seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Guerilla Warfare


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The Scramoge Ambush

The Scramoge ambush is an ambush carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on March 23, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). The IRA ambush a lorry carrying British Army troops and Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers at Scramoge (also spelled Scramogue), near Strokestown in County Roscommon. Three British soldiers and an RIC officer are killed, while two RIC “Black and Tans” are captured and shot dead shortly thereafter.

Following the ambush, the British carry out a sweep in which they capture three of the IRA volunteers involved and kill another who had not taken part.

County Roscommon is not one of the more violent areas of Ireland during the conflict. The local IRA argues to their GHQ that it is very difficult to conduct guerrilla warfare in the flat open countryside there. Prior to the action at Scramogue, the biggest previous incident had been in October 1920, when four RIC officers were killed in an ambush near Ballinderry.

Sean Connolly is sent by IRA GHQ from Longford to re-organise the Roscommon IRA and chooses the ambush site at Scramoge. However, he is killed twelve days before the action, at the Selton Hill ambush in neighbouring County Leitrim.

Both the North and South Roscommon brigades of the IRA take part and are commanded by Patrick Madden. There are 39 volunteers in the flying column, but only 14 take part in the actual attack. The remainder are tasked with blocking roads to keep the IRA’s line of retreat open. The IRA party is armed with thirteen rifles (eleven Lee–Enfields, one Winchester and one sporting rifle), twenty shotguns (though some are in bad condition) and two or three Webley revolvers. This is the largest collection of arms that the IRA assembles in Roscommon during the war and some of them have been borrowed from IRA units in Longford.

Among the volunteers who take part are Martin Fallon, ‘Cushy’ Hughes, Frank Simons, Luke Duffy, Peter Casey, Peter Collins, Patrick Gallagher and Tom Compton. Several of the IRA men, including Hughes, had served in the Irish Guards (IG) in World War I, but had been persuaded by Pat Madden to join the IRA upon their return.

The ambush site is carefully prepared. It is located at a sharp bend on the Strokestown–Longford road. A farmhouse and barn at the bend have been taken over and loopholed, and a trench is dug behind a hedge alongside the road. Only a mile from the IRA’s position, the British 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers regiment is garrisoned in Strokestown House.

The IRA waits in their position all day for British forces to come from Strokestown. Just as a troop lorry finally appears, two civilians came up the road in a pony and trap and have to be frantically waved out of the way.

The lorry carries a nine-man British Army and Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) patrol traveling on the Strokestown–Longford road. The British inquiry into the incident is to question why the lorry is unescorted, as their practice is not to travel in lone vehicles.

The IRA opens fire from very close range, killing the driver and halting the lorry in its tracks. Several of the soldiers and policemen are hit and they scrambled for cover behind a wall along the road. The lorry has a Hotchkiss machine gun bolted onto it, but its gunner gets off only one burst before being badly wounded and the gun is put out of action. The commander of the patrol, Captain Roger Grenville Peek, is hit in the lorry but tries to run to safety, only to be hit again and killed 400 yards down the road. The other officer with the party, Lieutenant Tennant, is also killed by a shotgun blast. After the death of the two officers, the surviving British, several of whom are wounded, surrender.

Just as the firing is dying down, another lorry, an RIC/Black and Tan patrol, approaches the ambush site but turns back after coming under fire.

Four of the British force are killed – this includes two British Army officers (Roger Grenville Peek and John Harold Anthony Tennant), a Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) driver, and one RIC man (Constable Edward Leslie).

Two men in civilian clothes are also found in the lorry. They turn out to be Black and Tans, Constable Buchanan and Constable Evans, who had been placed under arrest by the soldiers. They are made prisoners by the IRA. The ambush party takes the British arms, including the Hotchkiss gun, burn the lorry and make their escape over the hill of Slieve Bawn.

The IRA leaders, Pat Madden, Luke Duffy and Frank Simons, decide to murder the two Black and Tans, despite their offering to show the IRA how to use the captured machine gun. The IRA officers’ reason that if the prisoners identify the IRA men who had taken part in the ambush, the volunteers will be at risk of being executed if captured. The two are taken to remote locations and shot over the next two days.

The British garrison in Roscommon town mounts a sweep directly after the ambush with eight lorries and one Whippet tank. Three volunteers who had taken part are arrested afterward. Pat Mullooly and Brian Nagle of the North Roscommon Brigade are arrested as they try to get away from the scene of the ambush, as is “Cushy” Hughes, who is picked up when he is drawing his soldier’s pension in Roscommon. Mullooly and Nagle are badly beaten by their captors on the road to Roscommon. The next day, another volunteer, Michael Mullooly, brother of Pat Mullooly, is shot dead in his home by the RIC.


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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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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 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.


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Death of Anti-Treaty IRA Volunteer Michael Cull

Michael Cull, an anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) Volunteer from Roscommon, is killed during a raid on Ballyconnell, County Cavan, on January 6, 1923.

Ballyconnell is a small town in western County Cavan. According to the 1911 census it is populated by 125 families, or in the region of 600 people, and is according to local pro-Treaty TD Seán Milroy, “in the values of country towns, a very considerable centre of county life.” Since 1921 it has been wedged up against the new border with County Fermanagh and Northern Ireland to the north and the Arigna Mountains to the south and west. As the Irish Civil War rages south of the border, and with no effective police or military presence, Ballyconnell is particularly vulnerable to the depredations of armed groups of various allegiance.

Cull is part of a contingent of 50-70 anti-Treaty fighters holed up in the Arigna Mountains. As well as guerrilla attacks against the forces of the Irish Free State, one of their most frequent actions, out of necessity, is raids on civilian targets for supplies.

Cull, according to the local newspaper, is holding up Ovens’ hardware and grocery shop in Ballyconnell when he is shot dead by a plain clothes Free State officer. The National Army later derisively refers to “the shooting of a looter named Cull … He and others were raiding in Ballyconnell when a couple of officers who were in the area got in touch with them. This gang of Irregulars have been in the mountains for several months past.”

Cull’s death is by no means the end of Ballyconnell’s troubles. The anti-Treaty column based in the Arigna Mountains, composed of Volunteers from Roscommon, Leitrim and Cavan (which includes Cull’s brother James) and led by Ned Bofin, visits a ferocious revenge on the small town for the death of Cull.

Almost exactly a month later, on the morning of February 5, 1923, at about 7:00 a.m., fifty well-armed anti-Treaty IRA fighters descend on Ballyconnell from the hills in a military lorry and several cars. The guerrillas, armed with rifles and three machine guns, stop the train to nearby Ballinamore so that word cannot get out to adjacent Free State garrisons. They then go in search of those they hold responsible for Cull’s death.

At Oven’s grocery, the proprietor, William Ovens, is shot through the thigh and badly wounded. One of his employees, William Ryan, is dragged out and shot dead. According to the local press, the guerrillas shouted, “Was it you who shot Cull?” at Ryan before they shot him. His 80-year-old father follows the fighters through the streets, shouting “murder, murder.”

Sean McGrath, an Irish language teacher originally from Galway, is also dragged out of bed and shot dead, apparently for no other reason than that he is lodging at the home of Free State supporter John Dunn.

The guerrillas proceed to bomb and burn out three shops, including the car dealership and the Post Office, and to smash the windows of the other premises with shots and rifle butts. The Ulster Bank branch is robbed of £200 and two Ford cars are seized. After a rampage of 35 minutes, the IRA column re-mount their vehicles and head back toward the Arigna Mountains, leaving the little town partially in flames, pockmarked with bullet holes and mourning the death of two of its citizens.

According to the pro-Treaty National Army, “Our troops in Belturbet got word of the raid, and immediately set out in all their transport. They were joined en route by two Fords of troops from Cavan, and all proceeded to Ballyconnell, where they arrived shortly after 9 o’clock. They followed the Irregulars past Ballinamore but failed to get in touch with them.”

(From: “The Tragedies of Ballyconnell” by John Dorney, The Irish Story (www.theirishstory.com), June 19, 2014 | Pictured: The main street of Ballyconnell in the early 20th century)


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Death of Florence O’Donoghue, Historian & Member of the Irish Republican Army

Florence O’Donoghue, historian and head of intelligence of the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence, dies on December 18, 1967, in Mercy University Hospital, Cork, County Cork.

O’Donoghue is born in Rathmore, County Kerry, on July 22, 1894, the son of farmer Patrick O’Donoghue and Margaret Cronin. He moves to Cork in 1910, where he works as an apprentice in the drapery trade.

The 1916 Easter Rising is a watershed in O’Donoghue’s life. In December 1916, he joins the Cork branch of the Irish Volunteers. In early 1917, he is elected unanimously First Lieutenant of the Cyclist Company and as a result devotes all his spare time to Volunteer work. He begins writing weekly for two years for The Irish World newspaper. By May 1917, he is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and in October, Tomás Mac Curtain appoints him head of communications of the Cork Brigade. He replaces Pat Higgins as Brigade Adjutant in February 1917. He is a key organiser in the sensational jailbreak of Captain Donnchadh Mac Niallghuis on Armistice Day 1918 and takes personal responsibility for his protection. Michael Collins is the last officer from Volunteers General Headquarters to visit Cork shortly after Christmas 1919, until the truce in 1921.

O’Donoghue builds up an intelligence network and agents which includes his future wife, Josephine Marchment. She is head female clerk at the 6th Division Headquarters at Victoria Barracks, Cork, and passes on secret British Army correspondence to him. He recruits people to open letters, tap phone lines and intercept telegrams. The Irish Republican Army has 2,000 active members in Cork which are also used for intelligence gathering. By March 1920, after killing a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Inspector, he is on the run and serving full-time in the IRA. In November of that year, the Cork Brigade kills six British Army officers and executes five Cork civilians on suspicion of spying.

After two and a half years of fighting, a truce is agreed upon on July 11, 1921. When the Dáil approves the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in January 1922, the IRA splits into pro- and anti-Treaty camps. Over the coming months and after being elected onto the army’s executive as Adjutant General, O’Donoghue warns of the dangers of an Irish Civil War. In June 1922, he resigns from the army’s national executive and a month later, on July 3, 1922, from the army. Civil war does break out on June 28, 1922 between pro- and anti-Treaty factions, much to his dismay.

During the Irish Civil War, O’Donoghue remains neutral and tries to organise a truce to end the fighting. In December 1922, he forms a group called the “Neutral IRA”, along with Seán O’Hegarty, composed of pro-truce IRA men. He claims he has 20,000 members in this group. He campaigns for a month’s truce between the two sides, so that a political compromise could be reached. However, his efforts come to nothing and in March 1923, he winds up the “Neutral IRA,” judging that its objectives cannot be achieved. The Irish Civil War ends on May 24, 1923.

O’Donoghue serves as major in the Irish Army from 1939-1946. He forms a Supplementary Intelligence Service that is to remain behind enemy lines in the event of an invasion. He also teaches guerrilla warfare tactics to new army recruits.

O’Donoghue marries Josephine Brown (née Marchment) in April 1921 and they have four children. The couple also adopts two children from Josephine’s first marriage, including Reggie Brown, whom O’Donoghue kidnaps from his grandparents in Wales in 1920. He becomes a rate collector and remains outside politics.

In later years O’Donoghue becomes a respected historian. While in the army he edits An Cosantóir, the Irish Army’s magazine. He convinces Éamon de Valera to establish the Bureau of Military History to record personal accounts from the Irish War of Independence. He is a recording officer until 1948. His most famous work is his biography on Liam Lynch, entitled No Other Law.

O’Donoghue dies on December 18, 1967, and Tom Barry gives the graveside oration. His papers are in the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and his statement to the Bureau of Military History is in the Military Archives.


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Death of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Revolutionary, Physician, Writer & Diplomat

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, writer, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist of Spanish-Irish descent, dies in La Higuera, Vallegrande, Bolivia, on October 9, 1967. After his execution by the Bolivian army, he is regarded as a martyred hero by generations of leftists worldwide, and his image becomes an icon of leftist radicalism and anti-imperialism.

Guevara is born on June 14, 1928, in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a middle-class family of Spanish-Irish descent and leftist leanings. Although suffering from asthma, he excels as an athlete and a scholar, completing his medical studies in 1953. He spends many of his holidays traveling in Latin America, and his observations of the great poverty of the masses contributes to his eventual conclusion that the only solution lay in violent revolution. He comes to look upon Latin America not as a collection of separate nations but as a cultural and economic entity, the liberation of which would require an intercontinental strategy.

In particular, Guevara’s worldview is changed by a nine-month journey he begins in December 1951, while on hiatus from medical school, with his friend Alberto Granado. That trip, which begins on a motorcycle they call “the Powerful” (which breaks down and is abandoned early in the journey), takes them from Argentina through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and on to Venezuela, from which Guevara travels alone on to Miami, returning to Argentina by plane. During the trip he keeps a journal that is posthumously published under his family’s guidance as The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey (2003) and adapted to film as The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).

In 1953 Guevara goes to Guatemala, where Jacobo Árbenz heads a progressive regime that is attempting to bring about a social revolution. It is about this time he acquires his nickname, from a verbal mannerism of Argentines who punctuate their speech with the interjection “che.” The overthrow of the Árbenz regime in 1954 in a coup supported by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) persuades him that the United States will always oppose progressive leftist governments. This becomes the cornerstone of his plans to bring about socialism by means of a worldwide revolution. It is in Guatemala that he becomes a dedicated Marxist.

Guevara leaves Guatemala for Mexico, where he meets the Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, political exiles who are preparing an attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. He joins Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, which lands a force of 81 men (including Guevara) in the Cuban Oriente Province on December 2, 1956. Immediately detected by Batista’s army, they are almost wiped out. The few survivors, including the wounded Guevara, reach the Sierra Maestra, where they become the nucleus of a guerrilla army. The rebels slowly gain in strength, seizing weapons from Batista’s forces and winning support and new recruits. Guevara had initially come along as the force’s doctor, but he has also trained in weapons use, and he becomes one of Castro’s most-trusted aides. Indeed, the complex Guevara, though trained as a healer, also, on occasion, acts as the executioner (or orders the execution) of suspected traitors and deserters.

After Castro’s victorious troops enter Havana on January 8, 1959, Guevara serves for several months at La Cabaña prison, where he oversees the executions of individuals deemed to be enemies of the revolution. He becomes a Cuban citizen, as prominent in the newly established Marxist government as he had been in the revolutionary army, representing Cuba on many commercial missions. He also becomes well known in the West for his opposition to all forms of imperialism and neocolonialism and for his attacks on U.S. foreign policy. He serves as chief of the Industrial Department of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, president of the National Bank of Cuba (famously demonstrating his disdain for capitalism by signing currency simply “Che”), and Minister of Industries.

During the early 1960s, Guevara defines Cuba’s policies and his own views in many speeches and writings, notably “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba” (1965; “Man and Socialism in Cuba,” 1967), an examination of Cuba’s new brand of communism, and a highly influential manual, La guerra de guerrillas (1960; Guerrilla Warfare, 1961). The last book includes his delineation of his foco theory (foquismo), a doctrine of revolution in Latin America drawn from the experience of the Cuban Revolution and predicated on three main tenets: 1) guerrilla forces are capable of defeating the army; 2) all the conditions for making a revolution do not have to be in place to begin a revolution, because the rebellion itself can bring them about; and 3) the countryside of underdeveloped Latin America is suited for armed combat.

Guevara expounds a vision of a new socialist citizen who would work for the good of society rather than for personal profit, a notion he embodies through his own hard work. Often he sleeps in his office, and, in support of the volunteer labour program he had organized, he spends his day off working in a sugarcane field. He grows increasingly disheartened, however, as Cuba becomes a client state of the Soviet Union, and he feels betrayed by the Soviets when they remove their missiles from the island without consulting the Cuban leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He begins looking to the People’s Republic of China and its leader Mao Zedong for support and as an example.

In December 1964 Guevara travels to New York City, where he condemns U.S. intervention in Cuban affairs and incursions into Cuban airspace in an address to the United Nations General Assembly. Back in Cuba, increasingly disillusioned with the direction of the Cuban social experiment and its reliance on the Soviets, he begins focusing his attention on fostering revolution elsewhere. After April 1965 he drops out of public life. His movements and whereabouts for the next two years remain secret. It is later learned that he had traveled to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo with other Cuban guerrilla fighters in what proved to be a futile attempt to help the Patrice Lumumba battalion, which was fighting a civil war there. During that period he resigns his ministerial position in the Cuban government and renounces his Cuban citizenship. After the failure of his efforts in the Congo, he flees first to Tanzania and then to a safe house in a village near Prague.

In the autumn of 1966 Guevara goes to Bolivia, incognito (beardless and bald), to create and lead a guerrilla group in the region of Santa Cruz. After some initial combat successes, he and his guerrilla band find themselves constantly on the run from the Bolivian army. On October 9, 1967, the group is almost annihilated by a special detachment of the Bolivian army aided by CIA advisers. Guevara, who is wounded in the attack, is captured and shot. Before his body disappears to be secretly buried, his hands are cut off. They are preserved in formaldehyde so that his fingerprints can be used to confirm his identity.

In 1995 one of Guevara’s biographers, Jon Lee Anderson, announces that he had learned that Guevara and several of his comrades had been buried in a mass grave near the town of Vallegrande in central Bolivia. In 1997 a skeleton that is believed be that of the revolutionary and the remains of his six comrades are disinterred and transported to Cuba to be interred in a massive memorial and monument in Santa Clara on the 30th anniversary of Guevara’s death. In 2007 a French and a Spanish journalist make a case that the body brought to Cuba is not actually Guevara’s. The Cuban government refutes the claim, citing scientific evidence from 1997 that, it says, proves that the remains are those of Guevara.

Guevara would live on as a powerful symbol, bigger in some ways in death than in life. He is almost always referenced simply as Che — like Elvis Presley, so popular an icon that his first name alone is identifier enough. Many on the political right condemn him as brutal, cruel, murderous, and all too willing to employ violence to reach revolutionary ends. On the other hand, his romanticized image as a revolutionary looms especially large for the generation of young leftist radicals in Western Europe and North America in the turbulent 1960s. Almost from the time of his death, his whiskered face adorns T-shirts and posters. Framed by a red-star-studded beret and long hair, his face frozen in a resolute expression, the iconic image is derived from a photo taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960, at a ceremony for those killed when a ship that had brought arms to Havana exploded. At first the image of Che is worn as a statement of rebellion, then as the epitome of radical chic, and, with the passage of time, as a kind of abstract logo whose original significance may even have been lost on its wearer, though for some he remains an enduring inspiration for revolutionary action.


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Birth of Emmet Dalton, Soldier & Film Producer

James Emmet Dalton MC, Irish soldier and film producer, is born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on March 4, 1898. He serves in the British Army in World War I, reaching the rank of captain. However, on his return to Ireland he becomes one of the senior figures in the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which fights against British rule in Ireland.

Dalton is born to Irish American parents James F. and Katharine L. Dalton. The family moves back to Ireland when he is two years old. He grows up in a middle-class Catholic background in Drumcondra in North Dublin and lives at No. 8 Upper St. Columba’s Road. He is educated by the Christian Brothers at O’Connell School in North Richmond Street. He joins the nationalist militia, the Irish Volunteers, in 1913 and the following year, though only fifteen, is involved in the smuggling of arms into Ireland.

Dalton joins the British Army in 1915 for the duration of the Great War. His decision is not that unusual among Irish Volunteers, as over 20,000 of the National Volunteers join the British New Army on the urgings of Nationalist leader John Redmond. His father, however, disagrees with his son’s decision. He initially joins the 7th battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers (RDF) as a temporary 2nd Lieutenant. By 1916 he is attached to the 9th Battalion, RDF, 16th (Irish) Division under Major-General William Hickie, which contains many Irish nationalist recruits.

During the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, Dalton is involved in bloody fighting during the Battle of Ginchy, in which over 4,000 Irishmen are killed or wounded. He is awarded the Military Cross for his conduct in the battle. Afterwards he is transferred to the 6th Battalion, Leinster Regiment, and sent to Thessaloniki then Palestine, where he commands a company and then supervises a sniper school in el-ʻArīsh. In 1918 he is re-deployed again to France, and in July promoted to captain, serving as an instructor.

On demobilisation in April 1919, Dalton returns to Ireland. There, finding that his younger brother Charlie had joined the IRA, he himself follows suit. He later comments on the apparent contradiction of fighting both with and against the British Army by saying that he had fought for Ireland with the British and fought for Ireland against them.

Dalton becomes close to Michael Collins and rises swiftly to become IRA Director of Intelligence and is involved in The Squad, the Dublin-based assassination unit. On May 14, 1921, he leads an operation with Paddy Daly that he and Collins had devised. It is designed to rescue Gen. Seán Mac Eoin from Mountjoy Prison using a hijacked British armoured car and two of Dalton’s old British Army uniforms.

Dalton follows Collins in accepting the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 and is one of the first officers, a Major General, in the new National Army established by the Irish Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. The Treaty is opposed by much of the IRA and Civil War between pro and anti-treaty factions eventually results.

Dalton is in command of troops assaulting the Four Courts in the Battle of Dublin which marks the start of the war in June 1922. At Collins’ instigation he, as Military liaison officer with the British during the truce, takes control of the two 18 pounder guns from the British that are trained on the buildings. He becomes commander of the Free State Army under Richard Mulcahy‘s direction. He is behind the Irish Free State offensive of July–August 1922 that dislodges the Anti-Treaty fighters from the towns of Munster. He proposes seaborne landings to take the Anti-Treaty positions from the rear and he commands one such naval landing that takes Cork in early August. In spite of firm loyalty to the National Army, he is critical of the Free State’s failure to follow up its victory, allowing the Anti-Treaty IRA to regroup resuming the guerrilla warfare started in 1919.

On August 22, 1922, he accompanies Collins in convoy, touring rural west Cork. The convoy is ambushed near Béal na Bláth and Collins is killed in the firefight. He had advised Collins to drive on, but Collins, who is not an experienced combat veteran, insists on stopping to fight.

Dalton is married shortly afterwards, on October 9, 1922, to Alice Shannon in Cork’s Imperial Hotel. By December 1922 he has resigned his command in the Army. He does not agree with the execution of republican prisoners that mark the latter stages of the Civil War. After briefly working as clerk of the Irish Senate, Seanad Éireann, he leaves the job to work in the movie industry.

Over the following forty years, Dalton works in Ireland and the United States in film production. In 1958 he founds Irish Ardmore Studios in Bray, County Wicklow. His company helps produce films such as The Blue Max, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and The Lion in Winter, all of which are filmed in Ireland. His daughter is Irish actress Audrey Dalton.

Dalton dies in his daughter Nuala’s house in Dublin on March 4, 1978, his 80th birthday, never having seen the film that Cathal O’Shannon of RTÉ had made on his life. During the making of the film they visit the battlefields in France, Kilworth Camp in Cork, Béal Na Bláth, and other places that Dalton had not visited since his earlier years. He wishes to be buried as near as possible to his friend Michael Collins in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin and is buried there in March 1978 after a military funeral. None of the ruling Fianna Fáil government ministers or TDs attend.

(Pictured: Dalton photographed in lieutenant’s uniform, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, taken circa. 1914-1918)


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Edward the Bruce Appointed High King of Ireland

grave-of-king-edward-de-bruceEdward Bruce of Scotland is crowned High King of Ireland at Dundalk on May 2, 1316. He is the younger brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. He is also sometimes known as Edward de Brus or Edward the Bruce.

Edward is the second of five sons of Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale and Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. His date of birth, believed to be around 1280, is unknown but King Robert is obviously the firstborn. He has eleven siblings, of whom nine survive childhood. One of his older sisters, Lady Christina Bruce, also plays an active role in the wars of independence against England.

By 1307 Edward fights alongside Robert throughout his struggle for the Scottish throne and accompanies him during his flight from Scotland and subsequent guerilla campaign against the English. The three younger Bruce brothers Nigel, Thomas, and Alexander are all captured and executed by the English during this period. Some time between 1309 and 1313, Edward is created Earl of Carrick, a title previously held by his maternal grandfather Niall of Carrick, his mother and his elder brother.

As the Scots become more dominant, Edward commands a number of successful sieges of English-held castles across the country. By November 1313 he commands the siege of the last remaining English outpost in Scotland, Stirling Castle. Without Robert’s knowledge, he makes a deal with the English Constable of the castle that should an English army not arrive to relieve it by June 24, 1314, the castle will surrender, so making an aggressive siege unnecessary. Robert is deeply unhappy, but has little choice but to confront the English army sent by Edward II to relieve Stirling in June 1314. The armies meet at the Battle of Bannockburn, and the result is a decisive victory for the Scots which leaves Robert in fairly unopposed control of Scotland.

Robert decides to open a second front against the English and dispatches an army of 6,000 men under the command of Edward to Ireland. The aim is to challenge English dominance of the British Isles by drawing together Scottish and Irish interests. Scottish and Irish forces are initially successful in defeating the English and on May 2, 1316 Edward is appointed High King of Ireland.

A famine in 1317 proves a setback to Edward and greatly reduces his popularity. This allowed time for an English army under John de Bermingham to be assembled. The English army meets the Scots-Irish army under King Edward Bruce at the Battle of Faughart on October 14, 1318. The Scots-Irish army is badly defeated by de Bermingham’s forces. Edward is killed, his body being quartered and sent to various towns in Ireland, and his head being delivered to King Edward II.

Edward Bruce is the last High King of Ireland.

(Pictured: Grave of King Edward De Bruce, located in Faughart Cemetery)