Eighty years ago on 6 September 1940 a Free State Army firing squad executed two IRA Volunteers –a veteran of the 1916 Rising and his young comrade born in that year. Paddy McGrath and Thomas Harte had been tried by a military court under the Offences Against the State Act and met their deaths despite pleas for their lives to Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Eamon de Valera. Free article