Two Letters from 1919 and accompanying information

"They belonged to my wife who got them when her father passed away. They were from his father, who was Constable William Walsh R.I.C., to his mother. He sent them from Thurles where he was stationed during the War of Independence. About a month before the truce he was killed in an IRA ambush at Kallegbeg Cross in North Tipperary. I heard recently that he didn't die on that day but four days afterwards, and about two or three months before he was due to retire. My brother-in-law went and visited the area around Cloughjordan. The local story is that at his grandfather's funeral two strangers arrived – only after a few drinks it turned out they were supposed to be two IRA men – Dan Brian and Rory O'Connor. There's a story that he passed along information to the IRA around the time of the Civil War. The Local History Society in Cloughjordan put out information on the incident in a book of theirs. "