The Yank: The True Story of a Former US Marine in the Irish Republican Army

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They are saying to the royal family, under the Good Friday Agreement, you still have a role to play because a faction of our people will continue to be considered a colonial rump even though they are here 400 years instead of building a national identity that any other country would do." I am not saying the Irish people don't have a right to do it, but you have to do it when there's a political context for it, which there just simply is not at the minute. The Yank: My life as a former US Marine in the IRA' tells how the republican movement used Boston mobster James 'Whitey' Bulger and his criminal connections to help source and transport a huge haul of weapons to Ireland in 1984. Young man,’ he assured me, ‘we have the best Special Forces of all. The elite of the elite. The cream of the Corps – Marine Recon.’ One day a Puerto Rican recruit named Hernandez approached the drill instructors to request an emergency phone call. Phone calls and visits were not permitted in boot camp. The only exception was in the event of the death of a close family member.

The wish-list presented to the 'Army Council' members included the 106-millimetre recoilless rifle, an anti-tank weapon Mr Crawley believed could have been used to demolish British army watchtowers in south Armagh, sink Royal Navy patrol vessels in Carlingford Lough and damage other military and police installations. You know we were screwed from the beginning, they (the British) had us, we were going nowhere," he said.

John Crawley

Although many will say that Crawley’s conscience should be tormented for the rest of his life, he insists he has “no regrets”. What plays most on his mind is the informers in the IRA. “There’s people at the top who were at their skullduggery, but hopefully in the fullness of time that’ll come out. They were deeply embedded. I trusted some people who couldn’t be trusted.” Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has long denied he was a member of the IRA. Crawley says he understands the “political practicalities” behind the denials. “I can understand the political necessity of not putting yourself in prison but at the same time sometimes you just admire people who came out and said exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it,” he says. His light bulb moment came during the 1916 Rising in Dublin when he came close to joining his fellow University students in taking up arms against the rebels. Some inner ancestral voice caused him to hesitate. Later, while walking down O’Connell Street, he chanced upon the Proclamation of the Irish Republic pasted onto Nelson’s Pillar: “ On the base of the Pillar was a white poster. Gathered around were groups of men and women. Some looked at it with serious faces, others laughed and sniggered. I began to read it with a smile, but my smile ceased as I read….” O’Malley immediately took up arms against British Crown forces and became one of the Irish struggle’s most influential and inspiring patriots. Reporting directly to Michael Collins during that phase of the struggle for independence, he took the republican anti-Treaty side during the Irish civil war.His memoir of the Irish civil war, THE SINGING FLAME,isas thrilling and enthralling as his earlier memoir. I could never hope to emulate his writing talent, but his example inspired me to try. Crawley delivers a full-throated and unrepentant call for a united Ireland in this lucid chronicle… A clear-eyed look, from the inside, at a group willing to risk it all for a cause.” — Publishers Weekly

He believes some people in IRA leadership positions ensured the organisation's objectives could not be achieved. Q: Your training in the United States Marines during the 1970s provided you with an expertise that often left you at loggerheads with the IRA leadership once you had joined to become a soldier for them. To what do you ascribe their counterproductive stubbornness in ignoring your professional advice?Crawley challenges the view the IRA fought the British to “a stalemate” or that peace was a compromise. The IRA split over how to react between the old-line IRA, and the new Provisional IRA — the Provos, mostly impassioned young men who were not hesitant to resort to violence. Mr Crawley said he attended IRA meeting with people he believes were informers and who may even have betrayed him personally.

I couldn’t blame him for not having professional training but some of the stuff he came out with was baffling. I began to see a different side to him, a side that gave me my first niggling concerns about our prospects for victory,” he says. Having survived a hurricane and their vessel Vahalla almost being sunk mid-Atlantic with its cargo of arms, Crawley describes their difficult rendezvous with the trawler the Marita Ann. As the gun-running mission firmed up in Boston, Crawley received a ‘comm’ – a message on cigarette paper inside cellophane wrapping - telling him to call a Dublin payphone at a fixed time. An unknown voice on the other end said the IRA leadership wanted him home immediately. “Bring everything and be on the boat,” he was told. Everything you need is in that bag. If the Marine Corps thought you needed a wife, you’d have been issued with one.’At one time Bulger, who was murdered in a US jail in 2018, was the most powerful crime boss in Boston and ran the infamous Winter Hill Gang. Mr Crawley reveals how Bulger would offer his opinion on IRA operations and suggest potential targets. I would not have joined the IRA if I had have known that core members of the IRA leadership weren’t on the same mission I was on,” he says. Mr Crawley also reveals the inside story of how the huge cache of IRA weapons were seized after being transferred from a US vessel, the Valhalla, to the Marita Ann in the Atlantic Ocean after it was boarded by Irish authorities in 1984.

I would not have joined the IRA if I had have known that core members of the IRA leadership weren’t on the same mission I was on He along with several others were later arrested and in 1997 he was sentenced to another 35 years but was released three years later under the Good Friday Agreement. Question: For how long had you been pondering the idea of turning your remarkable life history into a book? And what provided the impetus for you to finally attempt it? It certainly wasn’t worth shooting anybody for,” he says, describing the Belfast Agreement as “an internal settlement on British terms”.He didn’t grasp the political considerations we had to factor in when planning or conducting military operations. Mr Crawley, who served around 14 years in total behind bars, said that he would not have become involved with the republican movement had he known what the outcome would be. Along the way, Crawley is blisteringly candid about the memorable people he worked with, including behind-the-scenes portrayals of revered IRA leader Martin McGuinness and of the psychopathic Whitey Bulger, as well as others in the Boston IRA support network. There are vivid portraits of colleagues and enemies, and Crawley is unflinching in his commentary on IRA leadership and their tactics, both military and political. Its skipper was Mike Browne. Mike and Bob expertly steered their respective fishing boats on a heading into the wind without banging together while John made more than a dozen trips over eight hours. The former Marine had been trained to lie camouflaged and low in ambush position for days, if needs be, until a target presented itself. When, one volunteer alongside him excused himself and announced he had to leave the ambush location because he had to ‘milk his cows’, and a second volunteer soon followed because he had to ‘work the next day’, there must have been quite a frown on Crawley’s face as he watched his comrades go about their civilian business.