North West Volunteers

The following is a list of known volunteers. The biographical information is drawn mainly from The International Brigades Memorial Archive, Marx Memorial Library, London; the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), Moscow; Raymond John Quinn, Irish Volunteers for Spain (Belfast, 2004), and No Pasaran! International Brigade Commemoration Committee Newssheet (Belfast), for which, thanks are due to Ciaran Crossey.

Derry

James Campbell
22 Tyrconnell Street, from a republican family; aged 33 in Spain. International Brigades records described him as ‘insubordinate’, and in July 1937 a British consulate official in Barcelona reported that he was detained in a police round-up of ‘many anarchists and Trotsky Communists and other undesirable elements’. What happened to Campbell is unclear.

James Donald
Born 12 January 1916 in Derry, and worked as a miner in Scotland where he lived at Methil, Fife. He arrived in Spain on 24 January 1937, and served with the British Battalion. In the spring of 1938 when he was sent to the front to help stem the fascist attack at Aragon. Some say he was killed at Caspe on 17 March. Others suggest he returned to the line. By June he was missing, presumed dead.

Jack Flynn
Nothing is known of this volunteer.

George F. Gorman
Longtower, born 1900, and lived in Folkestone, Kent before joining the British Army with which he saw 12 years service, in India and, during World War I, in Iraq.
In Spain from 3 May 1938, he was a sergeant in the No.4 company of the British Battalion. He took part in the Ebro offensive, and died on 23 September 1938.

William McChrystal
Born 28 December 1905, and lived at 36 Cross Street, Waterside. A tailor and member of the Communist Party of Canada, he organized unemployed workers in Vancouver, and arrived in Spain from Canada on 14 August 1937. He was taken prisoner at Caspe-Belchite on 17 March 1938.

Éamonn McGrotty
Born 1911. Cited in Christy Moore’s song Viva la Quinta Brigada as the ‘brave young Christian Brother’, and perhaps the best known of the Derry volunteers. Raised in a republican family, he lived at Marlborough Road and later in 4 Mount Street, Rosemount. He was in the Christian Brothers, 1925-32. When his father died in 1932, Éamonn the family moved to 9 Upper Drumcondra Road, Dublin, where he was active in Conradh na Gaeilge, Na Fianna, and the IRA, and worked as a journalist. His brother John said that, ‘Éamonn was affected by teaching young people with no shoes, this made him a socialist… He went to Spain because of his knowledge about the danger of advancing fascism in Europe, he had to help stop fascism.’ Arriving in Spain on 22 December 1936, he was Adjutant of the Irish company (the James Connolly Centuria) in the Lincoln Battalion. He died on 27 February 1937 in the assault on the Pingarron heights in the Battle of Jarama.

Charles McGuinness
Born 6 March 1893 and raised in Derry; an adventurer extraordinaire, and the title at least of his autobiography is no exaggeration: Nomad: Memoirs of an Irish Sailor, Soldier, Pearl-Fisher, Pirate, Gun-runner, Rum-runner, Rebel, and Antarctic Explorer (London, 1934); after the Antarctic expedition he developed an interest in the Soviet experiment, and became harbour master in Murmansk, Russia, from where he went to Spain, the first Irishman to join the International Brigades according to himself; before long, he returned to Ireland, switched sides and wrote pro-Franco articles for the Irish Independent; he was lost at sea on the schooner Isallt off Wexford in 1947. For more details, see John McGuffin and Joseph Mulheron, Charles ‘Nomad’ McGuinness: Being a True Account of the Amazing Adventures of a Derryman (Irish Resistance Books, Derry, 2002).

John Murphy
Nothing is known of this volunteer except that he arrived in Spain on 1 September 1937, from London.

Herbert Pollock
Nothing is known of this volunteer except that he was a member of the Communist Party of Canada, and arrived in Spain on 27 June 1937.

Donegal

Hugh Bonner
Born 2 October 1907, in Falchorrib, Templecrone, County Donegal, the son of Hugh, a farm labourer, and Nellie Bonner. He was a section commander in the Lincoln battalion when he was killed in action in the Battle of Jarama, 5 April 1937. According to Peter O’Connor, “Bonner was admired by everyone for his quietness, his courage and his coolness in battle.”

Philip Boyle
Born 5 October 1903 in Calhane, and a carpenter by trade. He served in the IRA, 1919-24; was imprisoned, 1920-1; and later joined the Communist Party in Hammersmith, London. He served in Spain as a company quartermaster, and was wounded at Teruel.

Paddy Glacken
Fought at Teruel, where he was killed in action on 20 January 1938.

Brian Goold-Verschoyle
Born in 1912 to an Anglo-Irish family, and raised in a ‘big house’ in Dunkineely. On leaving school he became an electrical engineer, joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, and acted as a courier for the Soviet secret police in London. In the spring of 1936, he visited Russia and was a student in Abramoff’s radio school in Moscow. In 1937 he was sent to Spain as a radio officer. Suspected of Trotskyism, he was kidnapped, taken to Odessa, convicted of being a British spy, and sent to the Gulag. He died in 1941 in a German air attack on a train carrying Gulag prisoners.

Joseph Kelly
Born 10 March 1898, emigrated to Canada, and worked as a lumberjack and a union organizer. A member of the Communist Party of Canada, he arrived in Spain on 14 February 1937; was promoted to lieutenant, and wounded twice. After Spain, he lived in Vancouver.

Paddy Roe McLaughlin

Born 1902, at Lecamy, about 5 miles north of Moville, the son of a small farmer. A veteran of the War of Independence, he later emigrated to America, and worked in construction in New York, joining the Communist Party of the USA. In Spain from February 1937, he served in the artillery. During the war he was granted leave to marry Kathleen Walsh, a Yorkshire born Communist, who had been gaoled in Liverpool for anti-fascist activities. A mechanic in the RAF during World War II, he worked in construction after the war, eventually settling in Liverpool. He and Kathleen were active Communists, until disillusioned by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

Patrick O’Daire
Born 22 May 1905, the Glenties. He served in the IRA in the War of Independence and as a sergeant in the Free State army during the Civil War. Emigrating to Canada in 1929, he was jailed for 15 months in Saskatchewan for provoking a riot, and deported to England, where he joined the Communist Party in Bootle, Liverpool, 1934, and worked in the building trade. He arrived in Spain on 5 December 1936, was wounded at Lopera, and made a company commander in April 1938. An excellent military man, he commanded the British Battalion in August-September 1937. After the war he was involved in the ‘Thetis’ submarine test in 1939, joined the British army during World War II, and retired with the rank of major. Evidently he retained fond memories of the Donegal highlands, as his troops dubbed him ‘the man from the mountains’. After the war he settled in Wales, and died in 1981.

Francis William Vincent O’Donnell
Born 19 August 1904, he emigrated to Canada, joined the Communist Party, and arrived in Spain from London on 29 January 1937. Captured at Murcia, and again at Gandesa, he survived the war.

Hugh O’Donnell
A stoker from Burtonport, he was a PoW in San Pedro prison, near Burgos in 1938, and survived the war.

Peadar O’Donnell
Born February 1893 at Meenmore, near Dungloe. He was in Spain when the war broke out, and returned in September 1936 to address a peasants’ conference in Barcelona and visit Madrid, describing his experiences in Salud! An Irishman in Spain (London, 1937). Though not a combatant in Spain, he deserves inclusion as he was instrumental in organizing support for the International Brigades in Ireland. One of 20th century Ireland’s finest agitators and literary men, he has been the subject of many biographies. For recent portraits see Peter Hegarty, Peadar O’Donnell (Cork, 1999), and Donal Ó Drisceoil, Peadar O’Donnell (Cork, 2001).

Tyrone

Joe Boyd
Born 1907, at Boydsland, Stewartstown. Aged 10 or so, the family moved to Belfast. He later went to New York, and in the early 1930s returned to Belfast and set up a milk retail business, using US pasteurising and bottling techniques. A member of the Socialist Party, he was one of two party members selected to join a Scotch Ambulance Unit in Spain. In November 1936 he was captured on his 29th birthday on the Toledo front as he ‘defied orders to drive his field ambulance into no-man’s-land to collect wounded from both sides…’. He was condemned to death, but Anthony Eden and Harry Midgley negotiated his release, via Portugal. After Spain, he returned to his milk business in Belfast, and became active in the Northern Ireland Labour Party. In 1972 he retired to Spain, where he died in 1997.

Charles Donnelly
Born 10 July 1914, Killybrackey, near Dungannon. Moving to study at UCD, he became active in the Republican Congress in Dublin and London before going to Spain. He left London for Spain on 23 December 1936, and was killed in the battle of Jarama by an explosive bullet on 27 February 1937. A promising poet, minutes before his death he picked an olive, shot through with a bullet, and coined the line ‘Even the olives are bleeding’. See Joseph O’Connor, Even the Olives are Bleeding: The Life and Times of Charles Donnelly (Dublin, 1992).

Ben (Frederick) Murray
Born 19 July 1895 in Enniskillen; raised with his family outside Aughnacloy, where his father was an RIC sergeant; emigrated to Canada aged 15; joined the Canadian army, serving in World War I; after the war he lived in Montreal. He returned to Belfast in 1932 or 1933 and became active in the Communist Party. He was a well-known Party speaker. After his move to London in 1935 he joined the CPGB and became a branch secretary. He joined the British battalion in Spain on 11 February 1937; was wounded at Brunete in July 1937 and killed in action on 14 March 1938. Brendan Moroney, another Irish volunteer, recounted how he recited the “appropriate Catholic prayers”as he buried Murray in the bomb crater where he was killed, although he was not to know that Murray was from a Methodist background.

Thomas Traynor
Born July 1897, Strabane. He emigrated to Canada and worked as a timekeeper in Toronto. A member of the Communist Party, he arrived in Spain in June 1937, and was wounded while serving with the Lincoln Battalion at Brunete. He later transferred to the (Canadian) McKenzie-Papineau Battalion, and served at Fuentes and Teruel. He was repatriated to Canada in October 1938.