[Jcordell]

I wish I could provide a bibliography for the following information , but I can't. Anyhow years ago I came across a piece of information about the IRA. Now that is not an organization I support, but it would have to be considered a guerilla organization in it's methods regardless of what one thinks of their political objectives. One man's Terrorist is another man's Freedom fighter. Anyway the source stated that the British estimated the actual number of active (full-time) IRA operatives to number no more than thirty or forty. Thirty or forty! Think about that. The Irish "Troubles" (the most recent one) started in 1969/70 lasted for approximately thirty years (give or take a few years) and killed a bunch of people and the IRA had less than a 100 active operatives.

Oh sure there were a bunch of auxilaries who showed up for the occassional event and many more supporters who provided support (food, shelter, money, weapons etc.) but somewhere between 30 - 40 people actually doing the majority of bombings, shootings, ambushes, raids, kidnappings, and other assorted acts. I think this little figure supports your theory in full. I don't know how many troops England had in Northern Ireland at the peak and of course that isn't counting all the cops and intelligence operatives, but I bet it was a lot more then 30 or 40. That's guerilla warfare.

Of course I would imagine there was a pretty high turn-over among those 30/40 IRA "soldiers". High mortality rate, bad benefits and no pension.