The Yank: The True Story of a Former US Marine in the Irish Republican Army

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But what prompted this former special forces Marine to abandon a potentially glittering career in the U.S. military, to becoming a particularly active member of the IRA? What were the forces that led him to becoming an Irish revolutionary? Mr Crawley was one of three men, including former Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris, convicted for their part in the plot. Mr Crawley said he attended IRA meeting with people he believes were informers and who may even have betrayed him personally. Mr Crawley, who is well known in republican circles, said that although he is not opposed to peace he believes that the Good Friday Agreement will not the deliver the type of Irish republic he and others joined the IRA to achieve.

The next day, though, the IRA called its second ceasefire. Crawley was transferred to Portlaoise Prison and eventually released as part of the peace process. With the Provisionals stood down, Crawley ‘retired’ from the IRA. “People say I should be grateful for the Good Friday Agreement, but I’d be more appreciative if the IRA hadn’t been riddled with informers and we weren’t caught in the first place.” Being ‘grateful’ for the Good Friday Agreement, might mean him “being grateful to the people who set me up”. On more than one occasion, it crossed my mind that gun-running activities on his patch could one day cause him difficulties he would need to resolve. He says he objected to the killing of “civilians” and commercial bombings, but has no remorse for what he did in the IRA, beyond the regret of not achieving a 32-county republic. Q: Looking ahead, what do you see as the key changes most likely to occur over the next 20 years between Ireland and England?I can’t speak for any other former IRA man than myself but I think a lot would feel that IRA volunteers who were active took great risks with their lives and sacrificed many years — and they took lives — and they would not have done that for anything but a much higher purpose,” he says. A foot soldier in the Irish Republican Army delivers an unrepentant memoir. … An in-the-trenches story of life as an ordinary soldier in a complicated set of circumstances.” — Kirkus And the first thing they want to know is who in the guerrilla opposition, let's say, are determined to win the struggle, and who's more determined to survive the struggle. After travelling to the US he later returned to update the republican leadership and provided a list of weapons he hoped to acquire to three members of the IRA 'Army Council' - including the man he believed was the then Chief of Staff.

For example, I heard a member of the Army Council (the IRA leadership body) say, “You could train a monkey to shoot.” I told him you could probably teach a monkey to point and pull, but you cannot teach him marksmanship fundamentals such as sight picture, sight alignment and trigger control. Nor can you train monkeys to move, shoot and communicate as part of a cohesive team. I firmly believe a small but influential element within the IRA command structure had a vested interest in keeping things at what became known as an “acceptable level of violence” to avoid provoking a British reaction that could jeopardize their leadership position within the movement. To keep the pot simmering, but never let it boil over. They would deny that, of course.About halfway through that boot camp at San Diego, we got a new drill instructor. He wore jump wings. I presumed he was ex-Recon, though I later learned this was not the case. I worked up the courage to approach him in the squad bay. Who are in the guerrilla opposition are ideologically committed to the line, and who are maybe just using it as a mobilising aspiration to build on other things.

The Irish “Troubles” were at a murderous fever pitch when John Crawley volunteered for the IRA. Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday, the bombing of the British Houses of Parliament, and other deadly incidents had recently unfolded or were about to … Civilian casualties were common as British soldiers, Republican militants (who wanted the UK out of Northern Ireland) and Unionist police and militants (who wanted to remain in the UK), engaged in gun battles and car bombing throughout Northern Ireland. The death toll numbered over 1,000. Everything you need is in that bag. If the Marine Corps thought you needed a wife, you’d have been issued with one.’ JC:My biggest challenge was figuring out what to say without incriminating myself or anyone else. The Irish Republican Army is still an illegal organization in Ireland and Britain. I hope I have managed to do that. Another challenge was simply remembering. Some of these incidents happened over 40 years ago. Having said that, many are seared into my memory and will never be forgotten. Furthermore, I had never previously written with a view toward publication and didn’t know if I had the ability to do so. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.”That's why they are chasing the royal family all over Ireland when they come here and shake their hand. He would later be sentenced at the Old Bailey in May 1996 to thirty-five years for conspiring to blow up the electrical grid that fed south-east England and was released from a British prison on 22 May 2000, as a consequence of the Good Friday Agreement. In all, Crawley would spend fourteen years in prison for his IRA beliefs. I told him I would find someone in Ireland who would fly to Boston and show him how to make the booby trap. I had been trained in the US Marines to recognise a wide variety of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact weapons, tanks, artillery and planes. Crawley was born in Long Island, New York, in 1957, the son of a Co. Roscommon father and a Co. Kerry mother. Two years later the family moved to Chicago and, in 1972, John moved to the town of Castlerea, Co Roscommon, to live with an aunt. He notes in his book, with what I suspect is a degree of pride, that his great-uncle, Tom Crawley, shot dead RIC Sergeant James King, in Castlerea on 11 July 1921, and that the King incident saw the last shots being fired in the Irish war of independence.

New York-born Crawley describes his life with a lean style and at a clip. The reader can’t help being carried along. Crawley leaves Ireland in the 1970s to enlist in the Marine Corps with the idea of returning to join the IRA, the story finding its flow with him signing up in 1979. The Yank gives us an inside account of the realities of guerrilla warfare, with none of the romanticism attached. The small, circumstantial details of such a life stay with you: a transient existence, yet often made up of waiting and frustrations, whereas “the action” comes fast, fleeting. At its core, The Yank is an adventure filled with scenes of combat, espionage, and smuggling... riveting..." — Coffee or Die MagazineThe wish-list presented to the 'Army Council' members included the 106-millimetre recoilless rifle, an anti-tank weapon Mr Crawley believed could have been used to demolish British army watchtowers in south Armagh, sink Royal Navy patrol vessels in Carlingford Lough and damage other military and police installations. Years later, after his arrest, a Special Branch officer would tell Crawley “you’re probably a decent fella from a respectable family but some evil b*****d got ahold of your brain”. Not true, Crawley insists. Nobody brainwashed or indoctrinated him. However, aged 13 he spent a summer in Ireland and “fell in love” with the country. For Crawley, Ireland became “home”. A bright student, he read voraciously and found himself drawn to hardline republicanism and the notion of taking up arms against British rule in Northern Ireland. In his mind, he linked the American War of Independence with Ireland’s own fight against Britain. It was politics, not religion which motivated Crawley – he remains a confirmed atheist. By age 17, he wanted to fight with the IRA. But how could a kid in America do that? Be prepared for more books like this in the near future. In the decades following Ireland’s 1919-21 War of Independence, members of the ‘old’ IRA stepped forward to tell their life stories. With peace in Northern Ireland holding since 1998, former Provisional IRA members are now inevitably surfacing to recount their histories. In 1984 Mr Crawley was on board the Marita Ann when it was boarded by Irish authorities in the Atlantic Ocean resulting in the seizure of a huge hoard of weapons. You see, here's the thing, they mightn't have got a guy onto the 'Army Council' who was actually an informer, but they got an informer so close to him that they were finding out everything that went on.