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My Fight For Irish Freedom: Dan Breen's Autobiography
by
Dan Breen
The story of the man who fired the first shot in the War of Independence, leader of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade. In 1919 a group of young men barely out of their teens, poorly armed, with no money and little training, renewed the fight, begun in 1916, to drive the British out of Ireland. Dan Breen was to become the best known of them. At first they were condemed on all sides
...more
Kindle Edition
,
192 pages
Published
July 26th 2012
by Mercier Press
(first published June 1924)
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Community Reviews
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Along with Tom Barry's GUERILLA DAYS, one of the best accounts of the Irish Revolution by a major participant. The post-script written by Breen decades later is heart-breaking, as he stands at the grave of Sean Treacy (who died in a hail of gunfire on a Dublin street during the conflict) and remembers himself and his friend who were still such young men but, "we thought we had lived full lives."
Dan Breen was one of the band who fired the "shot heard round the world" at Soloheadbeg: the opening salvo of Ireland's War of Independence. https://collinsassassination.wordpres ...
His book is action-packed & extraordinarily well-written.
If you've read a lot of books on the period or none, this is a rare, unique, up-close-in-your-face view of the war on the ground, and life on the run, from the flying column men who gave & got the worst of it. Breen was front & centre in some of the ...more
Its a memoir, so its hard to hold it to literary standards. But I found his writing style to be atrocious.
I'm not going to comment on the content other than mention that its an important book for any historian of the war of Independence. The amount of memoirs which emerged after that war (And which, curiously stopped just at the start of the Civil War) means we have a very rich supply of primary sources to study it. Very interesting.
I'm not going to comment on the content other than mention that its an important book for any historian of the war of Independence. The amount of memoirs which emerged after that war (And which, curiously stopped just at the start of the Civil War) means we have a very rich supply of primary sources to study it. Very interesting.
"We refused to leave Ireland. We told them that we were not afraid to die, but would prefer to live for Ireland... Irelands fight would have to be made by Irishmen on the hills and on the highways in Ireland not with printers ink in America or in another country... arms were not lacking; but of what use, we asked ourselves, are men who are toysoldiers? Of what use are guns that have been oiled and cleaned but never fired?"
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A great first hand account of an amazing story by an intriguing character that played a huge role in developing modern Ireland.
Easy read painting picture of life on the run for IRA man in early 20 th century
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