Ernie O'Malley was one of the leading fighters in the 'people's war' - as he called it - against the British campaign in Ireland 1920-21. Those were the guerilla days when small groups of poorly-armed Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Army, whose military training was for the most part elemental, fought to achieve the aims of 1916 as endorsed emphatically through the general election of 1918: freedom from foreign rule.

O'Malley was an Irish Republican Army officer during the Irish War of Independence and a senior commander of the anti-treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War and wrote three books about his experiences, On Another Man's Wound, The Singing Flame, and Raids and Rallies. Raids and Rallies, written while still fresh in the mind and memory, is O'Malley's account of some of the offensives in Tipperary, Roscommon, Clare and Mayo.

He took part in three, the attacks on Hollyford, Drangan and Rearcross RIC barracks and had first-hand knowledge of the others including those at Rineen, Scramogue, Tourmakeady, Modreeny, Kilmeena and Carrowkennedy. .