During the Civil War, when Ernie OMalley lay under sentence of death in Mountjoy prison hospital, some of his notes were smuggled out. Most of all, he wrote, I would have liked to talk about the rank and file where I found solace. Raids and Rallies, an account of various offensives against the British in 1920 21, is his tribute to that rank and file. It was a peoples war. That is why we fought so well from November 1920.What helps to make these memoirs notable is that OMalley writes more than a documentary in his constant awareness of nature in the background. Sunday Press;Entrancing reading for those who seek an insight into the mentality of the men who took on the might of the British Empire. Sunday Independent;Where OMalley differs from virtually all others who have published their recollections of those years is that he was a writer and an intellectual who was constantly weighing and analysing all that was happening. The Irish Post