2nd October 2007 - The Passing of Dan Keating Born at Ballygamboon near Castlemaine, County Kerry, in 1902, Dan Keating joined Fianna Éireann in Tralee in 1918 and later the Irish Republican Army. During the Tan War, he served with the Kerry Brigades and took part in the Ballymacandy Ambush of June 1921 and the Castleisland Ambush on the eve of the Truce. Keating rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty and fought on the Republican side during the Counter-revolutionary War. Captured in 1922, he was imprisoned in Portlaoise and later interned at the Curragh concentration camp before his release in 1924. His Republican activity continued for decades afterwards. He was repeatedly imprisoned by the Free State authorities during the 1930s, participated in the IRA campaign in Britain in 1939-40 and was interned again at the Curragh during the Second World War. Keating remained committed to the principle of abstentionism through the later divisions within the movement. Following the 1986 Sinn Féin split, he supported @RepublicanSF and in 2004 its Ard-Fheis elected him Patron. He refused both a so-called War of Independence pension and the Free State's centenarian payment out of Republican principle. Dan Keating died on 2nd October 2007 at the age of 105. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving veteran of the Tan War. He was buried at Kiltallagh Cemetery near Castlemaine, where The Croppy Boy was played by a lone piper as his coffin was lowered into the grave. An Phoblacht abú 🇮🇪