JJ "Ginger" O'Connell

Jeremiah Joseph "Ginger" O'Connell (1887–1944) was a general (later demoted to colonel) in the Irish Defence Forces.^[1]

Born in County Mayo and educated at University College Dublin, he spent the years 1912-1914 in the United States Army.^[1]

He returned to Ireland in 1914 and joined the Irish Volunteers, becoming Chief of Inspection in 1915.^[1]

At the time the 1916 Rising, O'Connell was operating in Dublin under instruction from Joseph Plunkett;^[2] he was dispatched to Cork by Eoin MacNeill to prevent the Easter Rising. He was arrested and interned, spending time in Wandsworth Prison with Arthur Griffith.^[3]

During the Irish War of Independence, he was a member of the Irish Republican Army headquarters staff, as Assistant Director of Training and, after the killing of Dick McKee, as Director of Training.^[1]

In the IRA split after Dáil Éireann ratified the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he supported the treaty and was made Deputy Chief of Staff in the National Army.^[1] On 26 June 1922, he was kidnapped by anti-treaty forces in reprisal for the arrest of an anti-treaty officer; his kidnapping was a precipitating factor in the formal outbreak of the Irish Civil War, when government pro-treaty forces two days later attacked anti-treaty forces occupying the Four Courts.^[1] O'Connell survived the fighting and spent the rest of the civil war as General Officer Commanding the Curragh Command.^[1]

He held various positions in the Irish Defence Forces, including head of intelligence, until his death in 1944, aged 57.^[1]

References

1. O'Connell, Jeremiah Joseph (‘J. J.’, ‘Ginger’), Dictionary of Irish Biography(subscription required)
2. www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie WS Ref #: 751 , Witness: Colm O'Lochlainn, Captain IV, Dublin, 1916; Printer and Publisher
3. bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie, WS Ref #: 637 , Witness: Muriel McSwiney, Widow of Terence McSwiney