During the 1940s and 50s the Irish Bureau of Military History collected together the Witness Statements of the men and women who had taken part in the War of Independence. Collected here are just 35 of those statements relative to the witnesses who had taken part in the fight in West Cork. The men whose accounts we read were just ordinary young men, farmers' sons in the main. They were sturdy young men, inured to the elements, knowing well their own surroundings. In 1918 following the General Election, the majority of the Parliamentary seats went to Sinn Fein, the recognised Republican party. They met in the Mansion House in Dublin, and there proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Irish Volunteers founded to defend Home Rule, of which these young men were soldiers, was proclaimed as the national army whose duty was to defend the state against its enemies. This is how they were trained and armed to fight a guerrilla war against great odds.