John Crawley was born in New York to Irish immigrant parents and moved to Ireland as a young teenager to attend school. Inspired there by the struggle for Irish freedom against British rule in the North of Ireland, he returned to America to receive military training in an elite, special forces “Recon” unit of the US Marine Corps.

Afterwards, he returned to Ireland to volunteer for the IRA and conducted many missions, including gun-running from the US, working with Boston criminal head Whitey Bulger. Crawley would be captured and imprisoned twice, both in Ireland and in England, while on major missions, done in both times by informers.

He is now retired and married with a family, and lives in County Monaghan, Ireland. He remains as committed as ever to the ending of British rule in Ireland and the establishment of a united Irish Republic.

Books by John Crawley

The Yank: The True Story of a Former US Marine in the Irish Republican Army

by John Crawley - Memoir, Nonfiction

The Irish "Troubles" were at a murderous fever pitch when John Crawley volunteered for the IRA. Civilian casualties were common as British soldiers, Republican militants (who wanted the UK out of Northern Ireland) and Unionist police and militants (who wanted to remain in the UK) engaged in gun battles and car bombings throughout Northern Ireland. The IRA split over how to react between the old-line IRA and the new Provisional IRA --- the Provos, mostly impassioned young men who were not hesitant to resort to violence. In a no-holds-barred recounting of his experience, Crawley details, first, the grueling challenges of his Marine Corps training, then how he put his hard-earned munitions and demolitions skills to use back in Ireland in service of the Provos.