of the 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment, in Kinsale, County Cork. Percival proved himself an energetic counter-guerrilla, noted for his aptitude for intelligence-gathering and the establishment of bicycle-riding 'Mobile Columns'. He was accused of brutality towards prisoners, including the use of strikes of a rifle butt to the head, pincers to pull fingernails and burning cigarettes on the body. These accusations were substantiated by prisoners' testimony but the veracity of the accounts has been challenged by a journalist. Following the IRA killing of a Royal Irish Constabulary sergeant outside Bandon church in July 1920, Percival captured Tom Hales, commander of the IRA's 3rd Cork Brigade, and Patrick Harte, the brigade's quartermaster, for which he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Both prisoners later claimed to have been repeatedly beaten and tortured while in custody. Hales alleged that a pair of pliers had been used on his lower body and to extract his fingernails. Harte suffered brain injury and died in a mental hospital in 1925. Ormonde Winter, the head of British Intelligence in Dublin Castle, later named Hales as an informer who had invented the story as an excuse for providing the names of his fellow IRA members in return for a lesser sentence. IRA commandant Tom Barry later stated that Percival was "easily the most vicious anti-Irish of all serving British officers". David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill met Percival in 1921, when he was called as an expert witness during an inquiry into the Anglo-Irish War. Percival would later deliver a series of lectures on his experiences in Ireland in which he stressed the importance of surprise and offensive action, intelligence-gathering, maintaining security and co-operation between the security forces. In his reports Percival was scathing of the government's policy of repeatedly releasing IRA prisoners between 1916 and 1920, claiming that "these men immediately returned to their homes and organised the murder of those members of the RIC who had been instrumental in effecting their arrests". Historian J.B.E. Hittle wrote that of all the British officers in Ireland "Percival stood out for his violent, sadistic behaviour towards IRA prisoners, suspects and innocent civilians......He also participated in reprisals, burning farms and businesses in response to IRA attacks. However, Clifford Kinvig, Percival's biographer considers him to have been unfairly vilified by Republican propaganda due to him being "tireless in his attempt to destroy the spirit