damage and died insane at Broadmoor Hospital in 1925. Crossbarry In March 1921, at Crossbarry, County Cork, the Essex Regiment encircled the IRA's "West Cork Flying Column" with 1,200 troops and soon managed to expose a company-sized element of the IRA. The IRA flying column, under the command of Tom Barry, numbered 104 'volunteers'. However, rather than attempting to immediately destroy this IRA element, which had been met in contact, Percival, the RIC and the Essex Regiment were ordered to link with the larger regular forces in an attempt to encircle the IRA force. However, the delay in tempo needed to carry out this move and a lack of communications between the RIC mobile teams and the Regulars, resulted in the pressure being taken off Barry's IRA men. This allowed the IRA force to attack and overwhelm a number of isolated army positions, which appeared to create an opening out of the encirclement. Foreseeing a break-out, Percival ordered his Essex and RIC mobile teams to regroup and lay an ambush outside the opening. Simultaneously, the larger regular force misunderstood Percival's objective and thought it saw an opportunity to destroy the entire IRA force in Cork. Consequently, it abandoned most of its encircling positions and regrouped the regulars for a single large attack on the ambush site. Meanwhile, believing his column had little chance of escaping, Barry ordered his IRA men to break out in small groups as best they could through the encirclement. Thus, in a stroke of luck, most of Barry's IRA column simply passed through the abandoned encircling army posts. A small IRA detachment did attempt to break out through the British ambush site. However, as the RIC and Essex group were about to spring their ambush, an Irish regular force racing to the ambush site ran into the IRA detachment and was quickly engaged. In the resulting firefight, the IRA detachment disrupted the British Army column and then melted away. In total, the British Army stationed 12,500 troops in County Cork during the conflict, while Barry's men numbered no more than 110 soldiers in the flying column and a little over 1,000 IRA members in the West Cork 3rd brigade, with only about 110 rifles. Almost all the IRA's weapons and equipment were captured from the British. The British Army failed to subdue the IRA flying column, and Barry's tactics made West Cork ungovernable for the British.