Dan Keating, Requiescat in pace.

I wonder how ol' Dan fared while trying to explain his lifetime of killing to his Judge...

Dan Keating, an IRA member and the last surviving veteran of Ireland's 1919-21 war of independence from Britain, has died, sources said. He was 105.

Mr. Keating joined the 1st Kerry Brigade of the Irish Republican Army in 1920 and, as a rifleman, took part in two major 1921 ambushes that left at least five police officers, four British soldiers and five IRA members dead.

"When you are involved in an ambush with a crowd of men, you wouldn't know who killed who. But the prospect never troubled me," Keating said in a March interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. He joined the IRA faction that opposed the 1921 peace treaty with Britain, and fought against former IRA colleagues in Ireland's 1922-23 civil war. He eventually was captured and spent seven months in a prisoner-of-war camp.

In a June 2006 interview, Keating said he considered the Irish Free State soldiers far more brutal than the British.

"They were worse than the Black and Tans," he said, using the nickname of Britain's auxiliary troops used during the war of independence, "and they committed some awful atrocities. In one week they murdered 19 people - comrades I knew only too well. They were just gone overnight."