A unique photo of four "Irish Swords" all Brothers in Arms.
Serial numbers are , from front to back, 708, 586,389 & 993.
Note the "first 1000" Aut-ord-Co bullet logo on the top of the receivers.
(These fine Colt 1921's are in a private collection, outside of Ireland)
The Thompson was nicknamed the Irish Sword.
In June of 1921, approximately 495 Thompson's were found in the hold of a Dublin-bound ship, on their way to the Irish Republican Army. Throughout the Sinn Fein rebellion, Irish Americans in the US had been supplying guns and financial aid to support the cause. Prior to the capture of the Thompson's in the ships hold, 50 Thompson's were sold to three men, named Mryphy, O'Brien and Gallagher. The guns were delivered to a saloonkeeper P. J. Gentry on May 25, and apparently reached Ireland. The Thompson saw most of its action in early 1922, in border raids against Ulster. In an attack at Clones Station in February Tommygunners killed four Special Constables and wounded eleven others. But during the Civil War most of Ireland's Tommyguns were in the hands of the Free State Army, not the I.R.A.
Although the Thompson did not reach Ireland in great numbers or play a major role in the winning of Ireland's freedom, it was a novel enough and glamorous enough item of ordnance to earn itself a place in the nostalgic memories of I.R.A. veterans. One such account describes the young rebel soldiers as adventurous, idealistic farm boys and students who "enjoyed the irresponsible romantic existence, the swagger which made possible by a revolver or a rifle (thrice-happy the man who could carry a Thompson gun!)."
The Chorus of one old I.R.A. ballad goes:
We're off to Dublin in the green, in the green,
Where the helmets glisten in the sun,
Where the bayonets flash and the rifles crash,
To the echo of a Thompson gun.
An indepth account of the Thompson and how it arrived in Ireland can be found in the book by William Helmer, The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar.
