Our Struggle for Independence

Our Struggle for Independence: Eye-Witness Accounts from the Pages of An Cosantóir is a collection of first-hand accounts of the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and the 1916 Rising, first published in the Irish Defence Forces journal An Cosantóir between 1940 and 1942. The contributors were IRA officers who led the actions they describe: Tom Barry, writing as ’Eyewitness’, on the Kilmichael and Crossbarry ambushes in West Cork; Joseph V. Lawless on the Battle of Ashbourne, County Meath, in 1916; Seán Gaynor on the Modreeny ambush in Tipperary; Commandant M. O’Kelly on the burning of the Dublin Custom House in 1921; and others on Ballyvourney, Rathcoole, Rineen, Dromkeen, Kilmallock, Ruan, Mallow, Midleton, Bantry, Ennis and Mount Street Bridge. Appendices reprint Colonel M.J. Costello’s 1940-42 essays on guerrilla warfare, German blitzkrieg tactics and the principles of war, written for Ireland’s Local Defence Force during the Emergency, and Hugh MacNeill’s history of Na Fianna Éireann. The accounts predate the Bureau of Military History witness statements (released in 2003) and are among the earliest published tactical analyses of the war by its participants. Subjects: Irish history, Irish War of Independence, IRA flying columns, guerrilla warfare, Easter Rising 1916, Irish Defence Forces history, West Cork, Clare, Tipperary, Limerick, Dublin.FAQsWho wrote the Kilmichael and Crossbarry accounts in Our Struggle for Independence? Tom Barry, commander of the West Cork Brigade flying column, under the pseudonym ’Eyewitness’. They appeared in An Cosantóir in 1940-42, before his memoir Guerilla Days in Ireland (1949).How is this book different from Guerilla Days in Ireland or the Bureau of Military History statements? The accounts were written as military training articles during the Emergency, twenty years after the events and sixty years before the Bureau of Military History statements were made public in 2003. Each action is set out as a tactical problem - intelligence, plan, execution, lessons - rather than as memoir.What is An Cosantóir? ’The Defender’: the weekly training paper founded in 1940 by Colonel M.J. Costello, O/C Southern Command, printed in Cork for the Local Defence Force. After 1945, it became, and remains, the journal of the Irish Defence Forces.