Anti-Treaty Soldier William Buckley

Anti-Treaty Soldier William Buckley (aged about 32) of Sallybrook, Glanmire, near Cork city (Sallybrook, Glanmire)

Date of incident: 30 Nov. 1922

Sources: Death Certificate (Cork Urban District No. 6, Union of Cork), 30 Nov. 1922; CE, 1, 2, 4, 18 Dec. 1922; FJ, 1 Dec. 1922; SS, 2 Dec. 1922; Pension Application of Daniel Buckley, MSPC/DP875 (Military Archives). 

Note: A party of National Army Soldiers surrounded the house of shoemaker William Buckley at Sallybrook, Glanmire, on Thursday morning, 30 November 1922, with the intention of arresting him because of their belief that he was an active IRA soldier. One of the Free State officers in charge of the party, having been admitted to the house, explained that his men had it surrounded and instructed Buckley to get dressed and come quietly with them. Instead, according to the military account of events as stated before a court of military inquiry, Buckley fired a revolver and wounded the officer in the thigh, escaped from the back of the house through a window, and fired on a sentry waiting outside while trying to make his escape. He was shot several times by two different sentries and died later the same day at the Mercy Hospital in Cork city. The attending surgeon reported that Buckley’s ‘intestines were protruding from the centre of the abdomen through a rather large, jagged wound’ when we was admitted. See CE, 2 Dec. 1922.

Buckley’s brother Denis testified before a military inquiry that William Buckley had been a member of the IRA during the War of Independence and through the Truce period; he had served with the Irregulars until the National Army came to Cork city, but after the burning of Cork Military Barracks by the Irregulars he had determined to ‘take no more part in the matter’. He declined to join in the retreat to Macroom. Yet he had retained his revolver from his earlier IRA service in spite of repeated urgings by his brother Denis to get rid of it. The court of military inquiry found that William Buckley was fatally wounded ‘by a member of the National forces in the execution of his duty, the deceased being at the time in armed opposition to the National forces’. See CE, 4 Dec. 1922. Buckley had been the chairman of the Riverstown branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, the members of which expressed their ‘deepest sympathy’ to his family at a special branch meeting. See CE, 18 Dec. 1922.

According to the 1933 pension application of Daniel Buckley, his son William Buckley had served as quartermaster of D Company of the Fifth Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade before he was mortally wounded while trying to escape from National Army soldiers who had raided his house at Sallybrook in Glanmire. The father of the victim was awarded a partial-dependant’s gratuity of £112 10s. in 1935. See Pension Application of Daniel Buckley, MSPC/DP875 (Military Archives).