Other Forces

"Even the olives are bleeding ..."

Charles (Charlie) Donnelly, from Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Poet, student at University College Dublin (my alma mater) and serial member of Left Republican splinter groups. A volunteer in the "Connolly Column", 15th International Brigade, he was killed in action while commanding a platoon of Irish volunteers operating alongside US and Canadian Internationalists of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at Jarama, 27 February, 1937. He was 22 years old. In 2008 the University College Dublin Branch of the Irish Labour Party renamed itself the Charlie Donnelly Branch in honour of his memory. Ar dheis Dé a anam. JR.