Ernie O'Malley

Ernest Bernard Malley (Earnán Ó Máille; 26 May 1897 – 25 March 1957) was an Irish republican and writer. After a sheltered upbringing, he witnessed and participated in the Easter Rising of 1916, an event that changed his outlook fundamentally. O'Malley soon joined the Irish Volunteers before leaving home in spring 1918 to become an IRA training officer during the Irish War of Independence against British rule in Ireland. In the later period of that conflict, he was appointed a divisional commander with the rank of general. Subsequently, O'Malley strongly opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and became assistant chief of staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War of 1922–23. He wrote two memoirs, On Another Man's Wound and The Singing Flame, and two histories, Raids and Rallies and Rising-Out: Seán Connolly of Longford, covering his early life, the war of independence and the civil war period. These published works, in addition to his role as a senior leader on the losing side in the civil war, mark him as a primary source in the study of early twentieth-century Irish history and society. O'Malley also interviewed 450 people who participated in the war of independence and the civil war. Much of the evidence he gathered from them represents the activities and opinions of the ordinary soldier. By the time of his death in 1957, he had become a "deeply respected military hero". Although he was elected, against his wishes, to Dáil Éireann in 1923 while in prison, O'Malley eschewed politics. As an Irish republican, he saw himself primarily as a soldier who had "fought and killed the enemies of our nation". O'Malley was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, on 26 May 1897. His was a middle class Catholic family in which he was the second of eleven children born to local man Luke Malley and his wife Marion (née Kearney) from Castlereagh, County Roscommon. The family's storytelling governess also lived with them in Ellison Street. The house was opposite a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks.