IRWIN, Thomas P. Benson’s Flying Column. A Story of the Anglo-Irish War.

Dublin: The Talbot Press Limited, 1942. Crown octavo. Third edition. pp. 303. Blue paper boards, titled in black. Previous owner’s book label. New endpapers. A very good copy.

Irwin claimed this to be a lightly-disguised factual account of the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, focused on the infamous misdeeds of the Auxiliaries (“Black and Tans”) and the Irish guerrilla response. The arrival of the first batch of Auxiliaries in Dublin in the year 1920 created quite a sensation in the city. One of their first acts will remain indelibly imprinted on the memory of the people of Dublin; the shooting of Seán Doyle on the Dublin mountains on Sunday, the 19th of September, 1920. Many strange rumours were afloat concerning this newly formed force of semi-irregular troops. Ostensibly they were to augment the forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary who, in conjunction with the huge Army of Occupation, were endeavouring to suppress the rapidly growing power of Republicanism, which was being fostered by the Sinn Féin organisation.
It was well known that the Auxiliaries had been recruited from the very dregs of the cities and large towns of England, and were being paid at a rate per day about twice the weekly rate paid to the
ordinary British soldiers, and on this account much ill feeling existed between the regular troops and the Auxiliaries. As for the R.I.C., with a few exceptions, they absolutely disowned their newly acquired comrades, and on one memorable occasion during an address delivered to the R.I.C. of Listowel by the infamous Commander of the Auxiliaries, in which he exhorted them to kill indiscriminately the rebellious Irish (promising them protection, and even reward, from the English Government), the reply of the officers and men of the R.I.C. to this butcher of the innocents was eloquently brief: “You forget we are Irish.” - Preface

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