I don't think success or failure would have been in his mind. In that kind of situation, especially when you're nineteen, I suspect you act on instinct, and in Tipperary the overwhelming feeling was against the Treaty.

As he told it once, he was in Clonmel, and the Free Staters were coming in one end of the town , and he had a gun and was told to hand it in, and he met a friend who'd been told the same - and they looked at each other, and went out of the town the back way up into the hills to find the men who were still fighting under Liam Lynch.

I wrote this song about it, after he died:

Oh they slipped away when it was barely day
into the hills that lay above the town.
And they wandered lonely on the mluntaisn stony,
while the soldiers hunted all around.
Like some fox to fly, all on the mountain high,
and to do what little could be done,
in a helpless struggle in those days of trouble,
in those desperate days upon the run.
And for some it ended in a lonely bullet,
and for some it ended in a cell,
and for some it ended in a life resplendant,
as a statesman doing very well.
But for some it ended in a hope suspended,
and a life beneath a foreign sun,
and in dreams persistant of a time far distant,
and of far off days upon the run.

Well they walked all day up on that rocky mountain,
till the sun went down behind the hill,
and they came that evening to a house lying wauting -
there was noone there who'd wish them ill -
but they slept that night there, high up in the heather,
and they shivered in the morning sun,
for a passing breath, it might mean life or death
to those boys who went upon the run.
And for some it ended in a lonely bullet,
and for some it ended in a cell,
and for some it ended in a life resplendant,
as a statesman doing very well.
But for some it ended in a hope suspended,
and a life beneath a foreign sun,
and in dreams persistant of a time far distant,
and of far off days upon the run.


And at dawn they came upon a rushing river,
with a hidden rope from side to side,
and they dragged their bodies through the freezing water,
and they walked all day till they were dry.
And their boots wore through, and they were lost and weary,
and the sun, the sun was beating down,
and their heads grew giddy, and the guns so heavy,
in those endless days upon the run.
And for some it ended in a lonely bullet,
and for some it ended in a cell,
and for some it ended in a life resplendant,
as a statesman doing very well.
But for some it ended in a hope suspended,
and a life beneath a foreign sun,
and in a fading story, of shame and glory,
and of far off days upon the run.

For him the "foreign sun" was Argentina; and when he came back a few years later he fough for six years in the British Army against the Nazis. A friend told me once that when he was once asked in some court case (motoring) if it wasn'y a bit strange for an old IRA man to have fought later in the British Army, he said "I always believed in defending the rights of small nations - even my own."