Ernie O'Malley

Common card · No. 446059

Ernest Bernard Malley (Irish: Earnán Ó Máille; 26 May 1897 – 25 March 1957) was an Irish republican and writer. After a sheltered upbringing, as a young medical student in Dublin 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 organiser and 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 1922–1923. After being severely wounded in a gun battle with Free State troops in November 1922, O'Malley was taken prisoner. He endured forty-one days on hunger strike in late 1923 and was the very last republican to be released from internment by the Free State...

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