George Lennon

Terence O'Reilly, Rebel Heart: George Lennon Flying Column Commander

Ivan Lennon, Lennons in Time

Tommy Mooney, Cry of the Curlew

Dr. Pat McCarthy, Waterford

George Lennon, Trauma in Time

George Lennon (1900–1991) was an Irish Republican Army leader during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In later years he became a dedicated pacifist.

As a young member of Na Fianna Éireann, Lennon, with companion "Barney" Dalton, was arrested for activating an explosive device (I.E.D.) along the Dungarvan quay. West Waterford O/C P.C. O'Mahony listed him, in October 1914, as a fourteen-year-old "Adjutant" in the newly formed Dungarvan Volunteers. An Irish Republican Brotherhood circle of twenty, organized by O'Mahony, included Lennon, Pax Whelan and Dan Fraher, all later prominent during the War of Independence. After the Easter Rising, in which he stopped a train in a futile search for arms, he left Abbeyside School just prior to his sixteenth birthday. Initially imprisoned as a seventeen-year-old at Ballybricken Prison, Waterford City, he was "on the run" for nearly a year before being captured and sentenced at Lismore Court House to Cork Male Gaol. Incarcerated with Charlie Daly of Kerry, he was released prematurely, due to ill health at the time of the third outbreak of Spanish Influenza, in May 1919. He served as West Waterford Vice O/C under O/C Pax Whelan. With Liam Lynch on 7 September 1919, he took part in an attack on British troops at Fermoy's Wesleyan Church. In May 1920 he participated in "one of the fiercest of all barracks attacks..." directed at the Royal Irish Constabulary in Kilmallock, County Limerick. After this he was attached to the East Limerick Flying Column (the first organised of "men on the run") and took part in a series of attacks on Crown forces including Bruree, Co. Limerick and Kildorrery, Co. Cork. He also served with the West Limerick Column and, at Liam Lynch's request, helped organise the famed Cork No. 2 Column portrayed in Sean Keating's iconic Men of the South.

In October 1920 he took command of the West Waterford Flying Column as the youngest leader of an active service unit. Operating from the Comeragh Mountains] and the Drum Hills, Lennon, with Great War veteran John Riordan, planned and led the Piltown Cross ambush on 1 November 1920 (the date of the execution, in Dublin, of Kevin Barry) in which a British Army unit was overwhelmed and armaments seized. In January 1921 the flying column took part in the unsuccessful Pickardstown ambush near Tramore and the Burgery ambush in March 1921. Capturing childhood acquaintance RIC Sergeant Hickey, he had him executed as a "police spy". In all, Lennon was involved in some 17 engagements, not including gun-running activities and arms seizures. The activities of Lennon's column resulted in nearly a thousand British soldiers being deployed to Waterford, along with over two hundred RIC and Royal Marines.

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