When the truce of July 1921 took effect between the Irish Republican Army and British Crown forces, a young IRA leader wrote to a fellow officer: "What do you think of the Peace Move? There seems to be something in it whatever it is. Perhaps Dev would accept a Republic with the exclusion of Ulster.. We are very much worried as we don't know what way the game is going. The number of real Republicans even in the IRA is small - that is of men who will see the Republic through to the bitter end. "

His name was O'Malley and for the past three years he had been very active in the war so that in consequence of his energy, organising ability and out-standing personal courage, he was appointed O/C of the 2nd Southern, the second largest division in the country. Early in 1921 police reports from Dublin Castle had named him as 'a notorious rebel'. Late in 1922 the Free State's military command would claim that: -The capture of O'Malley should mean the complete breakdown of their (irregular) Organisation in the North Eastern area." What happened between had proved that Ernie O'Malley was himself one of that small number - an Irish republican par excellence.

If it's again fashionable in some circles to denigrate 1916 and all the Easter Rising ever sought, then by contrast the Civil War that followed the 1916-21 fighting has been tacitly ignored. And yet the year 1922 was a watershed for Ireland. During that crucial year Ernie O'Malley had a prominent part in what (in a letter he sent to a Dublin newspaper while hunted on the run in August 1922) he called "a just and holy cause - namely the defence of the Republic to which (we) have sworn to be faithful"

More than sixty years later, and in a time of recurring warfare, the spirit of the man and the message of his three books merit a new attention. His reputation was made while in his early twenties. By 1939, aged 41, he was seen as a legendary figure from the past, and at his death in 1957 the Sunday Press praised him as the very type of the resistance, exceptional even amongst exceptional men.

Ernest Bernard O'Malley came from a respectable and middle-class Catholic family, which accepted the Union and did well by it, yet he showed an early dislike of authority. When King Edward Vil visited Dublin to the cheers of most of his Catholic subjects, the very young O'Malley refused to remove his hat and would spell 'King' with a small 'k'. The second son in a large family, he was a first-year medical student at University College Dublin when the Easter Rising first moved him towards Irish nationalism, which he was later to define as: "Not only the urge of the people to possess the soil and its products, but the free development of spiritual, cultural and imaginative qualities of the race. "

It was not a sudden conversion, a flash of light on the road to Damascus, an immediate enthusiasm. Involvement and understanding came slowly out of what was at first an unwilling interest; belief grew slowly and was unencouraged by those around him, but eventually, aged nineteen he left home and university to become a full-time member of the IRA. And in a sense he would be 'on the run' for the rest of his life.

He wrote a book about his Tan War days which became an instant classic on publication in 1936 - On Another Man's Wound, its latest re- print in 1979. It is a brilliant portrayal of a popular struggle against a foreign power. "It was a people's war, that is why we fought so well as from November 1920 The people understood, they made allowances, and there was need for that," O'Malley wrote in a smuggled-out note from Mountjoy Prison Hospital, in January 1923, while expecting execution during the Civil War.

Once he would have followed his elder brother into the British army of World War One "for excitement-; instead O'Malley's military talents went into the IRA where he appeared a very regular Irregular.

"I was driven myself had they only guessed it," he wrote, after agreeing that his strict training methods were resented by some of the country men he organised to wage guerrilla war- fare. A hot temper triggered by impatience, which he could blame on "my red hair and O'Malley name", plus the reverse coin of introspection seen as aloofness, were easily compensated for by special gifts and soldierly qualities.

It's been said that he would have made a great Jesuit. He did make a great IRA commander. And at once that most dangerous of opponents, both an idealist and a man of action, much more so than were most of his contemporaries.

Fighter and writer, scholar and farmer, involuntary Sinn Fein TD (elected for North Dublin while imprisoned in Mountjoy in 1923), lover of literature and promoter of the arts, he kept two ideals throughout his life - the Irish Republic (never realised except in the mind), and personal development through the study of the many shades of beauty in the world. His first volume of memoirs (to 1921) was published soon after his 1936 return to Ireland. The second book (1921-24) made fresh historical reading as the first detailed and personal account of the Civil War years by a high- ranking republican, so The Singing Flame, only published in 1978, is a rare new source for a poorly documented period.

Released from internment camp in July 1924, he felt that in Cosgrave's Ireland "my name was enough to damn me", and until 1935 he mostly travelled abroad, either aiding the Catalan separatists, or walking through Spain, France, Italy, to follow his love of art and architecture, music and mountains. In 1928 he had journeyed to America (with a false British passport) to help raise funds for a newspaper that he hoped would "arouse the nation's concern, that would give to the world outside Ireland the truth, aims and aspirations of the Irish people, in- stead of a misrepresentation that served the interests of the British." (That project later ironically became The Irish Press.) Afterwards he made his own way through the USA and Mexico, living hard in the depression years, but always bearing the historical image of Ireland, the desire for freedom and the inspiration of a heritage.

Titles of the poems he wrote at that time indicate his old and new concerns for the victims of oppression: From two islands; Deirdre; We have not sought for beauty; Navajo country; Mountjoy hanged 1921. It was during semi-exile in the artists' colony of Taos, New Mexico, that he first set down his memories of what may well be the most spectacular IRA career of the period. 'As thrilling as a cinema drama', reported a Dublin newspaper on his gun battle and capture by Free State soldiers in the exclusive Ailesbury Road suburb in November 1922.

Any outline of his later life may well seem anti-climax, but somehow more individualistic and interesting than the government, business or professional careers of Civil War companions. He was not a conformist. His back scarred by a hail of bullets, wounded and injured about a score of times, he was also at home in the quiet world of books, welcomed in the spheres of artistic endeavours, remembered as a stimulating friend by a wide circle. He loved the wild Mayo coast and the islands of his childhood. He had a re- served humour, a delicate irony. As a man of action and a man of letters, his abiding influence was hard years of war in a national resistance.

On August 10th and 11th, 1924, the remaining original members of the pre-Civil War Irish Republican Army Executive (that is those of them who had opposed and fought against the Treaty), together with the co-opted members of the Executive during the Civil War (about 26 in all) met secretly to review the past and decide policy for the future. Ernie O'Malley was voted on the subcommission committee to the Executive for Emergency Consultative Purposes', and it was he who proposed the motion, at this first post-Civil War general meeting of the Executive: That Volunteers be instructed not to recognise Free State and Six County Courts when charged with any authorised acts committed during the War or for any political acts committed since, nor can they employ legal defence except charged with an act liable to the death penalty which was passed unanimously, and that refusal to recognise those courts in one way or another lasted until the 1970s.

An important theme of both his books is the treatment of republican prisoners, who were even then denied prisoner- of-war status: a concern for all IRA men unaccepted as political prisoners or prisoners-of-war, and all his life he supported their lonely cause. He himself had taken part in the mass hunger- strike of October/November 1923, although medically exempted and suffering intense pain from old wounds and bed sores, for the length of its 41 days and being one of the four in Kilmainham who had wanted to continue.

While in American exile his diaries show support for the republican prisoners in the Free State, of whom he wrote: "who are there for the very same reason that the men we read of and revere were imprisoned." Back in Ireland, at a meeting in 1939 of the Irish Academy of Letters he voted in favour of Peadar O'Donnell's motion that a concert be organised to support dependents of IRA prisoners - not surprisingly the motion was rejected.

His was the drama and sacrifice of a really doctrinaire republican; a very brave man, at once ruthless and sensitive, whose contrasting traits of character are well revealed in his auto- biographical writings. He was very nearly killed in November 1922 when the Free State troops besieged his headquarters - ensuring ill health that affected the rest of his life and very likely resulted in his comparatively early death, aged 57. But while not shirking the possibility of death in action, he fought for military victory, and for a time believed that it was possible.

An old Ulster proverb says it is easy to sleep on another man's wound. There are many in Ireland today who rest cruelly or carelessly on the hard- ships and sufferings of brave men and women who fought or still fight for their country's freedom.

The only books O'Malley wrote were about the Irish wars and it is in those that he should be most remember- ed. On Another Man's Wound records the war against the British forces from 1916 until the calling of the truce in July 1921 and is told by one who volunteered for Oglaigh na hEireann in 1917 and by 1921 was O/C of the 2nd Southern Division (and later Assistant Chief of Staff in the Civil War). It is exciting, always enthralling, beautifully written, and far and away the best of the Tan War books. O'Malley was brave and energetic in his total dedication to the Republic as proclaimed in Easter Week; his personal ad-ventures, dramatic and varied, are an integral part of the wider significances of the national struggle.

And unlike some of his companions who later called themselves the 'Old IRA' or the 'Neutral IRA', he did not change his republican beliefs. Indeed he recognised that some Irish have always helped in the conquest.

During the 'National Emergency' years of World War Two, deValera himself was very keen to have so famous a fighter as Ernie O'Malley join the Free State army and pressure was put on him to follow many renowned re- publicans into its ranks. O'Malley asked: "Would I have to inform on my former comrades and work against them?- "But of course!- "Certainly not!" - and that was that. Only a month or so before his last illness he was writing in his diary: "I can never see a peeler without feeling uneasy. "

Hopefully O'Malley's books should fire the imagination of a new generation of republicans. In so many ways On Another Man's Wound relates to what is happening today between the British and Irish nations. It is tragic that his wartime experiences should remain so pertinent; nevertheless a source of guidance and encouragement; a book to convert the unbeliever or to inform the ignorant, just as Ernie O'Malley himself turned to republicanism at Easter 1916 when as a young medical student he witnessed Pearse reading the Proclamation outside the GPO and then followed the subsequent events of the Rising.

H is well-to-do family never discussed national politics at home; his elder brother was an officer in the British army and died in that service, but Ernie devoted the best years of his life to the fight for the Irish Republic, so that in 1923 the Sinn Fein news- sheets claimed that he had 'perhaps the greatest individual record during the (Tan) war' and was 'one of the bravest soldiers who ever fought for the independence of Ireland.'

He wanted to show the struggle of a mainly unarmed people against the might of empire and his book pays constant tribute to the heroism of a risen people. He was famed for his own courage, although like the truly brave he freely admitted to feelings of fear and inadequacy. Undeterred by mass condemnations from the British and their Irish allies, by news-papers and professional politicians and Catholic Hierarchy, between 1919 and 1921 the Irish Republican Army waged a war that also involved shooting policemen, executing British officers, burning buildings, punishing spies and informers, all those actions which Westminster and Leinster House vie with each other in condemning today. O'Malley was very active in attacks on barracks, ambushes, raids, and al- ways in Organisation and leadership crucial for the building of a people's army. He fought the Auxiliaries, an elite group of ex-officers attached to the police - a sort of 1920 SAS. He admitted that the Royal Irish Constabulary had "guts to stick it out", but insisted: "We can't admire Irishmen who fight for foreigners against us.- His book could still be a useful hand- book for contemporary guerrillas. Britain was not immune then, either. Cathal Brugha was ready to wipe out the British Cabinet if Conscription was enforced in Ireland. English ware- houses and docks went up in flames in a series of contemporary reprisals. A significant section of On Another Man's Wound concerns his eventual capture in Co. Kilkenny in December 1920 and the torture and imprisonment he underwent at the hands of the British army, including his interrogation ordeal in Dublin Castle, the Castlereagh of the Tan War. Threatened with hanging for an action he did not commit, in the midst of brutal questioning O'Malley replied: "With us hanging is no disgrace. " It is a revealing line. The British never understood the mentality, motivation and moral strength of their opponents. The prison chapters illustrate how he and his comrades defied the prison system and bewildered their guards who "had been told that we were murderers. That meant an image from a Sunday paper,- twitching hands and furtive walk, or sullen hardness. They heard us laugh and sing, rag and annoy each other, ioke and refuse to take prison regulations seriously. - But he pays tribute, too, to those who showed humanity to prisoners. This makes his verdicts on the others and on the British caste system all the more convincing.

After an historic escape from Kilmainham Jail in February 1921, he returned to the Martial Law areas and an intensified campaign, until he was first baffled, then broken-hearted by the truce called in July. One of the grimmest incidents had takenplace one month previously, when O'Malley as O/C of the division had taken it upon himself to execute three captured British officers because: "Any officers we capture in this area are to be shot until such time as you cease shooting your prisoners. " He wanted the Republican Army to have status abroad, rather than be hidden behind the image of a suffering colonial people. As he bluntly put itto his affronted superiors later in1921: "We (the IRA) had never consulted the feelings of the people. If so, we would never have fired a shot. If we gave them a good strong lead, they would follow." If his books were required reading in schools and universities, instead of the shoneen or revisionist (or simply non-existent) versions of modern Irish history, then the people of Ireland would be better prepared to achieve a true independence. As Ernie O'Malley wrote of the best of the IRA recruits, in words that typify his own unyielding spirit: "At times one came across a man who had been born free. There was no explaining it. One just accepted and thanked God in wonder. " His two books should be read together. It is in The Singing Flame that the British faces fade and are re-placed by Irish counterparts; the high noon of summer darkens to the Mulcahy/Cosgrave years. Of course The Singing Flame is partisan; one intended by its author as support for the republican tradition - with the 'cult' of1916 transformed into the 'cult' of1922, where the Four Courts of Dublin stands in place of the GPO. It is also an exciting story, full of incidentsand answering some questions that had been posed for half a century; relating his Civil War days as Assistant Chief of Staff in Dublin where he commanded future Fianna Fail ministers like Sean Lemass and Tom Derrig, while leading a hunted existence in a city resembling Belfast of the 1970s. The second of the books also has clear lessons for today, containing many parallels and the same abuse and falsified arguments used against the republicans then as now. In the early days of the Civil War O'Malley and his company heard a priest at Mass denounce them as looters and murderers. -The Hand of God was against us." His officers wanted to walk out, but he motioned them to remain. "If we were going to be insulted when we could not hit back, we might as well be dignified. It was good to get out in the fresh air again."

He could have accepted power and privilege under the Free State but he remained faithful to the Republic and rejected both the Treaty and deValera's alternative Document No. 2.He told a Free State general, Ginger O'Connell, at the time of the Treaty debates: -You'll have to fight in our area if you are false to your oath. That's where you'll meet with immediate and terrible war." The irony was pointed: Lloyd George had threatened an 'immediate and terrible war if the Treaty was not accepted. True to his word, when the Treaty was ratified, O'Malley's Second Southern Division was the first to renounce its allegiance to both IRA GHQ and Dail Eireann.

In the war against the Staters, O'Malley was (Acting) Assistant Chief of Staff to Liam Lynch. He was also O/C of the Ulster and Leinster Commands. But Lynch was away in the South/Cork area and O'Malley remained based in the enemy's stronghold of Dublin. He tells of waging a guerrilla warfare that this time for him was urban rather than rural. When asked why they were still fighting, he replied: "I think they think they're fighting for a younger generation. " (He was then 24.)

He himself knew that he was fighting imperialists, both British and Irish varieties, and believed that the Free State Cabinet and a few bishops should not be immune from the war. At the same time he recognised the great support given by the Cumann na mban and other republican women, and one feature of the book is the courage, strength and involvement of such women. As he writes: "During the Tan War the girls had always helped but they had never sufficient status. Now they were our comrades, loyal, willing and incorruptible comrades. Indefatigable, they put the men to shame by their individual zeal and initiative. -

The Singing Flame reveals much of Free State treachery; also inside stories of the critical months before the attack on the Four Courts began, and then a vivid picture of the war. But perhaps its most important pages are the prison chapters, detailing the scenes of prison life in Portobello barracks, in Mountjoy, in Kilmainham and the Curragh internment camps; the deaths of comrades and the hunger- strike event.

Despite his wounds, the threats of execution, and a wasting sickness worsened by forty-one days on hunger-strike, O'Malley was himself a leading challenge to "the petty automatons that help to keep one captive." Some of his most inspiring passages in The Singing Flame concern that other war that prisoners fought in jail.

Then as now they fought against criminalisation and for prisoner-of-war status. As O'Malley wrote: "Free men cannot be kept in jail, for their spirits are free.. In our code it is the duty of prisoners to prove that they cannot be influenced by their surroundings. Make the enemy feel a jailer but be free himself.- An appendix of prison letters documents that spirit of defiance.

Not surprisingly he was the last republican leader to be released from the Curragh in July 1924, although he had been confined to bed with his many wounds for most of his imprisonment. (Despite operations, he carried five bullets to the grave.)

The Singing Flame was published, in 1978, twenty-one years after his death, the chief political book reviewer of The Irish Times saw Ernie O'Malley as 'the unrepentant Fenian and perhaps even as the very first Provisional' (His younger brother wrote about the same time, but independently, that 'Ernie was a Provisional at heart.' As he was also one of the bravest, most idealistic, most dedicated and determined of socialist republican fighters, ruthless against imperialism, but chivalrous in war, that appears to be praise indeed.

On 30th June 1922 Ernie O'Malley, as O/C of the garrison, most unwillingly surrendered the destroyed Four Courts in Dublin. When Free State officers accused him of deliberately causing the fire and the great explosion that had wrecked the building, he denied that they had set off a mine. "It was the spirit of freedom lighting a torch. I'm glad she played her part. "

And two years before he died he wrote: -The spirit of freedom is immeasurable and its strength can suddenly increase in unexpected ways. "

The time will come when through that Spirit of Freedom the Irish Republic will not just be realised in the mind, and then the epitaphs of those like O'Malley and Bobby Sands and Francis Hughes can indeed, together with that of Emmet, be truly written, as part of a living tradition