Úna Brennan, born Anastasia Bolger in Wexford, a Cumann na mBan member, was one of the three women who raised the Irish tricolour over Enniscorthy during the Rising. During the WoI, Úna was fearless & used her home as a safe house for IRA documents & men on the run.
May Gibney, joined the Volunteers in the GPO on Easter Monday despite not yet being a member of Cumann na mBan. Afterwards she was detained & interrogated but released. During the WoI, she gathered intelligence, hid & ran guns & organised safe houses.
Mary O’Connell Bianconi, from Clare served with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in both World Wars. During WW1, she was joined the VAD, became an ambulance driver (& mechanic) & once drove through a German artillery barrage to pick up wounded. She rejoined in 1939.
#OnThisDay 1921 Lt Victor Bickersteth Murray from Newcastle, shot himself in the chest & died while stationed on Spike Island, Cork with the Cameron Highlanders. A note on Murray, 24 & a veteran of the Great War, read he was ‘Temporarily of an unsound mind’.
#OnThisDay 1921 Eleven British soldiers are shot in Cork City in retaliation for the six IRA volunteers executed that morning. Six died, the others lived. The dead were:
L/Cpl Beattie
Sgl G Bowden
Pte W Gill
L/Cpl D Hodnett
Pte A Whitear
Pte T Wise
The Irish at War 