When unassuming American tourist Daniel Wyndham arrived in Tralee, he was searching for whatever strain of Irish mysticism inspired W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.

But instead of a Celtic Twilight he found the hard-drinking redcoats of the Royal Munster Fusiliers - the Dirty Shirts.

Ireland was on the brink of civil war, Europe was on the brink of world war, and Wyndham was about to find out what the heroes and fighting men of Irish legend looked like in the twentieth century.