The Yank: The True Story of a Former US Marine in the Irish Republican Army

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Crawley was born in Long Island, New York, in 1957, the son of a Co. Roscommon father and a Co. Kerry mother. Two years later the family moved to Chicago and, in 1972, John moved to the town of Castlerea, Co Roscommon, to live with an aunt. He notes in his book, with what I suspect is a degree of pride, that his great-uncle, Tom Crawley, shot dead RIC Sergeant James King, in Castlerea on 11 July 1921, and that the King incident saw the last shots being fired in the Irish war of independence.

A young Irish-American man joins an elite US Marine unit to get the most intensive military training possible—then joins the Irish Republican Army, during the days of some of the bloodiest fighting ever in the Irish-British conflict.

By Dan Kaufman

The motivation was on the ground among volunteers, you look at the East Tyrone Brigade, you look at South Armagh, that motivation was there

Crawley challenges the view the IRA fought the British to “a stalemate” or that peace was a compromise.The Troubles” lasted about 30 years, from the late 1960s until 1998, and saw more than 3,500 people killed. Then came the Good Friday Agreement that restored self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of “power sharing” with the U.K. The pact stipulated that Northern Ireland would remain in the U.K. until a majority of people in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. While in Chicago, I stayed with my Aunt Alice and Uncle Mike. Mike Cahill was my mother’s uncle. He had emigrated to America from County Kerry at sixteen years of age and worked for the gas company his entire life. Aunt Alice, of German-Dutch origin, was from a farm near Pontiac, Illinois. She was a lovely woman and our family adored her. The couple had no children and welcomed me in while I got sorted out for enlistment. So he entered the man’s apartment, placed a blow torch, sleeping pills and a bottle of whiskey on a coffee table and told the man to choose his method of murder.

They know who to take out and they know who to promote and they do that, that's the way they operate." He considers the idea of partition institutionalised on the island and believes “Westminster parliamentary supremacy is very much intact”, with a referendum for Irish unification resting in the hands of Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland — “an English politician who doesn’t have one single vote in this country”. He notes that talk has turned now to “an agreed Ireland”, “a new Ireland” or “a shared island”, “but where is the Irish republic in all this?” he asks.

Childhood

Straightforward and unsentimental...Crawley provides enough context to understand the realities on the ground in the Ireland of the 1980s." — Shelf Awareness On arrival in Ireland, Crawley brought with him, ‘Semper Fidelis’ (Always Faithful), the credo of the Marine Corps, which he adopted as a life motto. He had always been proud of, and faithful to the American Republic and, after becoming a member of the IRA, he remained equally faithful to the Irish Republic that had been declared on Easter Monday, 1916. I knew that if my Boston mission dragged on without something in it for him, I would eventually wear out my welcome. Mr Crawley, who is well known in republican circles, said that although he is not opposed to peace he believes that the Good Friday Agreement will not the deliver the type of Irish republic he and others joined the IRA to achieve.