Volunteer Michael Kiely

Volunteer Michael Kiely (aged about 18) of Glannaharee East or Bweeng near Glantane (Nadd near Kanturk)

Date of incident: 10 March 1921

Sources: Death Certificate, 10 March 1921; CC, 11 March 1921; FJ, 11, 12 March 1921; CE, 12, 14 March 1921; Military Inquests, WO 35/151A/60 (TNA); 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 (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); Last Post (1976), 82; O’Donoghue (1954, 1986), 142-44; Moylan (2004), 110-12; Carroll (2010), 107; Sheehan (2011), 76; IRA Nadd Memorial; IRA Boggera Mountains Memorial; Kilshannig Memorial, Glenview, Glantane Main Street; http://www.independent.ie/regionals/corkman/news/bweeing-remembers-war-of-independence-hero-kiely-27052266.html (accessed 17 Sept. 2014); http://www.independent.ie/regionals/corkman/news/rededication-of-nadd-monument-27091540.html (accessed 22 March 1921).    

Note: Kiely (a labourer) and three other Volunteers were killed in a raid at Nadd by British forces at acting with benefit of enemy intelligence. A Volunteer of the Mallow Battalion column wounded at Nadd—Jack (‘Congo’) Moloney—told Volunteer John Winters how he had escaped death while three of his comrades (Herlihy, Waters, and Kiely) had died: ‘The British party first lined them all up in the yard [of Herlihy’s farmstead] and told them to prepare to die as they were to be shot out of hand. The officer in charge apparently changed his mind and told them that he would give them an opportunity to escape. He advised them to “run for it” when he gave the signal, but that at the same time his troops would open fire. Morgan and Moloney anticipated the signal to run and so took the firing party by surprise. They both managed to escape with wounds (Moloney in the liver and Morgan in the arm). The other three Volunteers were shot dead on the spot.’ See John Winters’s WS 948, 6 (BMH).

Michael Kiely was in 1911 one of the four sons of the farmer Tim Kiely and his wife Mary of Glennaharee East in Kilshannig parish. One other child had apparently died in infancy. All four sons (then aged 2 to 8) were co-resident with their parents. Michael (aged 8 in 1911) was their eldest son. In August 2006 the former Volunteer and ‘teenager’ Michael Kiely, one of the four victims of what is still known locally as the ‘Inchemay round-up’ of March 1921, was commemorated by the work of a special committee drawn from Nadd, Bweeng, Donoughmore, and Glantane. The committee supervised the construction of a memorial wall and the concreting of the entrance to Kiely’s home place at Bweeng. See http://www.independent.ie/regionals/corkman/news/bweeing-remembers-war-of-independence-hero-kiely-27052266.html (accessed 17 Sept. 2014). The name of this victim of the Inchamay roundup often appears incorrectly as Timothy Kiely. He was interred in Aghabulloge.