COLLINS, Michael. Who fired the fatal shot? (Rare letter)

A carbon copy of a typed letter to an unnamed recipient (‘Sir’), from ‘J. McD. Capt. / Ex. I.O.F.S.A. (1922-1924) / Cork Command’, asking his correspondent ‘If the fatal shot fired at Beal-na-Bláth was not your doing, was it fired by one Michael Crowley? It is a well known fact that the ambush was well planned and comprised of well known members of the West Cork brigade Flying Column under the late Erskine Childers’, and continuing ‘De Valera has a lot to answer for in this crime’, etc.

The letter may possibly be addressed to Sonny O’Neill, an ex-British Army marksman, to whom the fatal shot is sometimes ascribed. According to Florrie O’Donoghue, Emmet Dalton (in charge of Collins’ party) told him years later, “Mick wouldn’t keep his head down. If he’d ever been in a scrap he’d have learned to stay down. For I was flat down and Mick was killed standing up”. (See Coogan’;s biography p. 411).
‘Ex I.O.F.S.A.’ presumably stands for ‘ex Intelligence Officer Free State Army’. We have not identified the writer, but a military specialist might be able to do so. Paper a little crumpled but clearly legible.

[L4 File C]