Eyewitness and first hand accounts of the Irish revolution. Originally published by The Kerryman in the 1940s, this is one of the four titles in the Fighting Stories Series. It records the events of the War of Independence in the words of the people who fought it and those who wrote about it at the time. Amongst the gripping episodes recorded are: Limerick's heroes of 1916, the execution of an enemy spy in West Limerick, Limerick's Night of Terror, Cumann na mBan in Limerick and the destruction of Killmallock Barracks. Featuring reports of the ambushes, battles, successes and failures, Limerick's Fighting Story is a treasure trove of information and intriguing detail.

Almost a century ago a small body of men engaged in combat with the armed forces of an Empire. Militarily they were weak. Their strength lay in their faith in their cause and in the unflinching support of a civilian population which refused to be cowed by threats or by violence. This new edition of Kerry's Fighting Stories features stories and reports from every aspect of the conflict, from the formation of the Volunteers in Kerry early in the twentieth century, through the first casualties as the Easter Rising took its toll and on to the campaigns in the East and West of the county during the war of Independence itself. With barracks attacks, ambushes, shootings and even engagements with warships, it brings to life a conflict that is fading from the collective memory of the county and country. This classic account, with a new introduction by Professor J.J. Lee, offers a fascinating insight into the struggle for independence in Kerry from the perspective of those who took part in the actions themselves.

The first comprehensive account to record and analyze all deaths arising from the Irish revolution between 1916 and 1921 "A monumental new book [and] an incredible piece of research. . . . Formidable, authoritative and handsomely produced, The Dead of the Irish Revolution is a fitting memorial."--Andrew Lynch, Irish Independent "Will surely serve as the indispensable reference work on this topic for the foreseeable future. . . . A truly remarkable feat of close scholarship and calm exposition."--Gearoid O Tuathaigh, Irish Times Weekend This account covers the turbulent period from the 1916 Rising to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921--a period which saw the achievement of independence for most of nationalist Ireland and the establishment of Northern Ireland as a self-governing province of the United Kingdom. Separatists fought for independence against government forces and, in North East Ulster, armed loyalists. Civilians suffered violence from all combatants, sometimes as collateral damage, often as targets. Eunan O'Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin catalogue and analyze the deaths of all men, women, and children who died during the revolutionary years--505 in 1916; 2,344 between 1917 and 1921. This study provides a unique and comprehensive picture of everyone who died: in what manner, by whose hands, and why. Through their stories we obtain original insight into the Irish revolution itself.

The first of a six book series on titles on the Military History Of The Irish Civil War, this is an in-depth study of the battle for Limerick city. The story concentrates on the vicious battle that took place between Republican and Provisional Government forces for the control of Limerick City. Occurring in the early days of the Civil War, hostilities arrived in Limerick with a whimper rather than a bang. Outnumbered and out-gunned, the Pro-Treaty Commander of the city, Michael Brennan, negotiated a truce with the Anti-Treaty Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch. But the benefit of this lull in fighting accrued almost entirely to the Pro-Treaty side, gaining them time for reinforcements and weaponry to arrive. When it did, the city became a battleground of extreme viciousness. Several buildings were shelled by 18-pounder guns at point-blank range. The fighting around the Strand barracks was particularly heavy. Padraig Ó Ruairc offers a fresh perspective on the struggle that reduced the viability of the Republican's hoped-for Munster Republic and set the stage for the battle of Kilmallock which checked the pro-treaty rout that the initial stages of the Civil War had been.

This book examines the militant Irish republican movement in the United States from the final months of the Irish Civil War through to the Second World War. The narrative carefully and creatively intertwines the personalities, events and policies that shaped the activism during this period and shows the evolution of its inherently transnational nature. Through a bottom-up historical analysis that incorporates an examination of more than eighty archival collections in the US, Ireland and Britain, the book presents for the first time an account of the anti-Treaty IRA veterans who arrived in the US after the Irish Civil War. Upon their settlement in Irish-American communities, these republicans directly influenced and guided the US-based militant republican organisation, Clan na Gael, transformed the overall dynamics of militant Irish republicanism in America and provided leadership and co-ordination for an IRA bombing campaign. With the inclusion of these veterans’ stories, the book provides a fresh interpretation of the inter-war movement in America that shows it to be far from as stagnant, wayward and detached from Irish affairs as has previously been claimed.

In 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, the fort on Spike Island in County Cork was the largest British-military-run prison for Republican prisoners and internees in the Martial Law area, housing almost 1,400 men from Munster and south Leinster. Tom O'Neill has compiled an outstanding record of these men, using primary-source material from Irish Military Archives, British Army records, and prisoner and internee autograph books. This book includes details of arrests, charges, trials, convictions, sentences and transfers of the Republicans held on Spike Island. From the establishment of the military prison in 1921, to the escapes, hunger strikes and riots, as well as the fatal shooting by sentries of two internees that took place there, Spike Island's Republican Prisoners, 1921 is the first comprehensive history of individuals and events on the island during the Irish War of Independence. Spike Island is now a world-class tourist attraction.

This book challenges the widespread scholarly and popular belief that the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) was followed by a ‘traumatic silence’. It achieves this by opening an alternative archive of published testimonies which were largely produced in the 1920s and 1930s; testimonies were written by pro- and anti-treaty men and women, in both English and Irish. Nearly all have eluded sustained scholarly attention to date. However, the act of smuggling private, painful experience into the public realm, especially when it challenged official memory making (or even forgetting), demanded the cautious deployment of self-protective narrative strategies. As a result, many testimonies from the Irish Civil War emerge in non-conventional, hybridised and fictionalised forms of life writing. This book re-introduces a number of these testimonies into public debate. It considers contemporary understandings of mental illness and how a number of veterans – both men and women – self-consciously engaged in projects of therapeutic writing as a means to ‘heal’ the ‘spiritual wounds’ of civil war. It also outlines the prevalence of literary representations of revolutionary sexual violence, challenging the assumptions that sexual violence during the Irish revolution was either ‘rare’ or ‘hidden’.