No one had a longer high-ranking association with the Irish Volunteers and successor Irish armed forces than Jeremiah Joseph O’Connell, better known as ‘J. J.’ or ‘Ginger’ O’Connell. His unpublished memoir of his Volunteer activities is particularly valuable because it addresses the crucial period from the split in 1914 to the Rising, a timespan not well illuminated in the witness statements collected by the Bureau of Military History (BMH) between 1947 and 1957. The memoir gives a unique insight to the challenges of rebuilding the Volunteers after the split in September 1914 and moulding them into a properly disciplined and uniformly trained body with a capacity, should the need arrive, for meaningful military action