National Army Soldier David O’Sullivan

National Army Soldier David O’Sullivan of 75 Evergreen Street, Cork (near Aherla in Crookstown district)

Date of incident: 19 Sept. 1922

Sources: CE, 20, 21, 22 Sept. 1922; FJ, 22 Sept. 1922; II, 22 Sept. 1922; SS, 23 Sept. 1922; MSPC/2D369 (Military Archives); O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 210; Keane (2017), 306-7,

Note: National Army troops (about forty men from C Company of the Cork Reserves) had a series of violent engagements with Irregulars in the Crookstown district on 19 September 1922 while they were clearing mines and roadblocks in that area. The National Army Soldiers reportedly encountered ‘as many as four ambushes’; they also ‘had a running fight with the Irregulars across eight miles of country and succeeded in lifting road mines strewn pretty extensively through the district’. On the return journey from Crookstown to Cork city, in ‘the fourth and the most serious ambush of the day’ near Aherla, David O’Sullivan ‘was struck in the base of the skull by a dum-dum bullet, and his death was practically instantaneous’. See CE, 21 Sept. 1922. He was buried ‘with full military honours’ in St Joseph’s Cemetery in Cork city two days after the ambush. See CE, 22 Sept. 1922.

The National troops operating near Crookstown ‘claim to have killed seven irregulars as well as to have captured a large quantity of war material’. See CE, 20 Sept. 1922. This claim as to anti-Treaty IRA fatalities cannot be confirmed. According to a different report, National troops put the IRA losses in the Crookstown district at seven Irregulars ‘seriously wounded, if not killed’. Their bodies had reportedly been ‘left lying in a field after a heavy exchange of fire; they arrested five prisoners, one of whom was wounded, and they seized about 3 cwt. of fuse wire for road mines, which were contained in two large chests.’ See FJ, 22 Sept. 1922. 

David O’Sullivan’s pension file indicates that beginning at age 15, he had worked as a messenger boy for Messrs Atkins and Sons of the South Mall in Cork and earned 13s. per week. In 1919 he had enlisted in the British army and served until August 1922. He then joined the First Cork Brigade of the National Army in September, just ten days before he was killed. His sister Kitty O’Sullivan was awarded a gratuity of £60 in consideration of her brother’s death. This sum would ordinarily have been paid in installments. She proposed a lump-sum payment of £60 to enable her to better support her younger sisters Mary Ellen and Elizabeth, who in August 1924 were said to be aged 15 and 16 respectively. The Army Pensions Board agreed only to award the gratuity of £60 in twelve monthly installments of £5 for the benefit of these two younger sisters. See MSPC/2D369 (Military Archives).