Ernie O'Malley

Ernie O'Malley
O'Malley pictured under an alias in Kilmainham Gaol, January 1921
Personal details
Born	Ernest Bernard Malley (1897-05-26)26 May 1897 Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland
Died	25 March 1957(1957-03-25) (aged 59) Howth, County Dublin, Ireland
Military service
Allegiance	Irish Republican Army Anti-Treaty IRA
Years of service	1916–1923
Rank	Commandant-general
Battles/wars	Irish War of Independence Irish Civil War

Ernest Bernard Malley (Irish: Earnán Ó Máille; 26 May 1897 – 25 March 1957)^[a] was an Irish republican and writer. After a sheltered upbringing, as a young medical student 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 authorities in July 1924. He then spent two years in Europe and North Africa to improve his health before returning to Ireland. Following an abortive attempt to resume his medical studies, O’Malley went to the United States to raise funds for a new nationalist newspaper and spent seven years wandering around the country and Mexico before beginning his writing and coming back to Ireland. In 1935 he married an American sculptor Helen Hooker. He became well known in the arts and had a deep interest in folklore.

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".^[1]

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".^[2][3]

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