Item 43 - Brigadier-Gen. Denis Lacy / his life and adventures

A short sketch of Denis Lacy’s life by Liam Healy. Dennis Lacey (1890-1923) was an IRA soldier during the War of Independence and an Anti-Treaty republican during the Civil War. Lacey was born in 1890 in a village called Attybrack, near Annacarty in County Tipperary. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was sworn in to the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1914. During the War of Independence he commanded an IRA flying column of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade. In July 1920, this guerrilla unit mounted two successful ambushes of British forces – killing six British soldiers at Thomastown near Golden, County Tipperary, and four Royal Irish Constabulary men at Lisnagaul in the Glen of Aherlow. Lacey opposed the Treaty and most of his men followed suit. He later commanded the Anti-Treaty IRA’s Second Southern Division. In the ensuing conflict, he organised guerrilla activity in north Tipperary against Free State forces. He was killed in an action with National Army troops at Ballydavid, near Bansha in the Glen of Aherlow on 18 Feb. 1923. The pamphlet was printed in Waterford by The News Printing Works.