The Yank

HE YEAR IS 1975. A young Irish-American is on a mission to enlist in an elite unit of the US Marine Corps. His goal: to receive the most intensive military training possible and then go to Ireland to join the IRA and fight to end the British occupation of the North.

In this powerful and brutally honest memoir of his extraordinary experiences, John Crawley details the gruelling challenges of his Marine Corps training, and how, not long after his discharge, he joined the IRA. Soon he found himself in Boston, working with notorious American mobster James ‘Whitey' Bulger to amass a shipment of weapons. When captured on the Marita Ann gun-running trawler off the Kerry coast, Crawley was imprisoned for ten years, and upon his release he became one of the masterminds behind the IRA's plan to throw London's electrical system into disarray.

Crawley is blisteringly candid about the people he worked with and unflinching in his commentary on the IRA leadership. Through it all comes the steadfast voice of a man on a mission, providing an evocative and passionate account of where that mission led him and why. To this day, he remains committed to the establishment of an all-Ireland Republic.