Book review: Memoirs of Ireland's wars told from an extraordinary ordinary soldier

Irish Examiner

01-06-2025

It is difficult to understand the lives and motivations of those who were on active duty during the War of Independence and the Civil War.
The vast majority of lower-ranked officers and common soldiers chose to remain silent in later life. This was most likely because they wished to forget the horrors and trauma of that 1918 to 1924 era.
The first-hand accounts that have been written, generally come from the military leaders or those who subsequently entered public life. As a result, our history is deprived of a fuller picture of those troubled years.
In 2021, a memoir of that era was re-discovered after many years in private hands. This memoir was written by Dan Mulvihill and is now the basis for Owen O'Shea's new book One Man's Ireland.
O'Shea is no stranger to the War of Independence and Civil War in Kerry. One Man's Ireland is his third book on this theme.
One Man's Ireland outlines the experiences of Dan Mulvihill's life in the Flying Columns of the IRA and anti-Treaty forces of Kerry. Mulvihill and his sister Katie did incredible work for the cause of Irish freedom in mid-Kerry.
To have been part of flying column may be glorified now, but it was a life that is beyond the comprehension of most people today.
Each time Mulvihill left his home at Brackhill, near Castlemaine, Co Kerry, he did not know if he would ever return. And, if he did return, he did not know what he might find.
Life in a flying column meant sleeping rough while coping with dirt, lice, dampness, and hunger. Dan Mulvihill did all this in the belief that it would lead to an Independent Ireland.
'One Man's Ireland: Memoirs of Dan Mulvihill, Maverick Republican', by Owen O'Shea, outlines the experiences of Dan Mulvihill's life in the Flying Columns of the IRA and anti-Treaty forces of Kerry.
Mulvihill held an unusual post between the truce, July 1921, and the Treaty. His role was to liaise with the British Army to oversee and regulate the truce terms. In ways it was a thankless task, but both Mulvihill and his counterparts managed to keep events from getting out of control.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Civil War conflict in Kerry. Mulvihill took the anti-treaty side. He spent some of the Civil war in prison, and if he had not been moved from Killarney to Dublin, it is likely that he would have been killed by the Free State forces as a reprisal for one of the tit-for-tat killings that went on in Kerry.
He was very close to Liam Lynch and was pragmatic enough to know the prospect of victory had vanished once Liam Lynch was killed.
Dan Mulvihill never became overtly politically active. He did however, sign nomination papers for candidates in elections. During the Second World War, he was employed by the government to report on the activities of those suspected of having British or German leanings in Kerry.
He also became a campaigner for those who tried to claim IRA pensions. Between 1924 and 1958 more than 18,000 people applied for these pensions. Only 8,000 were successful. Dan Mulvihill campaigned for those who had risked their lives by taking in wounded soldiers, running messages, and carrying weapons.
The rise of violence in the Northern Ireland in the 1970s only served to evoke feelings of frustration in Dan Mulvihill. Owen O'Shea reckons that it was this frustration that finally led Mulvihill to write his own story. However, he failed to have it published. The title, One Man's Ireland was Dan Mulvihill's idea.
One Man's Ireland is a valuable addition to the books on the 1918 to the 1924 period. It is a concise insight into the mind of the 'ordinary soldier'.
Not that Dan Mulvihill was ordinary. He proved himself to be a man of extraordinary fortitude. He lived his life for the country he wanted Ireland to be, and his vision of that Ireland remained unchanged until the day he died.
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