The annual Kilmichael commemoration will be held on Sunday November 25th at 1.30pm at the Kilmichael monument.
THE annual Kilmichael commemoration will be held on Sunday November 25th at 1.30pm at the Kilmichael monument.
The guest speaker this year is Matt Carthy, Sinn Féin MEP for the Midlands and Northwest – a prominent speaker in the Brexit debate, and is Sinn Fein’s ‘Uniting Ireland’ co-ordinator.
This is the 98th anniversary commemoration of the famous Kilmichael ambush when, on November 28th 1920, the flying column of the third West Cork Brigade won a famous victory against the Auxiliaries.
The Auxiliares were mostly made up of high ranking officers of the British army who had fought in WWI.
Three volunteers of the IRA were killed that day but the Auxiliaries suffered heavy losses, of the eighteen soldiers on the two crossley tenders only one survived.
At 10.30am, prior to the commemoration at Castletown Kenneigh, there will be an Irish mass and wreath-laying ceremony afterwards at the graves of the three volunteers – Pat Deasy, Michael McCarthy, and Jim O Sullivan, and also at the grave of volunteer Diarmuid Ó Mathúna, who died some months later.
The main commemoration will be followed at 3.30pm by a dinner and traditional music in the Parkway Hotel in Dunmanway.
