General Tom Barry
(1897-1980)

Died aged c. 83

Thomas Bernardine Barry (1 July 1897 – 2 July 1980), better known as Tom Barry, was a prominent guerrilla leader in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. He is best remembered for orchestrating the Kilmichael ambush, in which him and his column wiped out a 18 man patrol of Auxiliaries, killing sixteen men. Born in County Kerry, Barry was the son of a former Royal Irish Constabulary constable. In 1915, at the age of seventeen, he joined the British Army and would go on to see action as a gunner in the Middle East during the First World War. Despite expressing some British patriotism during his early years, Barry's views slowly began to change towards Irish republicanism. In his memoir, Barry stated that this started shortly after he heard about the Easter Rising in 1916, though records show that after the war he made two unsuccessful attempts at joining the British Civil Service. In July 1920, he joined the IRA's 3rd Cork Brigade. Using his experience from his time in the British Army, he was able to train up he men in the flying column so it could become an effective fighting unit. Barry then became the column's overall commander and would lead the Brigade in a number of successful attacks against British forces, including the ambushes at Kilmichael and Crossbarry. Barry was amongst the republicans that opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Following the outbreak of the civil war, Barry was briefly imprisoned by the new Irish Free State but managed to escape and go on to command Anti-Treaty forces in the southern regions of Ireland. When it became clear that victory could not be achieved, Barry proposed that the Anti-Treaty IRA should lay down their arms, which led to frequent clashes with Liam Lynch. Barry still continued to apart of the IRA after the civil war and served briefly as its commander-in-chief in 1937, during which he devised a proposed plan for an IRA offensive into Northern Ireland and opened contacts with Nazi Germany. After leaving the IRA, Barry would write Guerrilla Days in Ireland, a memoir about his service in World War I and in Ireland.

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