20 Facts About WJ Brennan-Whitmore

William James Brennan-Whitmore was an Irish revolutionary, journalist and soldier.

William James WJ Brennan-Whitmore was born in Wexford, Ireland on 21 October 1886 to Thomas Whitmore, a journalist and painter, and his wife Mary Brennan.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore's parents died when he was a child, leaving him in the custody of his maternal uncle John Brennan from Ferns, a supporter of Fenianism, and his wife Elizabeth.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore first began to develop Irish nationalist convictions from his conversations with an Irish missionary priest named Father John Mullan while on duty in the hills of The Himalayas.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore left the army in 1907 and returned to his home in County Wexford, becoming a journalist and a prominent member of local branches of the Gaelic League and Sinn Fein.

In 1913 WJ Brennan-Whitmore joined the Irish Volunteers, becoming commander of the Ferns Battalion and being appointed adjutant of the North Wexford Brigade a year later.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore struck up a close friendship with JJ O'Connell, a national organiser of the Irish Volunteers, who personally introduced him to the organisation's leaders.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore began to be invited to meetings of the Irish Volunteers' military council, where he emphasised frequently the need to fully arm and train the Volunteers and to adapt their military strategies and organisational structure to Irish terrain and conditions, arguing alongside O'Connell for a focus on guerrilla warfare over conventional tactics.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore wrote a training manual expounding his ideas, earning promotion to the general staff of the Irish Volunteers in April 1916.

An opponent of the existence of secret societies, WJ Brennan-Whitmore was unaware of the Irish Republican Brotherhood's infiltration of the Irish Volunteers until the outbreak of the Easter Rising.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore initially acted as aide to Joseph Plunkett at the beginning of the rising, where he encountered Michael Collins for the first time, forming a negative initial impression despite going on to work under Collins and support the treaty.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore considered the rebel leadership's defensive plan a wasted opportunity, believing instead that the seized buildings should have been lightly garrisoned so as to free up manpower to push British patrols out of the city, and that the organisation of a planned retreat into the countryside was feasible as an alternative to surrender.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore was ultimately wounded in the leg and captured on Moore Street by troops of the 3rd Royal Irish Regiment.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore became closely associated with Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy and lectured rebel officers on guerrilla warfare while frequently challenged the British authorities to provide prisoner-of-war privileges to the Irish republican prisoners, efforts which often resulted in success.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore contributed articles to the IRA's official newspaper, An tOglach, which he would become the editor of in 1923.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore supported the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and was appointed as a commandant in the National Army, adjutant in Wexford and intelligence officer for Carlow in 1922.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore additionally accompanied Eoin O'Duffy to a meeting with the Italian minister to Ireland, Vincenzo Berardis, regarding the formation of a corporatist party in Ireland, but considered O'Duffy to be mentally unbalanced and his flirting with the IRA to be a mistake.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore was rumoured to have been a member of the National Socialist Irish Workers Party.

WJ Brennan-Whitmore completed his memoir of his experiences during the Easter Rising, Dublin burning: the Easter rising from behind the barricades, in 1961.

On 27 December 1977 WJ Brennan-Whitmore died aged 91 at the Meath Hospital in Dublin.