By Tony Waldron

 Born in Mulpit in 1895, parents Michael and Rose, he was the first of 9 children. What he done will tell you more about him and what sort of man he was than ever I could.

He joined the First Battalion of the Irish Guards in 1914 and went through the First World War. He was awarded a medal for bravery on the field. He was demobbed in 1919. He came home and joined the War of Independence. The Black and Tans raided the home in Mulpit. The made himself and his two brothers say Goodbye to their father and brough them out the back of the house to shoot them. The Tans had them and Patrick looked at my father and winked, and the two of them made a dash for freedom. All they had on them were their shirts. My father said it was good they were not too good when they made the charge, the shirts tore. They went both directions. Patrick was wounded; the bullet went straight through. He knew how to deal with it from the training he got in the Army.

Himself and my father were on the run. They were on the way to Clare to join the Hogans and the Brennans when the Truce was signed. Himself and my father and Paddy Murphy were in Higgins’s pub when an English officer was telling Mrs Higgins all the stories he’d have to tell his mother when he’d go home. Patrick heard him and said I’ll give him something to tell her, and he walked up and gave him one box and flattened him. What happened after that I don’t know if it’s true. What I was told is that as the British soldiers were coming in the door, they were getting clocked and forced into the snug. The Truce was broken. Stephen Jordan and Sean Broderick had to come and settle things up. The split came and he joined the Free State Army, and he spent the duration of the Civil War in Kerry where the war was as hot as hell. On Easter Monday he joined the Blueshirts. He got married and had six children: Andy, Rosaleen, Paddy Joe, Michael, Betty and Herman. He had some falling out with the family and he left and went to England. He never came back and is buried in Manchester with his sister.