Seven weeks before the Truce in July 1921 the British presence in County Cork was

• 8,800 front line infantry troops,
• 1,150 Black and Tans,
• 540 Auxiliaries,
• 2,080 machine gun corps,
• artillery and other units comprising a total of over 12,500 men.

Against these British forces stood the Irish Republican Army whose Flying Columns never exceeded 310 riflemen in the whole of the County of Cork, men moreover with "no experience of war . . . untrained in the use of arms . . . with no tactical training . . . practically unarmed . . .''

Guerilla Days in Ireland is the extraordinary story of the fight between those two unequal forces, which ended in the withdrawal of the British from 26 counties. In particular it is the story of the West Cork Flying Column under Tom Barry, it's commander of genius.

Tom Barry was born in 1898. In June 1915 he joined the British army, not to secure home rule for Ireland or to fight for the freedom of small nations -just to see what war was like. 'I had no national consciousness,' he recalls. The Easter Rising of 1916 and the execution of its leaders awakened it, and in the summer of 1920 he became Training Officer to the Third (West) Cork Brigade. Within weeks he commanded its Flying Column which Kilmichael and Crossbarry were to make legendary.

These 'flying columns' were small groups of dedicated volunteers, severely commanded, trained and disciplined. Constantly on the move, their paramount objective was merely to exist; to strike when conditions were favourable, to avoid disaster at all costs. In Guerilla Days in Ireland, which has been one of the classics of the War of Independence since its first publication in 1949, Tom Barry describes the setting up of the West Cork Flying Column, its training and its plan of campaign.

Tom Barry fought on the Republican side in the Civil War, was imprisoned and escaped. In the late 1930s he was Chief of Staff of the I.R.A. Apart from service in the Emergency he retired from public life thereafter. He died on July 2nd, 1980.

Cover: Tom Barry aged twenty-two.