seamus O’Daly and Capt Frank O’Daly, his sons Patrick and Colbert, and his daughters Brede and Philomena.