As I near the completion of this book I realise that I have inherited at least one trait of my fathers - an active dislike of having to write anything whether it be a speech, a weekly report or a letter, not to mention a book. Ernie O'Malley when he was Adjutant General I.R.A. would have testified to my father's dislike of having to write reports as indeed would, in later days, the mandarins in the Vocational Education System. I've been threatening or promising to write this book for over thirty years. I regret now that I didn't do so before my father died, not only because it would have saved me months of research and reading but I would have liked to set the record straight concerning some events as described in the original version of Limericks Fighting Story - something he was urged to do himself by his former comrades and by his own family. For this reason rather than narrate the stories of the Ballylanders and Kilmallock Barrack attacks myself I have allowed credible participants in these actions to tell the stories. In the case of the escape from Mountjoy I had no option other than to plagiarise someone else's story so again I allowed one who took part in the escape to describe it. In the case of Ballylanders a man named O'Riordan who was arrested and wrongfully charged with having been in overall command of the attack seems to have, for the purposes of contributing to Limerick's Fighting Story, adopted the mantle of "Sean Forde" and claimed in an anonymously written chapter that he actually was in charge. Granted, this man was a battalion O.C. and was in Ballylanders that night but any serious student of military matters would know that an action involving a brigade, and in this case G.H.Q. as well according to Brigade Adjutant). M. McCarthy, would have had a brigade or G.H.Q officer in charge. In another anonymously written story about Kilmallock the man in question, although by his own admission in prison, has his name mentioned nine times on the first page and almost as many references on the second page. Then in Sworn to be Free Piaras Beaslai writing of the escape from Mountjoy neglects to mention Malone though he was one of the "Politicals' chosen by Collins for the escape. Understandably I felt that he had been written out of the story of the time perhaps because of his political stance in the 20s, 30s and later. I have seen the statements made to the Bureau of Military history by many of the participants in the fight in East Limerick and all bear out my contention that Walter Mitty was alive and well when parts of the original Limericks Fighting Story was written. Happily a revised version, edited by J. M. McCarthy, Brigade Adjutant, which set the record straight, was published later. I only became aware of this when doing research into my father's career and this helped to defuse the frustration and anger I felt whenever I read the original. Tom Malone, Luimneach, Lughnasa 2000