Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #646560 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-17
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Interesting and enjoyable
Primary historical sources, as O'Malley's accounts are here, cannot be easily labelled as good or bad. They are the product of their writer and of their time. Errors on the part of the writer are as much of interest to historians as the verifiable 'facts'.
From a literary point of view, however, this volume is very readable and of interest to the historian of the period and the general reader. In particular O'Malley's frustration with his fellow fighters and the fighting system he was working for are interesting points within the works. As well as this O'Malley's work provides a study of the mentality of the people fighting at this period.
Essentially it is a book of 9 short stories (if the account can be called as such) detailing different military actions within the 1920-21 period. With O'Malley's clear and unchallenging style it can be read equally well as 9 distinct historical accounts or as a single work.

IRA Ambushes
This is a rather slight book with three chapters covering events in which O'Malley himself was a participant and the others accounts that he gathered at a later date. His own two volumes of autobiography are a far more interesting read. Nonetheless this book gives a flavour of the War of Independence in rural Ireland in 1919/21. Small scale actions rarely involving more than twenty or thirty participants on either side. The IRA had to pick its targets carefully and make surprise and local knowledge overcome its limited weaponry and comparatively untrained units. Success or disaster depended on assessing how much time would elapse before enemy reinforcements arrived on the scene. Little quarter was asked or given on either side and prisoners were often executed in cold blood.