William Fanaghan Lynch (; 20 November 1892 – 10 April 1923) was an officer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921. During much of the Irish Civil War, he was chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army. On 10 April 1923, Lynch was killed whilst trying to escape an encirclement by Free State troops in south Tipperary. Early life Lynch was born in the townland of Baurnagurrahy, Anglesboro, County Limerick, near Mitchelstown, County Cork, on 20 November 1892. His father was Jeremiah Lynch and his mother was Mary Lynch (née Kelly), both of whom are buried in Brigown graveyard, Mitchelstown. During his first twelve years of schooling he attended Anglesboro National School. Lynch was living with his parents in Baurnagurrahy for the 1901 and 1911 censuses. In 1909, at the age of 17, he started an apprenticeship in O'Neill's hardware shop in Mitchelstown, where he joined the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Later he worked at Barry's Timber Yard in Fermoy. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, he witnessed David and Thomas Kent of Bawnard House being taken through Fermoy after their arrest by the Royal Irish Constabulary. After this, he determined to dedicate his life to Irish republicanism. In 1917 he was elected First Lieutenant of the Irish Volunteer Company, based in Fermoy. War of Independence In Cork, Lynch reorganised the Irish Volunteers—the paramilitary organisation that became the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—in 1919, becoming commandant of the Cork No. 2 Brigade of the IRA during the guerrilla Anglo-Irish War. He helped capture a senior British officer, General Cuthbert Lucas, in June 1920, shooting a Colonel Danford in the incident. Lucas later escaped while being held by IRA men in County Clare. Lynch was captured, together with the other officers of the Cork No. 2 Brigade, in a British raid on Cork City Hall in August 1920. Terence McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, was among those captured; he later died on hunger strike in protest at his detention. Lynch, however, gave a false name and was released three days later. He then began to organise a flying column within his IRA brigade to launch attacks on British targets. Having "made himself a leader out of force of his own convictions ... possessed by a sense of mission and by revolutionary ardour", Lynch believed independence could only be "hewed"