Tommy or Thomas Wood [note 1] (c. 1919 – 1936) was a young Irish man who joined the International Brigades, fighting on the side of the Spanish Republic during the civil war against General Franco's Nationalists.
Wood had been attached to the recently formed XIV International Brigade at Albacete, and was almost immediately despatched—on 24 December—to the Córdoba area[23] as part of the Aceituna Campaign.
[note 4] A fellow of Wood's, Joe Monks, described their departure for the front on Christmas Eve: "The people turned out to wish us bon voyage; the little girls kissed us.
[26] The brigade's attempted offensive in Lopera, comments the historian R. Dan Richardson, "received a baptism of fire [which] turned into a thorough debacle".
[4][note 5] Kerney was requested to contact the republican Spanish Government Authorities and seek Wood's return on account of his being a legal minor still.
In his autobiography, the political commissar of the column Michael O'Riordan, reported that on 21 January, Ryan wrote that Wood had been wounded but did not list him among the dead.
[30] On 6 February, Ryan wrote to the Irish Communist Party's paper, The Worker,[note 6] that Wood had been "slightly wounded and [was] progressing favourably".
[6] He was carried off the field by the English communist and historian Ralph Winston Fox and ex-British soldier and Auxiliary[34] George Nathan,[35][note 7] but after being collected by stretcher bearers, he was hit again, this time in the head.
[6] The Irish folk and rebel music singer and songwriter Christy Moore wrote a song in 1983 while on holiday in Spain, which he titled 'Viva la Quinta Brigada'.
Where he fought and died beneath the blazing sun[40]In a 1961 interview with Sylvère Lotringer, the Irish writer Brendan Behan claimed Wood as a friend of his (albeit "two years older than myself when he went away").
[41] Fellow brigadista Monks—also from Dublin and a friend of Seán O'Casey[42]—later spoke to the John Cornford Poetry Group and described his memories of Wood at Lopera.