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    Guerilla Days In Ireland: Tom Barry's Autobiography
    Unavailable
    Guerilla Days In Ireland: Tom Barry's Autobiography
    Unavailable
    Guerilla Days In Ireland: Tom Barry's Autobiography
    Ebook356 pages5 hours

    Guerilla Days In Ireland: Tom Barry's Autobiography

    By Tom Barry

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Guerilla Days in Ireland' is a fascinating memoir of the Irish struggle for Independence from the commander of the Third West Cork Flying Column. Guerilla Days in Ireland is the extraordinary story of the fight between two unequal forces, which ended in the withdrawal of the British from twenty-six counties. Seven weeks before the truce to the Anglo-Irish War of July, 1921, the British presence in County Cork consisted of 8,800 front line infantry troops, 1,150 Black & Tan soldiers, 540 Auxiliaries, 2,080 machine gun corps, artillery and other units; a total of over 12,500 men.

    Against these British forces stood the Irish Republican Army whose Flying Columns never exceeded 310 riflemen in the whole of County Cork. These flying columns were small groups of dedicated volunteers, severely commanded and disciplined. Constantly on the move, their paramount objective was merely to exist; to strike when conditions were favorable, to avoid disaster at all costs. In Guerilla Days in Ireland Tom Barry describes the setting up of the West Cork Flying Column, its training, and its plan of campaign. Tom Barry was born in 1898. In June 1915 he joined the British Army, not to secure home rule for Ireland or to fight for Irish freedom of for freedom of small nations - just to see what war was like. In the summer of 1920 he became Training officer to the Third (West) Cork Brigade. Tom Barry fought on the republican side of the Civil War, was imprisoned and escaped. In the late 1930s he was Chief of Staff of the IRA He died on 02 July 1980.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMercier Press
    Release dateJan 1, 1981
    ISBN9781856357234
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Guerilla Days In Ireland

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    • 5/5
      Tom Barry fought with the British Army during the First World War, the Irish Republican Army during the war with England (1919-1921), and the anti-Treaty forces of the IRA during the Irish Civil War (1922-1923). Imprisoned by the Free State government in Dublin for his role in that civil war, he nevertheless returned to the ranks of the IRA and served as its Chief of Staff in the 1930s. He published these memoirs in 1949, at a time when Ireland was, at last, a Republic that until recently had been under the leadership of Eamon DeValera, Barry’s longtime leader in these conflicts.In an interesting historical moment of irony, the author heard the news of the 1916 Easter Rising the following May, as he served with the British Army expedition in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) as that army attempted but ultimately failed to relieve a British Army besieged in the city of Kut by Ottoman Turkish forces. By the summer of 1919, having returned to his native Cork from the war, Barry was inspired by that 1916 Rising to first learn more of his own country’s history and its struggles with England, and then to join the Irish Republican Army just as the volunteers were re-arming and resuming their drilling to defend the Irish Republic created in the wake of the 1918 general election.The IRA in this period found a number of its most important leaders and its most effective fighters from “rebel” Cork, and the fighting pursued in the fields, lanes, and city streets of County Cork made it the most important arena in the contest between Irish Republicans and the “forces of the crown.” Prominent names were also to be found among the British commanders that Tom Barry and others would face in Cork. Future Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery served there as Brigade Major of the 17th Brigade and future Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, who would surrender to the Japanese at Singapore, served as an intelligence officer and was decorated for that service. Both were considered to have done well in Cork by their Army superiors.His earliest duties with the IRA were as an Intelligence Officer focused upon learning as much as possible about the British troops then garrisoning County Cork. However, by early 1920 the British reportedly begin to suspect his real loyalties and Barry quickly joined the fighting arm of the IRA as training officer for the Cork Brigade. It is at this point that Tom Barry begins his real story which is the account of the Cork Brigade, and especially the West Cork Flying Column, and their war with the much larger British Force occupying Cork. This became a major if not the principal arena of the Anglo-Irish War.The narrative backbone of the book is Tom Barry’s rise to command the West Cork Flying Column, the Cork Brigade’s principal weapon for attacking British forces rather than just fending them off. This conflict was very much a modern guerilla war as the IRA frequently started out with weapons taken from their enemies and were frequently aided, abetted, and encouraged by the population. The IRA generally struck where their enemy was weakest and evaded combat when their enemy was clearly stronger.The author describes this unequal war in detail, including the evolution of their tactics, military organization, recruitment, intelligence war, relations with and treatment of civilians, and the targeted use of violence against key individuals. Such details and related discussions lift this rather simple military memoir to the level of textbook on guerilla war from the viewpoint of the guerilla, and in this instance a very successful guerilla leader. This is a must read for anyone interested in Ireland in the 20th Century and its struggle for independence, or for anyone wanting to better understand guerilla warfare and how such a war is waged on the part of the insurgent or guerilla.
    • 4/5
      Commandant General Tom Barry was the commander of the West Cork Flying Column of the I.R.A. during the days of the Irish guerilla war aimed at expelling the British from Ireland. Guerilla Days in Ireland is Barry's memoir of that campaign and his role in it, written and published 25 years after the events described. Barry describes in interesting detail the ways that the decidedly outgunned (even when they had enough guns to go around, they rarely had enough bullets) and outmanned IRA forces carried on an effective enough campaign to eventually force the British government to offer truce terms in 1921. Minute by minute accounts of individual ambushes and attempted ambushes (night-long vigils frequently went for naught when British patrols did not turn up where they were expected) of British forces. While particularly critical of the brutal tactics employed by the various British forces the I.R.A. was up against, Barry is frank about the counter-measures, often equally harsh, that his own soldiers resorted to. "They said I was ruthless, daring, savage, blood thirsty, even heartless," Barry writes. "The clergy called me and my comrades murderers; but the British were met with their own weapons. They had gone in the mire to destroy us and our nation and down after them we had to go."Obviously, this is a one-sided account. However, as an on-the-spot telling of tragic and bloody times, I found this memoir fascinating. I read it, in fact, on the recommendation of a bookseller in Cork City. My wife and I were on vacation there last year. While in one of the many fine bookstores in that town, I asked a salesman which histories of the years from the Easter Rebellion of 1916 through the Irish Civil War I should read. He recommended I start with Guerilla Days in Ireland, as I now finally have, and follow that up with Charles Townshend's two volumes, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion and The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence.