#OnThisDay 1920 Third Cork Brigade, led by Sean Hales, attacked Allihies RIC barracks blowing a hole in the wall & killed Constable Michael Neenan & wounding another. The RIC did not surrender but the next day, pulled out of this & several barracks in the area.
#OnThisDay: 1922 A firefight broke out between IRA & Ulster Specials in what is known as ‘The Clones Affray’. IRA leader Matt Fitzpatrick was shot dead, followed by four USC & many wounded, including civilians. A war nearly erupted between the North & South.
#OnThisDay 1820 Col Theodore O’Hara was born in Kentucky. A Confederate, he is best remembered for his poem, Bivouac of the Dead;
‘On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead’
#OnThisDay 1921 Simon Donnolly, V/C 3rd Battalion, Dublin Brigade & Easter Rising veteran was arrested & interrogated by Auxiliaries Captain Hardy. Donnolly was sent to Kilmainham Gaol where he would escape four days later with Ernie O’Malley and Frank Teeling.
#OnThisDay 1907 Sir William Howard Russell, the first modern war reporter passed away. Russell, from Tallaght reported on conflicts from the Crimean War, the American Civil War to the Franco-Prussian War. Russell invented the term ‘Thin Red Line’ at Balaclava.
The Irish at War 