How a U.S. Marine from Long Island became an Irish freedom fighter and member of the IRA
John Crawley joined the Marines to become a living, lethal weapon.
Then he left the Marines, went to Ireland, and aimed himself at the British.
“The Yank: The True Story of a Former U.S. Marine in the Irish Republican Army” is his memoir, and it reads like a movie script, full of mobsters, smuggling, sabotage, and murder.
One thing it doesn’t have, though, is doubt.
Although currently divided into Eire, an independent country in the south, and Northern Ireland, six British-aligned counties in the north, Ireland is one nation, Crawley insists. The fight for a united republic continues, he says, and must continue. No compromise is possible.
“There are only two possible outcomes,” Crawley writes. “‘One is the Irish Republic. The other isn’t.”
And to secure that republic, Crawley was once willing to do anything, starting with joining the Irish Republican Army.
An American citizen born on Long Island in 1957, Crawley wasn’t your typical IRA candidate. But growing up, he started seeing their battle to kick the British out of Northern Ireland like the Founding Fathers’ war to kick the British out of America.
“Perhaps where I differed from most,” he admits, “was that I was prepared to risk life and take life to achieve that.”
Realizing that the IRA might be reluctant to take on an American teenager, Crawley enlisted in the Marines right out of high school. He spent four years learning — and then teaching — sophisticated warcraft, from reconnaissance to demolition. He was discharged from the Corps at 8 a.m. on May 29, 1979.
True to his word, six hours later, he was on a plane to Ireland.
“I had done my bit for the American Republic,” he writes. “Now, I would do what I could for the Irish Republic.”
Once in Dublin, it took weeks of asking around — and, eventually, months of clandestine interviews — before he was accepted into the organization. Joining the IRA, however, turned out to be easier than serving in the IRA, which functioned less as a military force than “an unorganized group of armed civilians,” Crawley writes.
Weapons were often decades old. Telescopic sights were routinely out of alignment. Marksmanship was substandard.
“They seemed to know as much about sniping,” Crawley writes, “as a cat knows about its father.”
Nor did the stubborn men in charge want to hear Crawley’s misgivings. The few times he complained, suggesting getting different weapons or increasing training, IRA leader Martin McGuinness turned icy. Crawley learned to keep his mouth shut.
Crawley’s first serious assignment came in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. The mission? Attack a British Army patrol. A local farmer would lead him to the perfect spot for an ambush. Except, on the day of the planned attack, a cow kicked the farmer, leaving him limping. It seemed that the mission would have to be aborted.
Crawley refused. Grabbing his IRA-issued rifle, he slipped into the night alone. Finally, after hours of sneaking through the dark, he found the pre-selected hiding place. He hunched down in the grass and waited. Dawn came and went. Crawley began to doze when the Army patrol passed by.
He squeezed off a shot.
A soldier dropped to the ground.
The other soldiers began firing back. This was an awful time for Crawley’s rifle to jam. Apparently, it had been fitted with the wrong ammunition clip. Crawley ran back, crouching, while bullets flew. Soon Army helicopters began circling. Crawley made it back safely, just.
He never learned whether the shot he fired had been fatal, not that he cared much.
“I had no moral compunction about killing an armed British soldier on Irish soil,” Crawley writes. “I saw it as my duty.”
The IRA’s McGuinness soon had another job for him: Get weapons. Crawley was to go to Boston and set up a smuggling operation. But once he got there, he would immediately need cash, a gun for himself, and fake IDs.
When he arrived, his American contact took him to a man who could supply all three — James “Whitey” Bulger, the mob boss of south Boston.
Bulger generously contributed $5,000 in start-up money and a bag of weapons. He also promised to somehow borrow a driver’s-license machine from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles to print fake IDs. The operation was underway.
Still, “I never trusted him,” Crawley writes. “I wondered what would happen if my mission ever seriously conflicted with Whitey’s operation. I suspected I could end up in a lobster pot at the bottom of Boston Harbor.”
Once Bulger got him started, Crawley got busy. He spent the next nine months making contacts among IRA sympathizers in Boston and the Bronx, raising funds, and buying arms. By the summer of 1984, he had a boatload.
Crawley raised a crew, secured a ship — the Valhalla — and headed to Ireland.
The Valhalla had just finished transferring the arms to another ship off the Irish coast when the Irish Navy boarded. It seemed Dublin didn’t like gunrunning any more than London did. An informer had betrayed Crawley.
Crawley was sentenced to 10 years in an Irish prison. He was lucky. The skipper of the Valhalla escaped back to Boston but then started talking about his adventure. Whitey Bulger was not fond of people who talked.
It was 16 years before they found the man’s body.
Crawley was spring from prison on Sept. 10, 1994. He immediately rejoined the IRA. His next mission was even more ambitious than the last: Sabotage the English power grid.
“If our plan worked, it would result in thirty-six simultaneous explosions in one night, plunging London and most of the southeast into darkness,” he writes. “We were planning further, and even bigger, operations after the lights went out. I cannot reveal what they were, but if the Brits didn’t get out of Ireland, we were prepared to bomb England back to the Stone Age.”
What they didn’t know is they were under surveillance. The police arrested them before they were able to plant a single explosive. Now, Crawley was off to an English prison. This time, the sentence was 35 years.
He would still be there but for the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998. That treaty provided for political power-sharing in Northern Ireland. It mandated a ceasefire, with all partisan militias — Catholic and Protestant — agreeing to disarm. And it called for the release of prisoners like Crawley and his comrades.
Crawley walked out a free man on May 22, 2000.
While he took advantage of the clemency, he despised the deal that had won it for him. In his mind, it was a retreat and a sell-out of the six counties in the north. Disappointed and disheartened, Crawley would eventually resign from the IRA.
He has since married, had children and settled in Eire.
But he has not given up his dream of a united Ireland. And he still refuses to believe he was a terrorist or fundamentally different from other Irish patriots.
Or even American ones.
“If being prepared to risk life and take life as a U.S. Marine in defense of the American Republic didn’t qualify me as an extremist,” he asks, “why should it do so in defense of the Irish Republic?”
