Tony Ferguson

Andy Symington volunteered to join the Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1916. Over the next seven years, he participated in the Battle of the Somme, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, a trilogy of military service experienced by fewer than sixty men, as estimated by Daniel Mulhall, the eminent Irish historian and diplomat.

Honourably discharged due to wounds and shellshock, he returned to Ireland and fought against the British for the nascent IRA, becoming the most wanted man in Tyrone in 1921. In 1922, he became a lieutenant in the Free State army and fought against the IRA in the Civil War.

It uncovers a previously suppressed story of mutiny and officer murder in the trenches and reveals how the press covered it up. It also exposes a cover up in the War Diaries, as Army High Command sought to distance itself from an ill-conceived attack which cost the lives of 385 men, many killed by their own shells.

There is a poignant human-interest undercurrent, from his early days in a family of ten in Fermanagh to the post war impact of alcoholism and shellshock (today equating to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD) on a tortured family life. Over a century after the Somme, a remarkable twist of fate unfolds...