#OnThisDay 1921 Major Geoffry Lee Compton Smith DSO was executed by the IRA after 14 days of being their prisoner. He was to be ransomed for an IRA prisoner in British custody. But the IRA vol was executed, sealing Smith’s fate. He wrote in his last letter: “I should like my death to lessen rather than increase the bitterness which exists between England & Ireland”.
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Note: His last letters were recovered in a raid on one of Michael Collins’s hideouts in Dublin City. 
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The Easter Rising ends in Dublin 1916
#OnThisDay 1916 Mallin & Markiewicz surrender the Royal College of Surgeons, then MacDonagh in Jacobs’ Factory, then Eamonn Ceannt in South Dublin Union. By 10pm the Rising is over in Dublin. 485 people were killed, 262 civilians, 145 Crown forces & 78 rebels.
Note the last prisoner on the right covering his face.
Irish Units fight at the Battle of Chancellorsville 1863
#OnThisDay 1863 The Battle of Chancellorsville began in the American Civil War. This battle (and war) would see Irish men in units like the 6th Louisiana, ‘The Tigers’ fight against other Irish men like Meagher’s Irish Brigade. The Confederates won this battle.
The 16th Irish Division gassed at Hulluch 1916
#OnThisDay 1916 The 16th Irish Division suffered terrible losses at Hulluch on the Western Front. They were gassed by the Germans & when their gas masks failed, they died ‘in every conceivable posture of human agony’. Roughly 1000 Irishmen died that week.
Female Combatants in the Easter Rising & Revolutionary Ireland
Women played a number of vital combat roles in the Easter Rising & Revolutionary period. From Dr. Kathleen Lynn, Chief Medical Officer of the ICA to sniper Margaret Skinnider. Listen to @MaryMcAuliffe4 discuss this in great detail here:
The Irish at War 