MacBride's participation in the violent events which shook Ireland from 1919 onwards formed the basis of his political and personal identity in the years that followed. Within post-Treaty IRA circles, MacBride was certainly regarded as ‘having the well-deserved reputation of having a good IRA record’, despite his relative youth. A recent publication notes that by current standards, MacBride would be ‘stigmatised as a child soldier … and his recruiters would be guilty of war crimes’. MacBride's revolution was somewhat slow to start, however. His schooling in Wexford removed him from much of the early activities of the Dublin IRA; and when he did return and join their ranks, it was as a very junior member. In so far as MacBride's revolution can be held as emblematic of anything, it is the revolution of an adolescent, desperately eager to please, who achieved middle rank and was involved in a respectable number of ambushes without achieving the fame of a Dan Breen or an Ernie O'Malley. Indeed, such an experience is arguably the more commonplace for Ireland's revolutionary heroes. MacBride's story from 1919 to 1921 is that of a young man trying to find a place for himself in the country and the circumstances he had been brought up to consider his birthright: fighting the British in Ireland.

The initial stages of what came to be known as the War of Independence rather passed MacBride by.