On our return to Tipperary we very soon carried out three attacks on police barracks, one of which surrendered to us after a five hours’ fight. The first barrack in Tipperary to surrender to the I.R.A. was Drangan. That was on June 4th, 1920. Drangan is situated in the eastern end of the county, near the Kilkenny side. It is seven miles from Killenaule. Our usual procedure in these attacks—which always took place at night—was to mobilise 30 or 40 I.R.A. men, and have trees felled across all the roads leading to the position. In that way we prevented, or at least delayed, assistance from arriving to help the besieged garrison. This blocking of the roads was carried out often for a five or ten mile radius. Often, too, we felled trees across the roads when we had no intention of attacking a position—merely to annoy and confuse the enemy. Having taken these precautions to ensure that no assistance could arrive to the garrison we also cut the telegraph and telephone wires. Then we quietly occupied a few houses in the front or rear of the barracks and opened our attack, while some of our men perhaps attempted to fire the building by means of petrol. Very often too the first hint we gave of our presence was the exploding of a mine at the door or the gable of the barrack in order to blow up the building or to make a breach. Sometimes these plans succeeded, sometimes they failed. The fight at Drangan was a prolonged affair. The officers who took part in the attack were Sean Treacy, Seumas Robinson, Ernie O’Malley, Sean Hogan and myself. Having first taken the usual steps of blocking the roads and cutting all wires, we quietly occupied a vacant house right in front of the barrack—why the police were so stupid as to leave it unguarded I cannot imagine. More of our men went to the back and took up positions for opening fire, while on the street in front we erected a small barricade. About midnight we opened the attack. After the first volley we ceased fire, and called on the defenders to surrender. We always did that, not only to spare their lives if possible, but also to spare our own supplies of ammunition which were never plentiful. But they refused to come out. We renewed the attack, with rifles, bombs, revolvers and shot-guns—our munitions were always necessarily of an assorted kind. The enemy replied hotly to our fire, but with no effect. Suddenly the sky was lighted up with Verey lights—rockets discharged by the garrison as a signal to neighbouring posts that they needed help. But we knew it would be long before assistance could pass our barriers. We continued the onslaught with renewed vigour from front and rear, and some of our men actually tore off the slates on the roof of the barrack. Daylight was breaking amidst cracking of rifles and the bursting of bombs when there was a sudden lull in the replying fire from the enemy. A moment later appeared from one of the windows a sharp blast of a whistle, and our men ceased fire.