Peter Monaghan Deserter from British Army

Tom Barry in Guerilla Days mentions Monaghan a number of time. He says Monaghan was born in Scotland of Irish parents and deserted to the IRA with his rifle. Ambushes & Armour say Monaghan was a Royal Engineer attached to the Cameron Highlanders. Liam Deasy in Towards Ireland Free mentions him extensively. Everyone seems to agree that Peter Monaghan was not his real name

Deasy in "Towards Ireland Free"goes into some detail on Monaghan. It was 24th Dec 1920 at 11pm when 2 British deserters were noticed , and actually called at Deasy's house for food and cigarettes. His mother supplied them with both, but as the deserters left the house they were arrested by the IRA. They held the two at Knockpolgue in Kilbrittain area. What struck Deasy as odd was that the two men had virtually nothing in common. Monaghan was a well educated man, far above the standard of the average British soldier. The other man gave his name as Tommy Clarke and was uneducated

Monaghan spoke with the accent of a well educated Scotsman. He said they had left Ringaskiddy 3 days before and had travelled across country to try to meet with and to offer to help the IRA. Monaghan claimed that he had been a Captain in the RE during the war. On being demobilised he discovered there was nothing for him back in Scotland and had joined the Cameron's under the assumed name of Peter Monaghan. Deasy says that normally they would have shot the men as spies, but they were intrigued by Monaghan's claim to have been a mining engineer before the war, and to know something about explosives. For that reason they decided to take him on to make mines for them. No mention is made of what happened to Clarke

• 31 Dec 1920 Monaghan made mines for an attack on Kilbrittain RIC station - none of them worked
• Monaghan posed as an Auxiliary officer in a suspected informers house, and his accent and bearing got the informer to give himself away. The informer was shot
• 25 Jan 1921 an attack on Innishannon RIC station was to be carried out using one of Monaghan's mines. Again it did not work
• 11 Feb 1921 an attack on Drimoleague Barracks with mines. The mine did explode, but failed to cause enough damage to break the walls. The explosion blew outwards rather than inwards.
• 12 Feb Monaghan was missing from IRA parade, and remained absent till 5 pm the next day. His story was that he had smelled poteen as he was escaping from the raid on Drimoleague, and had gone into the Poteen house to sample the whiskey. He said it took him 12 hours to recover from the effects. He then set off to find the column. Deasy still cannot work out how Monaghan found the column in that desolate countryside
• On 19 Mar 1921 at Crossbarry Monaghan was in charge of one of the two mines - the one near Crossbarry Bridge. It failed to fire
• Monaghan was killed at Crossbarry. Monaghan appears to have been shot near the mine. Lordan, tried to retrieve the plunger detonator, and accidentally set the mine off, killing both himself and Monaghan
• I can find nothing to substantiate the claim that some of his mines were used 12 days later at Roscarberry

The balance of probability is that Monaghan was a British spy. If he was he was a very brave man.

IRA men