first annual meeting in September 1934, but the 20-year-old Donnelly was elected to the National Executive of the truncated organisation. Thereafter, he wrote for the Congress newspaper on political and social questions. In January 1935, Donnelly was again arrested for assaulting a Garda (policeman) at a Congress demonstration and was imprisoned for a month. In February 1935, he left Ireland for London. In the British capital he worked for the Republican Congress London branch and found employment variously as a dishwasher in pubs and cafes and as a reporter with an international news agency. He also wrote articles for various left wing publications. Together with two other poets, Leslie Daiken and Ewart Milne, he was one of the founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front. Eoin McNamee recalled Donnelly as "a frail looking Dublin man with a Tyrone background...he was something of an intellectual and clearly the theorist of the Irish Republican Congress in London at that time. He was well versed in Marxism, wrote for the Congress and Communist press, and frequently appeared on left wing public platforms." Spanish Civil War In July 1936, on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he urged the Republican Congress to send fighters to the International Brigades. He himself returned to Dublin with the intention of organising such a force. By the end of 1936, he had gone again to London and joined the Brigades. He reached Spain on 7 January 1937 and at Albacete, met up with an Irish contingent, led by Frank Ryan, known as the Connolly Column who had come to Spain to fight on the Republican side. Donnelly and his comrades were attached to the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion. On 15 February, after receiving only rudimentary military training, the Abraham Lincoln battalion was thrown into the battle of Jarama, near Madrid. Donnelly reached the front on 23 February, where he was promoted to the rank of field commander. On 27 February his unit were sent on a frontal assault on the Nationalist positions on a hill named Pingarron. Donnelly and his unit were pinned down by machine gun fire all day. In the evening, the Nationalists launched a counter-attack. A Canadian veteran recalled, The line would later become famous. A few minutes later, as his unit retreated, Donnelly was caught in a burst of gunfire. He was struck three times, in the right arm, the right side