Volunteer David Herlihy

Volunteer David Herlihy (aged about 42) of Glentaneatnagh or Inchamay (Nadd near Kanturk)

Date of incident: 10 March 1921

Sources: CC, 11 March 1921; FJ, 11, 12 March 1921; CE, 12, 14 March 1921; II, 12 March 1921; Military Inquests, WO 35/151A/60; George Power’s WS 451, 18-19 (BMH); WS 744 of Jeremiah Murphy, Michael Courtney, and Denis Mulchinock, 14-17 (BMH); Richard Willis and John Bolster’s WS 808, Appendix 8; Seán Moylan’s WS 838, 209-10 (BMH); John Winters’s WS 948, 5-6 (BMH); Leo O’Callaghan’s WS 978, 19-20, 22-23 (BMH); Jeremiah Daly’s WS 1015, 9 (BMH); John Moloney’s WS 1036, 13-17 (BMH); Joseph P. Morgan’s WS 1097, 15-18 (BMH); Tadhg Looney’s WS 1196, 13-14 (BMH); Michael O’Connell’s WS 1428, 14-15 (BMH); Moylan (2004), 110-12; Last Post (1976), 82; O’Donoghue (1954, 1986), 142-44; Carroll (2010), 107; Sheehan (2011), 76; IRA Nadd Memorial; IRA Boggera Mountains Memorial; http://www.independent.ie/regionals/corkman/news/rededication-of-nadd-monument-27091540.html (accessed 22 March 2016).   

Note: Herlihy (an unmarried farmer) and three other Volunteers were killed in a raid at Nadd by British forces acting with benefit of enemy intelligence. According to Florrie O’Donoghue’s account, the forces of the crown at Nadd almost succeeded in completely surrounding and cutting off the headquarters staff of the Cork No. 2 Brigade along with its Kanturk and Mallow columns. A house in which six members of the Mallow column were billeted was surrounded. Two members of the Mallow column—Joseph Morgan and John Moloney—managed to escape in a wounded condition, but three others—David Herlihy, Edward Waters, and Michael Kiely—were shot dead after they had surrendered. The officer who with the help of other soldiers hustled the three captives out into the yard at Herlihy’s house had shouted, ‘Get out, you _______, we’ll give you some of your own stuff now.’ They were ordered to run for their lives and were killed or wounded as they did so. The place at the Nadd where an IRA training camp had been in progress ‘for some months’ was the area around David Herlihy’s farmhouse, which had become known to Volunteer leaders as ‘the barracks’. ‘The columns were widely dispersed amongst the farmhouses in the [same] district. It was a base to which columns or sections of them returned after actions.’ See O’Donoghue (1954, 1986), 142-44. Herlihy was interred in Lyre Cemetery.