Francis McCullagh


Francis McCullagh was an Irish journalist, war correspondent, and author.

Career overview

McCullagh was born in Bridge Street, Omagh, County Tyrone, in 1874, the son of James McCullagh, a publican originally from the Gortin area, and Bridget McCullagh.
He began his journalism career as a staff reporter at the Glasgow Observer, and would continue writing for the newspaper through 1906-1937. From 1898, he was a correspondent for the New York Herald. In 1903, he was living in Japan, working for the English-language newspaper The Japan Times. Observing the growing tension between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire, he studied the Russian language. In 1904, he moved to Port Arthur, the major Russian military base in Manchuria, obtaining a post as a correspondent for the Novi Kraï newspaper of Port Arthur. At the start of the Russo-Japanese War, he became a non-military observer embedded within the Imperial Russian Army. In March 1905, he was evacuated as a prisoner of war, traveling from Dalny to Ujina on the Nippon Yusen liner Awa Maru. His experiences were published in 1906 as With the Cossacks: Being the Story of an Irishman Who Rode With the Cossacks Throughout the Russo-Japanese War.
He subsequently returned to Russia to cover the 1918-1922 Siberian Intervention during the Russian Civil War. At one point, the Bolshevik Red Army captured him.
In 1937, he covered the Spanish Civil War.
McCullagh died in White Plains, New York in 1956.

Works