Flamboyant
One
OUR nurse, Nannie, told my eldest brother and me stories
and legends. Her stories began: 'Once upon a time, and a
very good time it was,' and ended with 'They put on the
kettle and made tay, and if they were not happy, that you
may.' Tales of the King of Ireland's son, his strange adven-
tures and exploits; fairy tales about the 'good people'; the
story of the heavy-handed, mighty Fionn and his giant
strength; the epic of Cuchulain, the boy hero, the Hound of
Ulster; Cuchulain of the grey sword that broke every gap;
of Ferdia of Connacht whose loss was our loss, for was he
not from Erris in our county Mayo. That was the best of all
her stories.
She sang us songs and ballads of the people and of the
land:
'Tis often I sat on my true love's knee
And many a fond story he told me.
He told me things that ne'er should be,
Go dte/igh tu, a mhu/irni/n,
I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel,
When flax is spun I'll sell my wheel,
To buy my love a sword of steel,
Go dte/igh tu, mhu/irni/n slan.
I know where I'm going,
I know who's going with me,
I know who I'll love
But the dear knows who I'll marry
Oh, the French are on the say,
Says the Shan Van Vocht;
The French are on the say,
Says the Shan Van Vocht;
Oh, the French are in the bay
They'll be here without delay
And the Orange will decay,
Says the Shan Van Vocht.
A Bansha Peeler went one night
On duty an' patrollin' O,
An' met a goat upon the road
An' took her for a stroller O.
With bay'net fixed he sallied forth,
An' caught her by the wizzen O,
An' then he swore a mighty oath,
'I'll send ye off to prison O.'
But this, 'The Peeler and the Goat,' in a quieter tone, and
when we were alone.
In low and often stilly tones she told and retold ghost
stories that afterwards made us keep our heads under the
blankets. In the demesne, which belonged to Lord Lucan, we
looked for green-coated leprechauns under the trees, listened
for the ting-ting of their silver hammers, and watched the
fairy dancing rings in the glades. Often on the path close to
the chestnut trees we met old Lord Lucan on his tricycle.
Although we felt inclined to laugh at his machine, which we
thought of as a child's toy, and his straight-backed, slow
crablike approach, we answered his few remarks with serious
faces. Nannie took our part against our parents, defended us,
often accepted the blame for our small faults, which in a
home atmosphere could grow to gigantic proportions.
Life at first seemed to be a mixture of admonitions, curly
hair, and velvet suits, probably due to a wave of Little Lord
Fauntleroy. Governesses replaced each other rapidly ; we
had not much sympathy with that anaemic form of spinster-
hood. With the servants we spent many happy hours talking
or listening; from them we confirmed or changed our ideas
of people. By exchanging gossip with the girls in other houses
they could view family life in unexpected and unwished-for
ways. They knew our visitors and guests well, especially if
they had been a long time in the family. Then they could
advise, quarrel, threaten to leave, and often domineer ; but,
except Nannie, they were in a rank of servitude and looked
upon as a third sex. We listened to the stories of the butter
woman, watched her unroll her ridged pats and bulky ovoids
from a muslin wrap, and gathered near her when she drank
her big mugs of tea.
We were not allowed to go with other children; few were
'good enough' for us. We could not accept the distinctions
of our elders. We divided people into those who were courte-
ous and those who were distinguished according to our views.
Many with whom we were not supposed to mix passed our
tests, others whom we met in the house or in the streets did
not. Our chief admiration was for a boy who could use stilts,
and a tomboy who could walk on her hands. The most
interesting of all our illicit acquaintances was a beggar woman
who was double-jointed, and the town crier who gave extra
dongs of his bell when he stopped to speak. With envy we
watched boys and tomboy girls at horseplay, listened to their
shouts; watched the men who cemented the outside of the
house as they slithered with spades at delicious puddles.
The Royal Irish Constabulary had a barracks opposite
us. They touched their caps to father. We often climbed
the steps and were shown spruce weapons ; carbines clipped
in arms racks, blue-black revolvers, the steel of bayonets,
and heavy-padded helmets. The Head Constable would talk
to us in a chesty voice, a sergeant with thick gold V's
brought us through the rooms. Once we saw police, no longer
in bottle green, stiff-collared tunics, but like ordinary people,
wearing soft caps and cloth suits. They were going to the
North on special duty to keep the peace at the Twelfth-of-
July celebrations, when the Orangemen with song, bands,
banners, and fists blooded from thudding their drums, re-
membered the victory of William of the Boyne. Mary Anne
did not like to see us talking to the police--they were Peelers,
she said.
Ours was a shoneen town, as I knew it; a shoneen, little
John Bull, was anyone who aped the manners and fashions
of the English as interpreted through the Anglicized Irish ;
who adapted his mentality, or lack of it, to theirs; who des-
pised and, actively or passively, ignored the remnant of the
older Gaelic civilization of the people. Father and mother
never spoke of Ireland to us. If one minded one's business
there was time for little else. Nationality did not exist to
disturb or worry normal life. We heard long discussions at
table about names--Parnell, Redmond, Tim Healy--and the
words Home Rule. There was a general parliamentary elec-
tion which was of interest to us; every day we could look
at the opposing parties who were presented in the newspapers
as men climbing long ladders. Englishmen thought of nothing
but their bellies ; that seemed generally agreed on. But when
I was called O Ma/ille, our name in Irish, I was insulted.
That was not my name; only the poor used it. I would have
none of it.
At the concerts in the Mall, given by a band from the
garrison, most of the onlookers took off their hats when
'God Save the King' was played. We saw the militia stamping
by on the way to a summer camp, and heard the ring of their
nailed boots. Aided by the delightful remarks of shawled
neighbours: 'Wisha look at the boyo, Kateen' ; 'Glory be to
God, will ye look at Tinker Durcan'; we picked out some of
the town drunks noising past clean-shaven, in khaki. The
minister invited us to cinematograph shows in his house; all
Protestants were respectable and rich. Priests came to us for
dinner. They were hearty men who drank their whiskeys-and-
sodas with father or sat at the fire sipping at sweet-smelling
punch; but why did they screw up their faces after a long
drink if it was not pleasant? One of them always called the
'pope's nose' on a bird 'the ecclesiastical part' ; that meant a
laugh at table. At Westport, where we had driven to Mass
from the sea, a temperance preacher asked us all to stand
up to take the pledge against drink for a year. We were in
the gallery. Father alone kept his seat though mother
whispered : 'Stand up, dear; don't make a show of yourself.'
Later he lashed the cowards who, next day, would drink as
usual.
The priest would read out the dues from the altar. He
blew his nose like a cracked trumpet. I often tried it and
knew how it hurt. It would be fine to make a noise like that
He would pause for a long time after some names, or cough
in a threatening way. He would repeat a name, as if by acci-
dent 'Patrick Joe Grimes two shillings . . . Patrick Joe
Grimes.' Nannie said priests would stick you to the ground
if you went against them, or put horns on you, God save the
mark.
10
At Mass on Sundays from the centre of the chapel we
could look across the partition to the right and left to the
penny and tuppenny places where were low stool seats or
bare ground to kneel on. We sat on high-backed, varnished
pews : country women knelt on bare knees. One man, at the
Elevation, always hit his stomach three resounding smacks.
I heard father say to a friend that he was 'a regular craw-
thumper.' At funerals I heard women wailing and saw them
beating their long, wild-strewn hair as they climbed the hill
in the foot-gatherings. People lifted their hats, blinds were
drawn, shops would put up a shutter. It was a good thing,
when the procession passed, to turn and walk three steps
after the corpse. In the town a box of clay pipes and tobacco
or snuff might be left outside the chapel door whilst the
corpse was lying inside.
On market days we could sense the roughness of country
people. Awkward men drinking pints of frothy porter, using
wiry ash plants on each other in daylight or being dragged
and sometimes carried to the barracks by police. Bullocks
beaten through the streets, the shrill complaining of pigs, a
steady waft of speech and smells of cow dung and fresh horse
droppings. Shawled barefooted women selling eggs and yellow,
strong salty butter in plaited osier baskets, salty dilisk in
trays, or minding bonnovs with a su/gan. A ballad singer with
an old song or one of a recent happening, stressing his
syllables, rushing a long line into a short singing space whilst
the people gathered in a circle, following the words eagerly.
They bought his broadsheets and hummed the notes as they
walked around. Old women with pleated frills to their wlite
caps, the more wealthy with black bonnets shaking from a
spangle of flat beads; boys in corduroy trousers and bare
feet; rosy girls in tight-laced boots, which some had put on
at the entrance to the town. Through all, talk, laughter, hot-
blooded sudden blows, a sense of the bare breath of Mayo,
backed by rounded mountains and sea, frayed lake-edges, and
the straight reach of Nephin Mountain.
Nannie could tell fortunes with tea leaves: In the space of
three you'll get a letter you won't expect . . . there's a red-
haired man has a great wish for you. She looked at the sky
last thing at night to find out the direction of the wind and
the chances of rain. The sunwise turn was important ; we
should pass the salt that way, or whatever was wanted at
table. A Connachtman had leave to speak twice and to poke
the fire, she said. Thunder was God's voice in anger, lightning,
earthquake, or tidal wave punishments visited on the evil.
We were afraid of the dark through stories of walking death,
black dogs whose eyes were yellow fistfuls of fire, and the
co/iste bodhar, the terrible death coach. A ringing noise in
the ear meant a friend dead, and shooting stars were souls
released from Purgatory.
The gentleness and kindness of the people were all around
us as children, shielding and expanding, offset by steady
supervision of parents, nuns, priests, and teachers. One had
to be courteous to understand or feel with the people; on the
surface they were pleasant to each other, though I thought
their deference, to those who were wealthier and had more
social standing, to be put on. We would see their smouldering
wild fierceness also. Nannie would speak of mountainy men
and show them to us at a fair; somehow they were different.
Whether she came from the hills I do not know, but ever
since a mountainy man, or the name itself, heightens some-
thing in me.
At school where soldiers' sons from the garrison attended,
we pronounced 'a' as 'Ah' and not as 'ae' as they did.
Somehow for us 'ah' represented the difference between the
two nationalities. We were taught a little Irish, the Our
Father, the Hail Mary, and a few salutations. The few
words of Irish in common use were vulgar: gob, pus ; but
endearing terms a ghra/dh, a chuisle, a mhic, a sto/ir, and
'pulse of my heart' were used naturally as well as the diminu-
tive 'een' ; noreen, calfeen. The speech of the country people
and of some of the townsfolk was rude: tay, mate, afeard,
decave, faut, twiced; Tudor words once respectable. Adjec-
tival richness. Irish construction in English, use of Irish in
an English sentence, the marked rhythm of voice, were fit
only for the uneducated. We saw donkeys and jennets carry-
ing creels of turf to sell from house to house, and watched
asses and carts loaded with bog-dale.
The history of our town became loosely threaded together
in our minds : Dudley Costello of the early seventeenth
century lingered on. As a rapparee he had fought the Planters
from Mayo to Tyrone until his head rounded a spike on the
gateway of Dublin Castle.... Outside an hotel on the Mall
was the tree from which Father Conroy had been hanged in
1798. He had taken a despatch from a messenger riding hard
to the redcoats, roused his parish to gather supplies for the
12
French ; but he had not fought. . . . Sheriff Brown in that
Year of the French had made many a boy and man dangle
from the trees on the edge of the Mall.... Stoball, a hill in
the town said to be connected with an order 'Stab all.' . . .
French Hill, where the Frenchmen who had landed at Killala
fought and died chasing the English who had bolted to
Athlone on the Shannon. . . . Fighting FitzGerald, whose
house we often passed, had been hanged on a cart. The rope
had broken : 'The British Government can't even buy a
decent rope to hang me with,' he had said. We had watched the
judge at the Assizes clothed in scarlet and ermine. He sat
erect in his carriage guarded by cavalry with drawn swords.
The escort was a result of the land war; their white spotless
bridles had a metal core in memory of the slashing pikes of
the '98 rebels.
We hurried home once to tell our tense rage. We had heard
the story of Deirdre and the sons of Monagh; we were angry
against Conchubar the king who had killed the three brothers
and had broken his word.
On Clew Bay, where we went each summer, we learned to
row punts and boats, to blister our hands sitting side by side
tugging at the one long sweep with the fishermen. They
carved small boats for us, models of schooners, frigates,
ships, full-rigged boats in glass bottles. We learned to work
a lug-sail and to manage centre keels; we knew the names
of sails and shipping terms, to the delight of our sailor-
teachers. We sailed on the stout-nosed fishing smacks of the
Bay, where there are few traditions. Farther out, beyond the
Bar, was rough sea, and the story-tellers of Achill and Clare
Island. Near the steep swarthy cliffs of Achill men shot the
seals that gluttoned on fish; fishing in a choppy sea we
helped to pull in leaping lines and watched gleaming blue-
green mackerel and scaly silvery herrings fighting death with
curved bodies. We took lobsters from floating lobster-pots
and watched shells being gathered in oysterbeds.
Clare Island was an adventure even on what would be
called a calm day; the open sea lashed the cliffs that faced
towards Dooega Head and the rising slate blue of Croghaun
of Achill. It lashed the people who lived there. To us the
island meant stories of Gra/ine Ni/ Mha/ille, who had refused
a title from Elizabeth--'were they not both princesses?'--a
strong-minded Connacht woman who worried her husbands,
flaunted Elizabeth's governors, and as a pirate, robbed
13
Spanish and English ships. A cable led from her bedroom
in one of her castles to a galley below ; she did not leave
much to chance. In the minds of the people her name,
Grannia Uaile, had become a symbol for Ireland.
We lived the stories we heard of pirate ships and wrecks
from the Great Armada. We stole off in a rowboat on daring
discoveries ; there were islands near where we lived. Our
sister Sweetie would be Grannia Uaile, but the orders would
come from Frankie and me. She would change suddenly to
be the mother of an English sea captain. 'Let's play . . .'
'Let me be .. .' 'No, me . . .' 'Me.' It was hard to fight
against the English because none of us wanted to be the
Sasanach; it was an insult which could be wiped out only by
having the shouting Irish, who always won in the person of
Frankie, become the English later on.
One day we stole away in a small boat; the lug sail was
folded around the mast which was under the seats. When
out of sight of the house we all roared orders at the same
time, the boat dipped and wallowed with excitement. 'There
she is . . . Bang . . . bang. More powder . . . surrender. . . .'
We saw a high galley poop and the gunners with lighted
cord matches whilst we bore down to leeward straight on to
ram in our two-banked galley. Our wooden spears had cords
attached so that we could throw them into the water and
haul them in again ; they served as spears, guns, cannons,
and arrows. Sweetie was a nurse who bound up heads with
our hankies. The curly-headed Bertie and she had to become
our prisoners; we tied them with ropes; they were now the
crew of the Spanish ship.
We learned to love the sea, to be unafraid of it; stormy
days found us out on a point watching the curve of breakers
or shouting on a cliff ledge above the spray and crash. Behind
the Bay was the pointed Reek, Croagh Patrick, with its yearly
pilgrimage climbing the rocky slopes to hear Mass where
Patrick had once fasted. Stout-bellied hookers with dun and
sienna sails carried turf to the mainland; we listened to the
Achill men talking their wild, strong-sounding Gaelic, which
we had heard in town at markets and in the Courthouse
during trials.
The islanders had nearly all been abroad as sailors; they
talked around the turf fires of their hardships and adventures
in foreign parts, but from the women we heard the stories of
the islands. After returning from a fair the men imitated the
14
gestures, speech, and peculiarities of the mainland people;
with twisting sarcasm they mimicked people we knew. They
were quickly enraged if their lack of energy in off seasons
was criticized. At a wake I heard the caoin, a heart-breaking
cry of women in grief, caught up by it so that it seemed to
flow through them from another source ; the wail became
unified, impersonal as a sea-moan, disembodied as grief itself.
We were shown the Dane's Hole, which had passages leading
to the sea. In one room were old swords and an Irish flag;
but we did not go down through fear. The people had con-
fused the Danish Invaders with an earlier race, the Tuatha
De Danan.
Now we knew the country on either side of the Bay, from
grey, hungry Connemara to Mulranny. The bare, once ice-
covered drumlin gave the land a gloomy look when the sky
was clouded or when rain-winds tufted black clouds. But sun
made the cold land and the dark green glint and become
lush ; it shone on the crowded islands, lifting them out of the
water, making the cliffs recede. A harsh land and lonely,
hard to make a living from its grudging soil, cruel-hard they
said it was, as hard as the hob of hell, and desolate in the
winter when storms could cut them off for three weeks from
the mainland. Misty, indefinite, the land changed its surface
in the mind from gaiety to brooding melancholy ; but it
gripped hard when one knew it or had lived there.
In rain or sun we love this country; its haunting imper-
sonal bareness, its austerity, aloofness, small lakes, the dis-
proportionate bulking of the mountains, smells of shrivelled
seaweed rotting in grey dirt-spume, brine, storm-wood, tarred
rope and riggings, sea-wrack, and mud after an ebb tide.
The glass green blue of a rough sea, clear depths under a
cloudless sky, blurred distorted crabs and the flowing of
fronds and seaweed slow apricot sunsets, steel grey, white,
and light blue clouds furled up by wind, splotched by rain
until they mixed as on a palette, white green undersides of
waves dashed back from pitted torn rocks, phosphorescence
dripping from oars and bow on a dark night, the bullet pre-
cision of caillech dubh diving clean for fish. Changing swirls
of moaning wind on capey headlands, rain splashing off
thatched roofs or pelting against windows, waves smashing in
rough sea as the bow dipped in furrows when one lay
stretched out forward, the raucous harshness of herring gulls,
islanders shouting into the breeze against the clapping of
15
sails. Our life was ringed by the Bay; it was a huge world to
us.
An old woman told my fortune one day as I dried myself
at her fire after I had fallen out of a punt. She looked at my
feet as well as my hands and kept her hand on my head as
she told me of fighting and trouble; but I do not remember
the end of her tale.
TWO
AT a station in the midlands as the family moved to Dublin
we heard loud moaning from women who were saying good-
bye to their sons and daughters who were off to America.
The moans became a caoin, women threw their shawls back
from their heads and beat their faces as they wailed : 'A
Mhuire, Mhuire . . . 0 Katey girleen . . . O Michael boy,
my son.'
Our accent was mimicked, and back to back my brother
and I fought a ring of tormentors; in the end we were left
alone, as we were both lithe and hardy. We told our school
chums stories of Fionn and Cuchulain, but they laughed at
us. They had read the latest Buffalo Bill, could talk of the
red varmints of Indians, Colt's-emptying frontier fighters, of
split-up-the-back Eton suits and the rags of that other public
school life of the Magnet and Gem. Only to ourselves now
did we talk about the older stories. We told lies and deceived
our teachers whenever it suited us. We felt ourselves con-
spirators against what we considered the undue authority of
school and home.
I made my first holy communion. It would be the happiest
day of my life I was told, and I would always look back at it
proudly; but I was in the dumps. I looked at myself in the
glass. I could not see the light of grace on my forehead;
perhaps I had made a bad communion. I worried over the
confession in my mind . . .
Yearly a Brother, whom we called the recruiting sergeant,
came to enquire about our vocations for the Brothers or the
priesthood We were interviewed singly and prompted about
our leanings towards religious life.
16
I learned of comparative religion by swopping stories with
a Presbyterian boy. Some of my tales began : 'There was once
a minister Dick...' His: 'There was a fat old priest who...'
My suppressed indignation lingered on, but helped me to
make an adjustment in tolerance.
King Edward came to Dublin. I was sent with my younger
brother and sister to see the procession pass down town from
the Phoenix Park. We stood in the front rank of the waiting
people. I said we would keep our hats on. Scarlet-coated
Life Guards with shining helmets cantered past ; but we alone
of the crowd looked at the carriage with hats on. To show
my intense conviction, I spelt King with a small letter. I did
not like the English. Early, Nannie with a grimace of disgust
told us the story of the giant who said 'Fee, fah, fum, I smell
the blood of an Englishman'; evidently they smelt badly.
We met few English people ; they seemed very grand in
manner, important, and serious, with loud voices.
Joe Devlin, Member of Parliament for Belfast, came to
see us. Our teacher had told us about the mighty man before
he visited the classroom with the Head. We stood up and
cheered when he entered. He asked for a half-holiday for the
school, which was granted ; truly, he was a great man. He
spoke about Home Rule and Irish freedom.
We learned to mix with 'gutties' in the lower schools, to
sit beside patched home dignity and thrift or carelessness.
We laughed at the Jesuit school, Belvedere, and invented
names for the initials 'BC' on their caps ; in examination
results we beat them. We fought boys from Belvedere and
Protestants from Mountjoy School; they were Swaddlers and
Proddy-dogs ; we were papishes, R.C.'s pronounced quickly,
and O'Connell's Sausages, from the 'O.C.S.' on our caps;
their 'M.S.' meant Monkey Slops. At home there were still
taboos as to whom we should mix with ; but our selection
was based on liking. At school there was no stress on relative
wealth ; brains were shared equally by rich and poor, but
many could not reach the higher grades because their parents
needed their earnings.
Now there came a change. Here was more of a middle
class concentration ; its prejudices and distinctions gripped us.
The budding attractions of ties, long trousers, hair oil, and
girls were combined with Ruskin, who seemed as necessary
for certain years as pimples. Gentility flourished easily in
Ireland : very little wealth nourished it. In the towns
17
tuppence-ha'penny looked down on tuppence, and throughout
the country the grades in social difference were as numerous
as the layers of an onion.
My sister was taught deportment by nuns in boarding-
schools, how to enter and leave a carriage, the flouncing
courtesy, recitations for company, and art as applied with
needles in a ladylike way to unoffending backgrounds. By
the irony of Irish life she was now in Saint Ita's, Padraig
Pearse's first school, conducted by Miss Gavan-Duffy, a
friend of mother's. Pearse, a separatist, controlled a boy's
school, Saint Enda's ; one of the two Catholic schools not
conducted by religious. I had accepted Catholic views of
normality in religion, morals and behaviour ; atheists were
perverse, they sinned against the light. There was a pitying
commiseration for them and for people of other religions.
There were strikes in Dublin, the great lockout of the
Larkin strike. Workers who refused to resign from the Irish
Transport and General Workers' Union were thrown out by
the Dublin Employers' Federation. Twenty thousand men
starved slowly for six months whilst they fought the masters,
the Irish Parliamentary Party, and separatist opinion. Sheehy-
Skeffington, the Countess Markievicz, George Russell, Jack
White, and some intellectuals were with the workers, but the
fight ended in defeat. The lockout showed the terrible condi-
tions under which Dublin workers had to live, and for a while
the slums stank.
I heard Jim Larkin speak, a fiery orator, well loved by his
men and the calmer James Connolly who did not provoke
such enthusiasm as Larkin, but whose every word told. I was
in O'Connell Street one evening when Jim Larkin, to keep
a promise, appeared on the balcony of the hotel, wearing a
beard as a disguise. He spoke amidst cheers, and hoots for
the employers. Police swept down from many quarters,
hemmed in the crowd, and used their heavy batons on any-
one who came in their way. I saw women knocked down
and kicked. I scurried up a side street; at the other end the
police struck people as they lay injured on the ground,
struck them again and again. I could hear the crunch as the
heavy sticks struck unprotected skulls. I was in favour of the
strikers. Later I saw bodies of men drilling in Croydon Park,
the Irish Citizen Army. A newsboys' strike at what period
I do not remember. Mounted police charging quick-witted
urchins who scattered and lured the attackers into narrow
18
by-lanes. There the boys used stones and pieces of brick
with accuracy and rapidity. My sympathies were with the
newsboys.
I was at Skerries on the coast when the Howth gun-
running took place ten miles from Dublin. The Irish Volun-
teers landed nine hundred heavy single-shot German Mausers,
and the Skerries company assisted. Police and military
attempted to disarm the Dublin Volunteers on their way
back to the city, but did not succeed. A Scottish regiment,
the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the K.O.S.B., provoked
by the Dublin crowd which had heard of the attempt to
disarm the volunteers, fired at close range. Three people killed
and thirty-three wounded. The Zabern incident seemed small
in comparison. A man came round to the hobby horses and
side shows on the Strand that night: 'Women and children
have been shot down in the streets of Dublin,' he said.
'Stop your amusement and mourn for your dead.' We
laughed at him and walked away. Who was he, anyhow?
He gathered a small group around him and kneeling they
recited the Rosary. Young boys whistled a new tune:
We are the Volunteers, the Volunteers.
We are the Volunteers,
And not the Scottish Borderers.
The European War came. Redmond, the Irish Party leader,
pledged Ireland's support to help England ; the Irish Party
voted for war. Home Rule was on the Statute Book; but an
amending Act was passed to suspend it until six months
after the War would be over.
Asquith, the British Premier, came to Dublin, to appeal
for recruits. John Redmond had already advised Irishmen
to carry the war to Flanders. With a school friend I walked
through the crowded streets. The approaches to the Mansion
House were guarded by Royal Irish Constabulary, armed
with carbines. They stood in the shadows lining the shop
fronts of Grafton Street, the butts of their rifles resting
between their toes. In Woolworth's we bought small siren
blowers, decorated with the Union Jack. We blew them as we
walked around. A procession led by Redmond's Volunteers,
armed with 'sewer pipes', as the large amunitionless Gari-
baldi rifles were called, had marched to the Mansion House.
Posters on the tram standards announced that Jim Larkin,
James Connolly, and others would address an open meeting.
19
'A counterblast to the packed meeting in the Mansion House.'
We walked towards Liberty Hall, the labour headquarters.
A large board outside : 'We serve neither King nor Kaiser--
but Ireland.'
The Citizen Army was drawn up ; some of them carried
rifles, magazine rifles, and bandoliers of ammunition. They
marched across to the top of Grafton Street a few hundred
yards from Asquith's meeting, and stood with fixed bayonets
as a guard to James Connolly who spoke. Outside the old
House of Parliament Jim Larkin spoke to the crowd and
asked their pledge that they would never join the British
Army. We had minor skirmishes as people tried to snatch
our sirens because they flaunted the Union Jack. We heard
rumours that Asquith had been fired at, that the procession
would be broken up as it left the Mansion House ; but
although there was a feeling of tenseness, nothing happened.
Asquith said, 'Room must be found and kept for the inde-
pendence, existence, and free development of the smaller
nationalities.'
I attended recruiting meetings held in the streets. Recruit-
ing officers were asked questions about the freedom of Ire-
land when they spoke of poor little Belgium. The interrupters
were silenced by police, or arrested. Sometimes a rival anti-
recruiting meeting would begin; police and detectives would
force their way through the crowd and attempt to arrest the
speakers. Men were fined for answering the police in Irish.
Irish Volunteer organizers were arrested or ordered to leave
the country; attempts were made to disarm the Volunteers.
Often up amongst the Dublin mountains I met their bat-
talions on route marches or on manoeuvres. Officers in full
uniform with stiff tunic collars, some of the men in uniform,
others wearing equipment only, a number carrying rifles.
I looked at them curiously, watched them in the evening,
mud-splashed after a hard day's work. At home we discussed
them, laughed at them. They were play-acting, trying to pull
the lion's tail. Who were they going to fight ? They hated
England more than they loved Ireland. A crowd of pro-
Germans, that's what they were. My brother joined a cadet
corps, and was commissioned to the Dublin Fusiliers. My
friends joined the Army. I would also join, later on.
O'Donovan Rossa died in America and his body was
brought home to Ireland. He was an old Fenian and the two
traditions met, the old Ireland and the new. He lay in state
20
in the City Hall, with an armed guard of Irish Volunteers
and Citizen Army men. Out of curiosity I passed by the glass
coffin lid, objecting to the green-uniformed Fianna Boys who
guided the long files, but I did not utter a word. I watched
the funeral pass to Glasnevin Cemetery, company after com-
pany of Irish Volunteers marching by, some in uniform,
some wearing uniform hats and bandoliers, others green ties
only. I saw the ungainly side of the parade: irregular march-
ing, faulty execution of commands, strange slouch hats turned
up at one side, uniform caps wobbling, long single-shot
Howth Mauser rifles. They provided an amusing topic of
conversation at dinner.
Father asked me what I should like to do. He thought
I might care for law ; but I did not like that profession.
Once I had heard him say that in Ireland the law considered
one guilty until innocence had been proved. I wanted to do
medicine ; it seemed good to help prevent imperfect bodies
and to relieve pain. I went to the University with members
of my school class. There one heard little of the Volunteers
or the various other movements.
I saw the Saint Patrick's Day parade of the Dublin Irish
Volunteers. Staff officers with yellow tabs on their grey-green
uniforms, companies marching with a swing. We laughed
later when discussing them. They had no guts, they would
never fight. I was still thinking of joining the British Army.
Around us the people were mostly imperialists or believed
in the Parliamentary Party. The old men, to prove their
loyalty, had joined the G,R.s, the George Royals, a defence
corps known to some as the Methusiliers, or the Gorgeous
Wrecks. I was commended for my desire to join up, but I
was dramatising myself. I had no interest in the war ; at
most it appealed to me as a physical hardening if I saw
Service.
The old hatred of the 'Redcoats' had disappeared. Before
the war, scapegoats, those in debt or in trouble over a girl,
had joined the ranks ; now all trades, professions, and classes
were found there.
There were rumours about the Irish Volunteers being dis-
armed ; but who would bother about them? They did not
count. Police arrested and deported some, others were for-
bidden to enter certain stated areas in Ireland. Three men
were sentenced to three months for singing 'God Save the
King' in an unseemly way. Finna boys, citizen army, and
21
the Volunteers were seen more often on the streets and in
the outskirts on manoeuvre. 'So many fine boys dying at the
front while those ragamuffins strut around,' said a neighbour.
'They should be conscripted.' . . . The Pals Battalion of the
Dublin Fusiliers suffered heavily, and those who had lost sons
were less kindly disposed at seeing other boys unhurt, walk
the streets of the city....A letter from my brother stationed
at Cork. He had joined a detachment sent to the coast to
prevent gun-running, and was 'very much bucked.' Mother
cried--he was in danger, and in his own country. Father
looked worried but said nothing. In the papers we read that
men had landed in a collapsible boat, evidently from a
German submarine, off the Kerry Coast. Two of them had
been found by the Royal Irish Constabulary hiding in the
sand dunes, German automatics in their haversacks. They
had been removed under escort to what newpapers called
an unknown destination.
MOURNFUL LINES ON THE MILITARY OUTRAGE
IN DUBLIN
You true-born sons of Erin's Isle, come listen to my song,
My tale is one of sorrow, but I won't detain you long,
Concerning the murderous outrage that took place in Dublin town,
When a cowardly regiment was let loose to shoot our people down.
On the 26th of July, the truth I'll tell to you,
The Irish Volunteers all swore their enemies to subdue,
They marched straight out to Howth and soon the people were
alarmed,
When they heard the glorious news 'Our Volunteers are armed.'
The crowds all kept cheering on as our brave defenders passed,
But their cheers were stopped by an outrage which for some time
did last.
Our gallant men, the Volunteers, were met in front and rear,
By the King's Own Scottish cowards, who are doomed for every-
where.
God save our gallant Captain Judge, the hero of the band,
Who nearly gave his precious life for the just cause of the land,
In spite of terrible injuries and weak from loss of blood;
He fondly hugged his rifle grand, the prize of his brotherhood.
Next in the line of heroes is the scout so well renowned,
With the butt end of his rifle felled a Borderer to the ground.
He disarmed him of his weapons and soon made his escape
By climbing a wall in Fairview, for his young life was at stake.
22
The Dublin police were ordered the Volunteers for to subdue,
But O'Neill and Gleeson boldly replied 'such a thing we decline
to do,
For to fight against our countrymen would on us put a stain,
For we wish to see our native land "A Nation Once Again."
On Bachelor's Walk a scene took place which I'm sure had just
been planned,
For the cowardly Scottish Borderers turned and fired without com-
mand,
With bayonets fixed they charged the crowd and left them in their
gore,
But their deeds will be remembered in Irish hearts for evermore.
God rest the souls of those who sleep apart from earthly sin
Including Mrs. Duffy, James Brennan, and Patrick Quinn,
But we will avenge them and the time will surely come,
That we'll make the Scottish Borderers pay for the cowardly deeds
they've done.
Three
EASTER of 1916 came. At Verdun the French were hard
pressed. The Allies looked to the United States for muni-
tions. It was a late Easter. Flowers bloomed early ; the
weather was warm and dry, almost like midsummer. I sat
in Stephen's Green on Easter Saturday, basking in the sun,
watching the ducks and gulls, before I walked up and down
to do Grafton Street and meet my friends.
Easter Monday, a holiday, was warm and many people
went to the races, to the Hill of Howth, Killiney, or to the
mountains. I walked across the city over the Liffey to the
South Side, intending to visit the older portions of Dublin;
up by Winetavern Street, through the Coombe, and back
around by Dublin Castle walls. I looked at the statue of
Justice on the upper Castle Gate. She had her back to the
city, and I remembered that it had frequently been com-
mented on, satirically.
I passed by Trinity College; the heavy oaken doors were
closed. In O'Connell Street large groups of people were
gathered together. From the flagstaff on top of the General
Post Office, the G.P.O., floated a new flag, a tri-coloured one
of green, white and orange, the colours running out from
the mast.
23
'What's it all about?' I asked a man who stood near me,
a scowl on his face.
'Those boyhoes, the Volunteers, have seized the Post Office.
They want nothing less than a Republic,' he laughed scorn-
fully. 'They've killed some Lancers ; but they'll soon run away
when the soldiers come.'
Thin strands of barbed wire ran out in front of the Post
Office. Two sentries in green uniforms and slouched hats
stood on guard with fixed bayonets. They seemed cool
enough. Behind them the windows had been smashed. Heavy
mail bags half-filled the spaces, rifle barrels projected, officers
in uniform with yellow tabs could be seen hurrying through
the rooms. Outside, men were carrying in heavy bundles--
'explosives, I bet, or ammunition,' said a man beside me.
Others unloaded provisions and vegetables and carried the
food inside. On the flat roof sentries patrolled to and fro.
Men on motor bicycles, uniformed and in civilian clothes,
arrived frequently and the sentries made a lane for them
through the crowd.
I walked up the street. Behind Nelson's pillar lay dead
horses, some with their feet in the air, others lying flat.
'The Lancers' horses,' an old man said, although I had not
spoken. 'Those fellows,' pointing with his right hand toward
the G.P.O., 'are not going to be frightened by a troop of
Lancers. They mean business.' Seated on a dead horse was
a woman, a shawl around her head, untidy wisps of hair
straggled across her dirty face. She swayed slowly, drunk,
singing:
Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue,
Here's the best of Jolly Good Luck to You.
On the base of the Pillar was a white poster. Gathered
around were groups of men and women. Some looked at it
with serious faces, others laughed and sniggered. I began to
read it with a smile, but my smile ceased as I read.
Poblacht na hE/irearnn n
The Provisional Government
of the
IRISH REPUBLIC
To The People of Ireland
Irishmen and Irishwomen
24
In the Name of God and of the dead generations from which she
recieved her old traditions of nationhood, Ireland, through us,
summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right
to national freedom and sovereignty, six times during the past three
hundred years they have asserted it in arms. . . . We declare the
right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to
the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and in-
defeasible. , . . The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty
equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens . . .
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government.
Thomas J. Clarke
Sean Mac Diarmada; Thomas MacDonagh
P. H. Pearse; Eamonn Ceannt
James Connolly; Joseph Plunkett
Clarke, I had known through a friend of ours, Major
MacBride, who used to come across the city to buy cigars in
his little shop. Pearse I had seen for the first time a few
minutes before. A man in the crowd had shouted out his
name as a quiet-faced figure in uniform with a strange green,
soft hat had passed slowly out through the front door of the
G.P.O. He had talked with an officer underneath the portico
beside a fluted pillar. His face was firm and composed.
Connolly I had heard speak at meetings. I had seen Mac-
Donagh in the University where he lectured on English,
gayer than the other lectures. Plunkett was editor of the
Irish Review, back numbers of which I had read. They did
not mean anything--only names. As I stood looking at the
G.P.O. pigeons fluttered up from the roof and with flat dives
flew swiftly in different directions. The Volunteers' communi-
cations were not going to be interrupted evidently.
I was walking home when I met three boys I knew from
Trinity College. Trinity had been founded by Queen Eliza-
beth, and had been built and maintained mainly on confis-
cated Irish lands. Its tone had always been anti-Irish, arro-
gantly pro-British, and it had always linked itself to Dublin
Castle. The students all wore their college ties, black and red,
carried themselves with a swagger and seemed very pleased
with life in general.
'What do you think of those damn Sinn Feiners?' said
one.
One night not long before, when both of us were tight,
I had helped him to climb the college wall and railings.
25
He had no trace of brogue, but a polished 'garrison accent.'
'I don't know,' I said, 'but they will soon be chased out
by the military.'
'We are collecting our people, as we want to defend
Trinity. It may be attacked. Will you come along? We'll
give you a rifle. There are plenty belonging to the
O.T.C.'
'I'm going home now, but I will be back to see you later,'
I said.
'You. better hurry on or you may not be able to get
through. Cheerio!' and he walked away.
As I continued on my way I met another boy whom I
knew. He was jubilant. 'There will be fighting,' he said.
'We have expected it for a long time past. There's going to
be dirty work at the crossroads.'
So he was in favour of the rebels. He was a student at
the School of Art. We had never discussed politics ; I had
not any to discuss, save to laugh at other people's opinions.
'Well, I am going back to Trinity in the evening. I was
offered a rifle,' and I chuckled. Was it not pleasant to have
a rifle and to feel that there was going to be excitement?
This was a lark. He stopped suddenly and looked at me
hard.
'Why? What is Trinity to you?'
I said that I would go back there to defend it.
'But it's not your university. Remember you'll have to
shoot down Irishmen, your own countrymen. You bear them
no hatred. If you go in there you cannot leave; and mark
my words, you'll be sorry ever afterward. Think it over.'
I parted from him and went home thinking of what he
had said.
Near my house people stood at their gates, discussing the
situation. The Loyalists talked with an air of contempt.
'The troops will soon settle the matter in an hour or two,
these pro-Germans will soon run away.' They were sure of
themselves. The trouble would soon be over. The Redmond-
ites were more bitter : 'I hope they'll all be hanged,' said
one. 'Shooting is too good for them. Trying to stir up trouble
for us all.' People who, although they were next door neigh-
bours, had never previously spoken, now chatted eagerly, like
old friends.
Rumours circulated and recirculated changing as they
26
passed on. The Four Courts had been seized and Stephen's
Green ; Dublin Castle had been captured. The country had
risen, men from outlying districts were marching on Dublin.
Other positions in the city had been occupied. The rebels
were shooting everybody they met. It was not safe to be out.
All through the evening rumour piled upon rumour. I had
thought over what the art student had said ; somehow I did
not go to Trinity. At home the seizure of the buildings was
taken as some kind of mild joke. Dublin had been used to
strikes. They had provided excitement but were never very
serious.
In the night time I went down towards O'Connell Street.
I heard the noise of firing ; random shots in the distance.
People from the slums, the crowded, dilapidated tenements
of the eighteenth-century grandees, had looted some of the
shops. Boys walked around with a bright yellow shoe on one
foot the other bare ; women carried apronsful of footwear,
stopping at intervals to sit on the curb and try on a pair of
satin shoes, then, dissatisfied, fling them away and fit on
another and different variety. Boys wore silk hats perched
on their noses or backwards at a drunken angle. Three of
them had cut slits in their hats and placed them over their
faces. Water pistols in hands they were Kelly the Bush
Ranger and his gang, with their bullet-proof bucket helmets.
Pickets from the G.P.O. fired at the looters, but they fired
in the air. Clery's store, a large one, was like an ant heap.
Men, women, and children swarmed about, carrying off
furniture, silks, satins ; pushing baby carriages filled with
sheets, stockings, garters, curtains. Trails, winding and twist-
ing, showed what they had discarded. Pickets were strength-
ened, looters were fired on, the shots were lower. The looters
dropped their armsful and scampered away, cursing the
armed men. 'You dirty bowsies, wait till the Tommies bate
yer bloody heads off.' They came back when the pickets had
moved farther up the street.
I spoke to a sentry standing in front of a pathetic-looking
strand of barbed wire. He had a Lee-Enfield magazine rifle,
wore a slouch hat, a bandolier, and a pair of green puttees
neatly wound. He was about sixteen, and blue-eyed ; he
looked at the looters as if they had staged the performance
for him. He spoke eagerly, glad to give good news. The
country is rising. Kerry, Cork, and Limerick and men from
the North are marching. We can hold Dublin until they
27
come,' and he smiled. 'Our wireless is sending out word to
other countries.'
I walked round in a detached manner. I had no feeling
for or against, save irritation at those fellows doing the
unexpected, seizing the Post Office and the other buildings.
I wondered why the troops had not attempted to clear the
Post Office, the rebel headquarters. The Dublin Garrison
numbered nearly two thousand five hundred and we had
been told that other troops were on their way from the
Curragh of Kildare. The rebels were not numerous--the
reports of their numbers varied from twelve hundred to three
thousand--and their positions were not in a proper state of
defence. Groups of people stood and talked. Everyone had
something to say and something to add. 'Only for Eoin
MacNeill's countermanding order there would be more of
those men in there. It's a shame to rush young boys into
trouble,' said a neatly dressed woman, On Sunday I had
read an order in the morning papers from Eoin MacNeill,
President of the Irish Volunteers, and their Chief of Staff,
countermanding the manoeuvres which were to be held all
over the country on Easter Sunday.
Opposite the Pillar a tramcar had been overturned, block-
ing the approaches from Amiens Street Station ; but there
had been no attempt to barricade the wide stretch of
O'Connell Street. Two women stood in front of a sentry--
the same boy I had spoken to. 'If only my Johnny was back
from the front you'd be running with your bloody-well tail
between your legs.' The boy shifted his rifle a little but did
not reply. That night the military proclaimed martial law
in Dublin.
During the night stray shooting, then spells of silence.
Next day troops from the Curragh shelled positions near the
Phoenix Park from the Abbatoir, and drove the defenders
towards the city. The G.R.'s, who had been out for a rout
march the day before, had not returned to their homes. The
anxious loyalists heard that some of them had been killed
'The cowards, to fire on old men !' Perhaps the trouble, the
Rebellion, was going to last. People thought of food and
tried to buy extra supplies. Prices had risen ; only small
amounts were sold. The anger was loosed on the rebels.
'Why don't the military act?' An element of doubt now
The mobile column from the Curragh, with another unit
had reinforced the Dublin garrison. Close on five thousand
28
troops in the city. Perhaps the rebels had received help.
I found little change in O'Connell Street next day. The
G.P.O. had been more thoroughly barricaded. Other shops
had been looted: Lawrence's toy bazaar and some jewellers.
Diamond rings and pocketsful of gold watches were selling
for sixpence and a shilling, and one was cursed if one did not
buy. Women and girls, some clad in Russian leather boots,
smart tweed skirts, and a shawl, wore rings on every finger,
throbbing rows of them, only the joints showing. Ragged
boys wearing odd boots, brown and black, tramped up and
down with air rifles on their shoulders or played cowboys
and Indians, armed with black pistols supplied with long
rows of paper caps. Little girls hugged teddy bears and dolls
as if they could hardly believe their good fortune. Kiddies
carried golf bags and acted as caddies to young gentlemen
in bright football jerseys and tall hats, who hit golf balls
with their clubs, or indeed anything that came in their way.
This was a holiday. Some of the women, with wispy greasy
hair and blousy figures, walked around in evening dress.
Young girls wore long silk dresses. A saucy girl flipped a fan
with a hand wristleted by a thick gold chain ; she wore
a sable fur coat, the pockets overhung with stockings and
pale pink drawers ; on her head was a wide black hat to
which she had pinned streamers of blue silk ribbon. She
stutted in larkish delight, calling to others less splendid :
'How do yez like me now ? Any chanst of yer washing,
ma'am?' In the back streets men and women sprawled about,
drunk, piles of empty and smashed bottles lying around. The
troops were slowly surrounding the city, hemming in the
rebels and trying to isolate their posts.
All Ireland was under martial law, we learned, so there
must have been trouble in the country. Rumours and more
rumours. The Germans had landed in the South and were
marching inland. German submarines had come up the Liffey.
The rebels in the country had surrendered. The rebels were
nearing Dublin.
Rifle fire began slowly, increasing in scale, then the delib-
erateness of volley firing and the sharp, quick continuous
sound of machine guns. The fighting had begun in earnest.
The troops had advanced beyond the canals which almost
ring the city ; the bridges were held by different regiments.
I crossed towards the North Wall and found Lancers firing
at snipers in a very unmeaningly impressive way. The neat
29
puttied legs of the kneeling Lancers were sheltered by a
bridge parapet or they stood up straight to fire somewhere
at nothing; behind them grouped a garrulous crowd to stop
return bullets. After each shot a small ragged boy dashed
forward, seized the empty cartridge case, and waited for
the next shot. He was making a bandolier out of empty
cases. People moved around behind the line of fire, indifferent
to the shooting. They were curious, interested, seemingly
unconscious of danger.
A frightened-looking elderly man was dragged forward by
two soldiers. A woman walked beside them. 'He's a dirty
bloody sniper, blast him, she shouted excitedly. 'Take him
away.' There was flour on the man's clothes ; he protested.
The crowd watched in silence. A man beside me muttered,
'She's a dirty spy,' and spat.
I made my way to O'Connell Street, the headquarters of
the rebels. There were few people there now and the sentries
had withdrawn. Bullets whizzed in the distance. The boys
offered to allow me the use of a pair of prismatic glasses to
see the snipers firing from Trinity College. 'Only tuppence a
look,' but I refused.
I kept a diary of events, entering everything I had heard.
When I tried to sum up the day the account was conflicting
--rumour, counter-rumour. I had no feeling about it. I might
have been a foreign news correspondent who had just landed,
knowing nothing about the country, the people or the cause
of the present Rising.
At night the din increased; artillery was being used. I
slipped out of bed, got quietly over the back wall, and went
down town. There were few people out. 'It's dangerous to
go near O'Connell Street,' a man said, 'three people have
been badly wounded near the Parnell Monument.' I reached
the monument and turned in to Moore Street. From the
G.P.O. came the sound of cheering, then a voice singing:
"Then here's their memory--may it be
For us a guiding light,
To cheer our strife for liberty
And teach us to unite!
Through good and ill, be Ireland's still,
Though sad as those your fate;
And true men, like you, men,
Like those of Ninety-Eight."
30
Men took up the chorus; their voices echoed through the
bullet noise. The unlit streets gave a strange quality to the
words, the chorus zoomed in a loud shadow between rifle
crashes. I felt I should like to join in that song.
I stood near the Pillar. I heard a voice say, 'Run for it,
quick,' and I ran. The houses on either side of Mary Street
swayed.
'We were trying to blow up the Pillar," said a uniformed
officer of the Citizen Army in Moore Street. 'It's too good a
guide to warships in the bay or to the artillery over there,'
pointing across towards the Liffey. But the Pillar remained.
'How's the fight going?' I asked.
'We hold Boland's Mill, the College of Surgeons, and posts
on the South Side. The English have landed and are trying
to fight their way through, but they have been held up,'
'And when they get through?"
'Oh, well, when they do it will be hot here.' He said good-
bye in Irish and walked towards the G.P.O.
I went back home in the early morning and got into bed,
unnoticed, save by my brothers. I felt faint stirrings of sym-
pathy as I wrote in my diary. I did not feel indifferent now
to the men holding Dublin.
The shelling and noise increased. The people seemed a
little cowed as if they did not understand what it was all
about. Civilians fell wounded here and there ; the presence
of death was close. Military posts pushed on slowly down
the city. Spent bullets fell around and the whirring noise
of live ones could be heard. I tried to get down to the centre
of the city, but I could not get through the cordons. In the
evening I was in a whirl; my mind jumped from a snatch
of song to a remembered page of economic history. I walked
up and down the garden at the back of our house. Distant
sounds of firing had new sounds that echoed in my head.
They meant something personal; they made me angry. The
men down there were right, that I felt sure of. They had
a purpose which I did not share. But no one had a right to
Ireland except the Irish. In the city Irishmen were fighting
British troops against long odds. I was going to help them in
some way.
The note of resentment softened a little among the people.
I heard expressions of sympathy 'for those poor devils in
their rat traps.' 'Damn it, anyhow,' said a man, as if
31
discovering it for the first time. 'they're Irish--they're our own.'
I felt the same, but I did not know how to help.
I met a boy who had been to school with me--a tall boy,
in homespun suit, with grey eyes and a laughing mouth. We
found that we were of the same mind about trying to aid
the men in Dublin. He had, I remembered, been a member
of the Gaelic League, but had never joined the Volunteers.
'I know where there's a rifle,' he told me. 'My father was
given one, a German Mauser, as a present by a soldier who
brought it back from the Front. There's ammunition also
in clips.' I arranged to meet him that night not far from my
house.
In the meantime we would separate and get as close as we
could to the soldiers' posts and find out any information. If
possible we would attempt to get down town in the night-
time, I examined the positions occupied by the troops and
wondered from what place we had best open fire. Towards
the centre of the city there was a gleam in the sky ; after
twilight buildings were burning. The soldiers advanced with
fixed bayonets, telling the lingering people, 'Get home, get
to your homes at once.'
That night we met near the railway line, a hundred yards
from my house. He carried the rifle wrapped up in canvas.
We undid the covering. He pressed in a clip of cartridges
down the opening and the grooved cartridges clattered noisily
into the magazine. We walked to the railway embankment
for half a mile. 'This will do,' he said, as we halted near a
bridge. He settled himself down flat on his stomach. He fired
in the direction of the canal bridge, where I had seen a
military picket in the evening. The Mauser made a sharp,
curt report. There was no reply. He handed me the rifle.
It kicked up towards my face when I pulled the trigger.
The suddenness of the noise gave me a shock. It was the
first shot I had ever fired. 'Shove it in tighter to your shoulder
the next time,' he said. We saw rosy dots in the darkness ;
we heard buzzes which changed in sound as they passed over
and went on. We went back to a metal bridge and climbed
up together. We gripped the steel trestles with our feet and
knees.
'I can't see the foresight,' he said.
'I wish I had thought of some phosphorus.'
'I'll wrap my hanky around it.'
Leaning on the narrow steel parapet one looked into the
32
darkness, observing, whilst the other fired. The sound of the
rifle shot rang along the metal. We changed positions and
lay quiet, listened to the sounds in the distance, and watched
the flames far away. We could make out different rifle shots:
the heavier thuds of what we thought must be Volunteer
snipers, the sharper flash of the English rifles, and the cold
relentless precision of volley firing ; then the startling ham-
mer-hammer of machine guns. Darkness added to the noise;
bullets made the most of the night. The sounds made my
heart thud with excitement. Yellow and red flames climbed
high out of a hole of blackness; they seemed to float in the
sky, jumping above each other. The undersides of clouds
glared; bright ghosts of buildings came and passed.
Volleys were sent at us; bullets clanged off the bridge.
We looked up towards the canal after each shot, not think-
ing of the answering spurts. Feathery red lights spread out
farther on the sides. 'They're trying to surround us,' I said.
We moved farther away. We were very cold. In our excite-
ment we had forgotten to bring coats or scarfs. Before dawn
we hid the rifle, shook hands, gripped for a long time, and
went to our homes, arranging to meet the following night.
In the morning smoke could be seen, and flames. It was
terrible to watch. Why had I not known about the fight
earlier? I thought of all the chances I had had of joining
the Irish Volunteers, instead I had laughed and scoffed.
Now when I wanted to help I could not. A Dublin Fusilier,
a friend, came to visit us during the day. He drank his
large glasses of whiskey and was eagerly listened to. He
was an authority. His officers had told him : 'Every man
you see in green uniform, regard him as a German soldier,
as an invader, and shoot him down.' 'We examine all sus-
pects,' he said, 'and a bruise on anyone's shoulder means
that he has been using a long-barrelled Mauser. I'd like to
stick them up against a wall instead of taking them prisoners.'
He was hailed by many, who were anxious to shake hands,
as he walked away.
Rumour said the headquarters in the G.P.O. had been
burnt out, that the men had surrendered, that they had
escaped by boring their way through the walls of houses down
to the side streets.
I examined other posts in the evening. Near midnight,
I left my house by a back window, without noise, and met
my companion. We crept nearer to the soldiers and sheltered
 33
behind a low stonewall. A machine gun answered his first
shot. We lay low and trembled. Then we gained courage; we
did not even duck our heads. I found myself singing :
At the risin' of the moon
At the risin' of the moon,
For the pikes must be together
At the risin' of the moon.
I was hit by a fist in the ribs. 'Shut up, do you want them to
find out where we are?' he said. We changed from one
position to another until all our ammunition had been fired.
We looked towards O'Connell Street and tried to imagine
what the men there were thinking. The fire had spread; it
seemed as if the whole centre of the city was in flames.
Sparks shot up and the fire jumped high as the wind
increased. The noise of machine guns and rifles was continu-
ous; there did not seem to be any pause. We reached our
beds before dawn.
Later in the day came news of the surrender of the men
in the Post Office. For another day the firing cominued
then it died away, save for the bullets of isolated snipers.
The Volunteers and Citizen Army men marched to surrender
with the rifles they had kept in safety for years. People
taunted, jeered, and spat at them as they swung by singing.
Some few waved handkerchiefs or shouted a greeting. The
grand adventure was over.
People moved about more freely now. British officers at
temporary headquarters, in shops and houses, issued passes
to those who wished to go inside the cordons. I obtained
three at different posts and brought them down town think-
ing they might be useful. The G.P.O. was a shell, from
which the tri-colour still floated. The stout walls were black-
ened but they held. On top the statues had pieces missing.
The lower portion of O'Connell Street was in ruins. What
houses still stood were being hauled down by wire ropes
attached to traction engines. Houses were smouldering on
Moore Street,,Earl Street, Abbey Street the Quays. Kelley's,
at the corner of O'Connell Bridge, had been battered in by
machine gun and shell fire--Kelley's fort it was called.
Liberty Hall, though it had not been occupied, had been
shelled by a gunboat which had come up the Liffey. Every-
where glass had been shattered or neatly drilled by bullets. I
was frequently questioned by pickets and had to show my pass
34
many times before I reached the South Circular Road. In
a house there, in 'digs,' was a medical student who had been
out fighting. 'They're going to make a house to house search
in this area and I want to get out,' he said. I told him about
the passes. He went to give them to others and they passed
through the lines. Then the three passes were returned by
somebody who was not suspected and other men used them,
The prisoners were transferred to the different Dublin
barracks ; raids and arrests took place and prisoners came
to Dublin from all parts of Ireland. The bitterness of the
people against the Volunteers was tinged with a little admira-
tion. They had fought well against the regular troops. Many
hoped they would all be hanged or shot, and said so to
everyone they met, Stories of the fighting circulated and of
the murders of civilians in the North King Street area,
where the troops had been unable to break through. The
number of men holding Dublin was found to be less than
eleven hundred, whilst the British had from twelve to fifteen
thousand.
Four days after the surrender a brief announcement: three
men had been shot at dawn, Padraig Pearse, Tom Clarke,
Thomas MacDonagh. Next day four were executed and the
following day, one, Major John MacBride. I had felt resent-
ment at the death of the others; now a strange rage replaced
it. I had known MacBride. He had been to our house a week
before the Rising and had laughed when I told him I would
soon join the British Army. He had patted my shoulder and
said, 'No, you won't.' I wandered around all day wondering
what I could do to help, cursing under my breath, meeting
few I could feel any sympathy with, for my friends were all
hostile to the spirit of the Rising.
The executions continued. Men of the detective division
of the Dublin metropolitan police picked out prisoners who
were leaders. The Dublin papers reappeared and said their
say. The Irish Times, a Unionist paper, wrote : 'In the verdict
of history, weakness today would be even more criminal
than the indifference of the past few months. Sedition must
be rooted out of Ireland, once for all. The rapine and blood-
shed of the past week must be finished with a severity which
will make any repetition of them impossible for many genera-
tions to come.' The Irish Independent pointed out that 'cer-
tain of the leaders remain undealt with and the part they
played was worse than those who had paid the extreme
35
penalty,' meaning, the limping Sean MacDiarmada and the
wounded Connolly. James Connolly, set up on a stretcher,
was the last to face the firing squad.
Before the last two men to be executed faced the dawn,
Bernard Shaw's letter in an English paper proved that their
spirit had awakened chords: 'My own view is that the men
who were shot in cold blood, after their capture or surrender,
were prisoners of war, and that it was therefore entirely
incorrect to slaughter them. The relation of Ireland to Dublin
Castle is in this respect precisely that of the Balkan States
to Turkey, of Belgium or the city of Lille to the Kaiser,
and of the United States to Great Britain. . ..An Irishman
resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his country
is only doing what Englishmen will do if it be their mis-
fortune to be invaded and conquered by the Germans in
the course of the present war.'
Some of the people resented the executions. The men had
fought well, their prisoners had been well cared for, they had
held the capital for six days. Something strange stirred in
the people, some feeling long since buried, a sense of com-
munion with the fighting dead generations, for the dead
walked around again. Even the soldiers who wished to make
further examples felt the anger of the people. Tri-colour
badges were worn on coats, caps, and hats ; songs were
whistled and sung. 'The Soldier's Song' began to be known;
soon one could hear it in the streets. 'Who Fears to Speak
of Easter Week?' replaced 'Who Fears to Speak of '98?
"I'll sing you a song, a soldier's song,
With a cheering rousing chorus
As round the blazing camp-fires we throng,
The starry heavens o'er us.
Impatient for the coming fight
And as we watch the dawninglight
Here in the silence of the night
We'll chant the soldier's song."
*   *   *
"Who fears to speak of Easter Week
Who dares its fate deplore?
The red-gold flame of Erin's name
Confronts the world once more.
So Irishmen, remember then,
And raise your head with pride.
For great men and straight men
Have fought for you and died."
36
Songs were copied by hand, or typewritten, and handed around.
Poems were learned by heart. The surge of a rebirth of feeling,
of a national spring in the air. The fierce exultance of song
expressing a buried national feeling.
General Maxwell, the British Commander-in-Chief, was
known as 'Bloody Maxwell.' Photographs of the executed
leaders were in every small shop. Names of men who had
been practically unknown two weeks before were now on the
lips and in the hearts of many. P. H. Pearse, Thomas Mac-
Donagh, and Joseph Mary Plunkett were poets. Volumes of
their poems and plays were republished. Doctor Browne of
Maynooth, Ella Young, Francis Ledwidge (then at the front),
Seamus O'Sullivan, James Stephens, wrote poems about them.
I reconstructed their work and their ideals. I bought and
read everything that breathed their spirit: Connolly's Labour
in Irish History, a vigorous work, overthrowing national
idols; the works of Ethna Carberry, Alice Milligan, and
other poets and writers. I covered them with brown paper
or with the covers of novels, and kept them in my shelves
in the study, unnoticed.
There was much distress amongst the people. Over three
thousand had been killed or wounded. The arrests, number-
ing over three thousand, meant a further drain on resources,
for the dependants of the imprisoned men had in the majority
of cases no support. The secret reports of the Royal Irish
Constabulary had been given due credence at Dublin Castle,
and a very miscellaneous assortment of prisoners passed
through the country jails on their way to Dublin. Irish Volun-
teers, members of the Gaelic League, people interested in
Irish athletics, school teachers, writers, journalists, those
suspected of being in favour of the Rising, all mingled pell-
mell in overcrowded jails. Rebellion, disaffection as it was
called, was going to be stamped out. The spirit of the people
was to be dealt with as staff officers work out a strategical
distribution on the map at headquarters before an attack.
Pins change place, are moved here and there, the enemy is
crushed.
A National Aid Society was organised, and, despite the
odium attached to such work, people came forward to help.
Australia forwarded the first large sums, but voluntary
contributions came in from all over Ireland. In Dublin, people
who three weeks ago would have sneered at the Volunteers
as toy soldiers now stinted themselves, happy to be able to
37
help. I helped at the National Aid Office where Fred Allen,
a city engineer, was in control. A young man, Michael
Collins, came there later to help. I tried to organize area
collections and had students in the University to assist.
Masses were said, the Month's Mind, in honour of the dead
on the days they had been executed. I organized collections
at the church doors with some newly-made friends. We
pieced together a large tri-colour flag which I carried around
after the Masses; standing above the people we sang songs
--'Ireland, Ireland, 'fore the Wide World.' Into our hats and
caps the people who gathered about outside the churches
poured money, coppers and silver. They cheered us as if
we were doing something daring. The money helped to keep
some of the dependants' womenfolk from starvation.
A gift sale was organized and the Mansion House, the
residence of the Lord Mayor, was used. Women brought
their brooches and rings, family heirlooms were handed in
proudly, though beneath the pride were tears; book lovers
carried their most beloved books. One man, a poet and a
lifelong collector, gave his entire library ; artists, including
Lavery and Orpen, supplied blank canvases, setting six
hundred pounds as the purchase price for the portrait of
the buyer. Throughout the day a procession, the poor, the
very poor, the needy, the rich. Their contributions all handed
in joyfully, proudly, some pathetically, some with a gesture
that made one's heart beat wildly.
The executions had caused bitter feeling, and the arrests
and the strict enforcement of martial law helped to intensify
it. The people as a whole had not changed ; but the new
spirit was working slowly, half-afraid, yet determined. The
leaders had been shot, the fighting men arrested and the
allied organizations disrupted. Without guidance or direc-
tion, moving as if to clarify itself, nebulous, forming, re-
forming, the strange rebirth took shape. It was manifest in
flags, badges, songs, speech, all seemingly superficial signs.
It was as if the inarticulate attempted to express themselves
in any way or by any method; later would come organiza-
tion and cool-headed reason. Now was the lyrical stage,
blood sang and pulsed, a strange love was born that for some
was never to die till they lay stiff on the hillside or in quick-
lime near a barrack wall.
In an English court an Irishman from the North, Roger
Casement, who had helped the Irish Volunteer movement,
38
was on trial for high treason. He was one of the men who
had been captured by Royal Irish Constabulary a few days
before the Rising on the sand dunes of the coast of Kerry,
after landing from a German submarine in a collapsible
rubber boat. He had been in Germany; there he had suc-
ceeded in getting arms for Ireland, but the German captain
blew up his ship off the coast of Cork after capture by the
British.
During Casement's trial people in Ireland waited and prayed
and hoped. Many again went through the fierce anger they
had felt at the first executions, Petitions for reprieve were
signed by large numbers in England. But the result was to
be expected. Casement was hanged.
The University was changed now for me--new associa-
tions, new affliations. Some of the boys had been 'out' and
had escaped arrest; others who had been in the country had
not received orders. I reconstructed my world slowly. We
were being hammered red hot in the furnace of the spirit,
and a spark was bound to fly and disclose us to each other,
with a word, a look, a chance remark. Lectures became the
unconscious part of the day's work. Conversations in
Stephen's Green, seated among the trees, leaning over the
bridge, staring into the water ; tramps up amongst the Dublin
Mountains, beyond the Pine Forest climbing Two Rocks;
walks in the night-time--that was what counted. Always
Ireland, Ireland, Ireland; story, legend, song, poem, plan-
ning. Perhaps we, too, would get a chance to fight or die.
That seemed to be the end of all, the beckoning fate. The
European War faded into an indefinite misty distance.
The effort at repression continued. Boys were arrested for
marching in groups, for singing the Soldier's Song, for
carrying the tri-colour; concerts were prohibited, newspapers
heavily censored. Baton charges broke up meetings, freedom
of speech was denied, bayonets began to glitter and threaten.
The people met the new measures passively; but militarism
without excessive physical repression, evoked the same
memories and produced the same results as it had once done
when it could shoot and hang, burn and confiscate, transport
to the West Indies or employ the boiling pitch-cap.
Christmas came and the Volunteers met in scattered groups.
I was asked to join the fourth battalion on the south side
of the river; but the meeting places were too far from my
home. My absence might be noted and too many awkward
39
questions would be asked. A medical of my year asked me
to join his company. 'It's on the north side, in the first
battalion area, and it will begin to meet in a few days' time.
I'll bring you along with me.' In the days that passed we
smiled knowingly at each other, for we kept a secret that
nobody else was aware of.
I met him near Parnell Square and he brought me to the
Gaelic League rooms. The front door was half open. Inside
seated on a table was a man idly swinging his legs, with an
evening paper in his hand. He eyed us sharply, recognized
my companion, and grasped his hand warmly, then he nodded
his head towards a room at the end of the hall. We entered;
the room was a large one, the blinds were drawn and gas
mantles without globes lighted up the space. Over the mantel-
piece was a blackboard; seated on chairs were eight or ten
men, some well dressed, others in shabby clothes. At a table
between the windows two men were writing on a wooden
unpainted table. We walked towards them, my companion
saluted and shook hands with one of the men. He had a
ruddy face and huge shoulders.
'Your name has been submitted and approved of,' he said,
turning towards me. 'You know the objects of the Irish
Volunteers ?'
'Yes, I do,'
'Well, read this first, and then sign your name.' He shoved
forward a printed leaflet stating the objects of the organiza-
tion:
1. To secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to
all the people of Ireland.
2. To train, discipline, and equip for this purpose an Irish
Volunteer Force.
3, To unite in the service of Ireland, Irishmen of every creed
and of every party and class.
I, the undersigned, desire to be enrolled for service in Ireland
as a member of the Irish Volunteer Force. I subscribe to the
Constitution of the Irish Volunteers, and pledge my willing
obedience to my superior officers. I declare that in joining the
Irish Volunteer force I set before myself the stated objects of
the Irish Volunteers and no others.
I read down the sheet and signed my name. The Captain,
for it was he who had spoken to me, shook hands. I saluted
and sat among the others, all of whom had been out in the
40
fighting. I was a member of "F" Company of the First Bat-
talion. The Captain ordered us to 'fall in.' He asked the
addresses of former members of the company, and men
volunteered to look them up and try to have them on parade
next week. A section commander took us for drill. After
a time we were dismissed. I walked home, happy, an official
of a Volunteer company.
THE DUBLIN BRIGADE
It was on Easter Monday the boys got the call
To join their battalions in park, glen, and hall
In less than an hour they were out on parade;
There were true men though few in the Dublin Brigade.
When they got their orders they took up their posts;
Though few were their numbers 'gainst England's proud hosts
There was joy in their hearts, not a man was afraid;
There were straight men and great in the Dublin Brigade,
There was much work to do in getting things right,
But the old and the young were all anxious to fight.
Every man worked hard at his own barricade
And rifles rang forth from the Dublin Brigade.
For a week without rest not a man showed a frown
Till the cowardly Saxon set fire to the town.
To save it our leader had to be obeyed
For he was the pride of the Dublin Brigade.
Four
We thought F Company the best in the battalion. At first
the company was sufficient in itself, 'battalion' was a name;
then I sensed its organization. At the University, later, we
talked of our companies staunchly, and of other companies
in mild depreciation. We discussed volunteer life after classes.
We recruited slowly and carefully ; we had to know our
men thoroughly before we asked them to join the Irish
Volunteers. The Dublin Brigade was formed of the first and
second battalions on the north side of the Liffey, the third
and fourth on the south side.
Stories like Lieutenant Malone's defence of Mount Street
41
Bridge and of the other exploits in Easter Week made us
feel that the fighting spirit, frittered away by irresolute leaders
in risings since 1798, was still there. The Volunteers meant
business. For the moment we would share their greatness,
then the talk would drift on to the chances of getting recruits
or ammunition. Some day I hoped I would see de Valera and
Cathal Brugha and others I had heard of.
I had known one man, Major John MacBride. He had
been kind to us as children; he would leave the other visitors
to talk to us. With him we dropped our best company
manners and felt at ease. Story-tellers, sailors, and soldiers
were very important--and he had been a soldier. He told us
about the Boer War. He showed us an unminted coin which
had once been in the Boer mint. He had a commission from
President Kruger and the flag of the Irish Transvaal Brigade:
he would show us them one day. He spoke in jerks. We
knew the stories of Boer Commanders and the names of
officers, long rides searching for food in the burnt ruin of
farmhouses, and the bitter hate of the men who had fought
whilst their women and children huddled in death in British
internment camps. MacBride had little in common with
the Gaelic cultural associations of the dead leaders or with
the revolutionary economic programme of James Connolly
and Padraig Pearse.
I got many a scowl from my volunteer acquaintances when
they met me walking with my brother or a friend in khaki.
I tried to tell them that some of these soldiers honestly
believed in the Party leader, Redmond; some thought they
were fighting for Ireland when they fought abroad. In the
Wicklow I had met a group of officers from the P.B.L.'s,
Poor Bloody Leinsters. Two of them had been influenced
by the rising. They had followed Redmond; now they thought
that by promising Irish help without getting a working
measure of freedom in exchange, he had failed. No longer
they believed in what they were fighting for; but in honour
felt bound to return to their battalion in France. 'When
I come back next time,' one began, but did not finish, as
we shook hands. Both were dead within three weeks. When
I spoke of these two I did not find sympathy or understand-
ing. Men in the company had relatives and friends at the
Front; their creed was simple; they believed either in an
uncompromising Ireland--or not at all.
Officers in Irish regiments were indignant at what they
42
had misnamed the Sinn Fein Rebellion; but there was a half
understanding; risings and attempted risings were part of the
country. I heard an English officer say with dawning surprise,
'Why, those people look upon us as the Belgians do the
Germans.' He had been used to Ireland as a good hunting
country in the same way as he had looked upon northern
Scotland as a fine place for grouse, deer, fish and the wear-
ing of kilts. As long as the country provided a Somerville
and Martin Ross atmosphere of hounds giving cry, strong
brogues, roughish wit, discreet familiarity of servants, and a
sure eye for picking out 'the quality' and letting them know
it; then Ireland could be understood.
Our company had ten or twelve men when it was reorgan-
ised after '16, but others slowly returned. A big percentage
of the 'old crowd,' as they were called, had answered the
muster roll on Easter Monday morning. Some who rejoined
had not been seen by their comrades since the fight, or they
had met in prison or internment camp. Many were out of
work; their employers dismissed them when they found they
had fought, Some had again obtained employment; their
new situations were not as good as the old ones. There were
no vain regrets, but a shrug of the shoulder, a smile. It was
'all in the day's work,' and here they were back again in
the ranks.
We, like all city companies, were mixed : professions,
unskilled labour, students, Government clerks, skilled labour,
business men, and out-of-works ; mostly young men, some
boys. University students were scattered among the city
companies where they learned to meet and know that fine
type, the Dublin working man. Through him and others they
were brought into touch with the slums and with living con-
ditions; they found the Cause had united men of different
classes, outlooks, creeds. On my right in the ranks was a
newsboy, a 'guttee,' on my left an out-of-work, covering me
in the rear rank was a master of arts, since professor of
romance languages, next to him a final medical. There were
no class distinctions. One judged a man by his previous
training, courage, efficiency, and ability ; results by zeal and
willingness to learn. Names of proposed recruits were read
to us on parade by our captain. The list would pass to all
the companies in the battalion. 'Does anyone know this
man?' he would ask. 'What do you know about him? Do you
think he's safe?'
43
Our drill hall was in the Gaelic League rooms at 25 Parnell
Square, and we met once a week. Once we were hastily
converted into an Irish class; we dragged forms into rows.
A blackboard appeared, my section commander became the
teacher, but the report of our scouts was not followed by a
rush of Dublin Metropolitan Police, or of 'G' men, as the
detectives were called. Our scouts watched the approaches
to the square; any undue movement of police or 'G' men
would be quickly reported. for a time, to avoid suspicion,
we met in the hall of the American Rifles in North Frederick
Street; when there was a special detective mouching in the
neighbourhood we left in groups by different doors. Dancing
and Irish classes were held in the hall, men and girls passed
in and out and suspicion was not easily centred on our
gradual arrival. Companies that had no halls met outside
the city, or as half companies or in sections, to avoid num-
bers of men being seen on the roads.
Some of us worried over our drill, arms drill and bayonet
fighting ; we practised with broom handles. The handles
rattled with precision at arms drill ; they cut and skinned
our knuckles and scarred our hands in bayonet fighting.
Each section was expected to have a number of men trained
in musketry, engineering, signalling, and first aid. Classes
were held for these special services. We were asked to
volunteer for them. I joined a signalling class and was
selected for a non-commissioned officer's class. I had to
refuse the N.C.O. class. I found it difficult to attend parades
punctually. My people did not know I was in the Irish
Volunteers ; they would never allow me to belong. I had no
latchkey. I had to account for all my movements save on
one night a week. I had arranged to study physiology two
nights a week with a boy whose parents were stout Gaelic
Leaguers. He was not a Volunteer ; but he could say that
I had been to his house if any questions had been asked.
I called to him before going to class or parade. I dressed for
drills as if I was going to a party or to meet a girl.
We expected to fight in the city; when, we did not know.
The real call might come through a sudden hasty mobiliza-
tion, and perhaps at night-time. We walked around the lanes
and back alleys of the North Side. We selected observation
and sniping positions, or checked up on the food supplies
in shops in given areas. We climbed to the tops of buildings
to get panoramic views of the city, or to study roof-tops, and
44
we learned to know by sight the big-footed men of the 'G'
Division.
Some few of us read the Official British Army Military
Books, and textbooks of different services. I had a friend in
a bookshop opposite Trinity, who at first thought I was in
a training camp, but when, by accident, he found I was on
the other side, he continued to order the books as a joke.
Official books were difficult; they were used to supplement
military lectures and practical demonstration. Read by one-
self, they were tedious, dull, and badly written. They were
as hard as the origin and insertion of muscles and relations
in anatomical textbooks, which had almost to be sung to be
known. And there were no involved neumones of rhymed couplets
with strong twist of word to help.
When we had a working knowledge of standard
books, we branched on to more advanced works on tactics and on
strategy. These we supplemented by military Journals. I took
paper covers from novels and pasted them onto military
books; I put them below my medical textbooks on the
shelves so that they would not attract the attention of my
mother or of a raiding party.
Frank, home on wound leave, often sat on the edge of the
table as I read in the study. 'What are you up to now? Oh,
military stuff again. Why don't you swot your Phys?' We
would argue over a problem, or the use of ground on a
contoured map; at times he pulled himself up abruptly and
looked at me. Then I knew what he was thinking of ; he,
an officer in His Majesty's forces, was hotly debating with
a rebel. Then we returned to the map.
'It's no use,' he'd say, 'you might as well give it up; you
can't beat the regulars. None of you know how to handle
men; you must fling them about all the time; I wish you
were with me, though, out there.' Frank and I were bound by
affection. We had always stood by each other. My beliefs
did not make any difference to him nor did they to his fellow-
officers. It was easier to talk to men who had fought; they
were usually more dispassionate. Frank had changed; the
army caste system had gripped him: contempt for politicians
and civilians, elimination of the human factor in the military
world of decision, narrowing of the world to a tested com-
radeship, meticulous attention to social convention. He was
now a regular and spoke of Kitchener's mob, the new army,
with regimental contempt.
I had no unit to experiment on. My three younger brothers
helped me to cover up my doings; they believed as I did.
They were too young to join the Irish Volunteers, but there
45
was Fianna E/ireann, a boys' organization, which trained as
we did. I took charge of their company on manouevres,
worked out all kinds of protective formations, trained them
as scouts, and experimented with tactics. The experience
from the European War I got from small booklets issued
privately by the British. It was comforting to know that 'the
information therein was strictly private and confidential, and
was not to be communicated either directly or indirectly to
the press, or to any person not holding an official position in
His Majesty's Service.' The home situation was complicated
by the hidden uniforms and equipment of my brothers and
by their attempts to attend their parades. I was commended
for the long walks which I now took with them in the
country.
Frank MacCabe was our company captain. He had very
broad burly shoulders ; he carried himself squarely and wore
dark green riding-breeches on parade. He seemed slightly
conscious of his dignity as commander of the company;
sometimes as if he knew of this feeling his face blossomed;
it became a spreading pink when he gave an order. Although
he made gross mistakes when explaining musketry theory, I
did not lose respect. He had been out in Easter Week, and
that covered the here and the hereafter. I was in awe of any
rank. Diarmuid O Hegarty, battalion vice-commandant, who
visited us at long intervals, was a kind of minor god.
Paddy Hoolihan was our physical drill instructor. His chest
had banded muscles; it kept the pronounced curve of the
pridefully conscious Guardsman. His own strength made him
abuse ours in setting-up exercises ; smiling, he kept us in
tortuous positions. One evening in underclothes and trousers
we were doing floor exercises for abdominal muscles--the
newsboy always said 'abominal muscles'; somewhat flushed
we were brought to attention by our Captain. 'A lady, sister
of The O Rahilly, killed in the Easter scrap, is going to inspect
you. She will probably give some of you religious medals. If
there is any laughing you will bloody well hear from me
afterwards.' We tightened our lips as he walked expanding
down our ranks past many a torn shirt with a grey-haired
gentle-faced woman, Mrs. Humphreys. She asked our names,
talked longer to those who had fought, gave them a medal of
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
Liam Archer, thin-faced, brim of hat turned determinedly
46
down, who worked in the General Post Office, later took
charge of us. He was a better officer. He would have been
dismissed if it had been known that he was a member of the
Volunteers. There was little loose talk among men in the
Brigade, yet weekly fifteen hundred paraded, attended special
classes and manoeuvres. When I passed Archer in the street,
he gave me a wink. Civil servants had now to take an oath
of allegiance. Many left the service, but some remained; a
few had been told to take the oath.
The battalion was commanded by a semi-mythical being
called Byrne. Byrne the Boer, he was called. It was rumoured
that he had served in the Irish Brigade under Major MacBride.
We spoke of him with awesome respect. He had been out and
had escaped imprisonment. As a sniper he was said to have
potted away for four days after the surrender. As he came
in to the drillroom there was a low whisper: 'It's Byrne.' A
tall man in a waterproof spoke in a heavy voice, holding his
chin stiff.
Diarmuid O Hegarty, the vice-commandant, inspected us.
Once he said that we were marking time only, we wouldn't
long keep that up. A Volunteer must always hold himself
ready. He had a rapid utterance ; his hair flopped on his
forehead with the intensity of his words. His hair gave him
an untidy look; he was careless in his dress. What did he
mean, we asked afterwards; it looked as if there would soon
be something doing, During the Easter scrap I was told he
had wandered about with a puttee trailing loose; when one
looked at him one remembered the puttee. A civil servant,
he had been arrested, released and reinstated.
Weekly we paid threepence or sixpence ; our quarter-
master marked the amounts in on the little linen-backed
green cards which we brought on parade. They were a badge
of membership, but a danger if we were arrested. We paid
for the privilege of belonging ; the carrying-out of orders
might mean, if arrested, imprisonment and the loss of occupa-
tion. 'If all armies were like ours,' said a van driver in my
section, 'soldiers having to pay for kit, rifles and ammunition,
there wouldn't be so much bloody talk about war.'
Walking home at night with some of the men I listened to
their talk and learned. Some had read steadily and well,
others had a personal opinion on much that was generally
accepted without thought or inquiry. They had learned to be
independent in mind. Arts students in the University, with
47
their constipated knowledge, Chesterbloc complex, and em-
bryonic pedantry, would probably look down on the simple
independence and bright alertness of these men. I was taught
their songs :
Step together--be each rank
Dressed in line, from flank to flank
Marching so that you may halt
'Mid the onset's fierce assault
Firm as the rampart's bank,
Raised the iron hail to weather
Proud sight
Left, right
Steady, boys, and step together.
. . . . .
When Wexford and New Ross could tell
And Tubber neering and Carnew,
Where many a Saxon foeman fell,
And many an Irish soldier, too.
Hurrah, brave boys, we vow to stand
Together for our fatherland
As did that bold devoted band
The gallant men of Ninety-Eight,
The newsboy I often saw a bit of the way home; but that
meant we both saw each other home, as he would then walk
back in my direction. He lived in a tenement behind Marl-
borough Street. One night he said, 'Come on up.' Smells of
bacon fat spiralling up insistently, the lingering decay of
cabbage and a steady strength of sewage. I caught my breath
in short, greasy coughs. Dirty paint hiccupped off the wall,
banisters were splintered or broken away; 'for fuel,' he said.
Gaps in the wooden stairs, broken windows patched with
cardboard or open to the rain; doors swung dully on lopsided
hinges. He lived on the third floor with two brothers, a
sister, father, and mother. The boys were asleep in one
corner covered by grey army blankets, there was a mattress
in another. His mother was bent sewing over an oil
lamp, the father was slumped in a chair, his overhanging
moustache dewed and a breathy stale smell of porter coming
from him.
Afterward the boy came down to the door. Two shawlies
on the steps were holding a loud banter across to a woman
who leant out from the third-storey window. 'My God, the
people shot landlords all over Ireland to get a piece of land
48
and a home; but nobody has shot a Dublin landlord for an
extra room.'
'Oh, we're used to it now,' he said. I walked up to what
had been sententiously called the widest street in Europe; a
woman grasped my arm: 'Dearie, do you want a short time?
Come on. I haven't been had for days.'
By degrees I paid for my rifle. It cost four pounds. My
rifle was a long .303 Lee-Enfield. Our quartermaster un-
screwed the stock for me. It was a proud night for me when
I brought it home. I wrapped the two parts in brown paper
and carried the parcel past police on their night beats. If
they only knew what I had, I thought. I left the parcel outside
the side gate in the shadow of a laurel. I waited until all
had gone to bed. I made a dump for it in my room by sawing
a piece out of the floorboards, adding two uprights for
supports so that it fitted back in stool shape. I had bought
Rangoon oil, and a tin of three-in-one. I brought my treasure
upstairs. It was very heavy. I looked at it carefully ; it
needed cleaning. I thoroughly scoured it with boiling water,
cleansed it out with rags in the pull-through, and oiled it, I
striped and cleaned the bolt action. I put a plug of vaseline
in muzzle and breech, smeared the steel with it, screwed on
the stock, and wrapped an oiled rag around the rifle.
I removed the piece of board, tied a piece of string to the
leather sling and muzzle, and shoved the rifle in as far as my
arm would go. I tied the cord to a nail which I had previously
hammered in at half-arm's length from the opening. I put a
bundle of the Irish Volunteer and Sinn Fein beneath the
opening. In case of discovery by mother, it would seem to
be a hide for papers only. I pulled my brothers out of bed
early next morning. I showed them how to work the rifle,
told them how to clean it; in case I should chance to be
arrested I got them to promise that they would look after it.
I had placed my two revolvers in another hide. At times
one of them was kept by a retired member of the Dublin
police. He kept a shop not far away. He received my mobili-
zation orders, as they could not be left at my home; I passed
his shop each day on my way to the Medical School. Each
section had a despatch-rider who left word with us during
the week of changes in the time and place of parade. In case
of a special day or night mobilisation, he knew our home and
working addresses. The company could be quickly brought
together when needed.
49
We had not more than seven or eight rifles and a fair
number of small-arms, though our strength had increased to
sixty. Often our captain announced that weapons offered to
him had to pass to other companies in the battalion, because
there was not enough money in our Army Fund to buy them.
The Tommies sold us rifles and kit, but one had to be cauti-
ous when approaching them. Some had been used as decoys
by their officers. We looked longingly at gunsmiths' shops in
Dame Street and on the quays; but we could not buy arms
or ammuntion, even shotgun cartridges, without a special
permit from the police. Once, when a man from another
company, who could not hold himself in any longer, broke
a shop window, he was told off and the automatic was handed
back.
This was a new world and a strange one. The men had
little use for anyone who was not of the physical force belief.
Gaelic Leaguers and members of Sinn Fein Clubs who did
not belong to the Volunteers were sneered at, Most of the
men had joined Sinn Fein and the Gaelic League.
Like the thoroughgoing pragmatists we were, all our asso-
ciations and contacts in life and literature were diverted to
the one purpose. Gaelic Leaguers stressed the incentive of
the language towards propagandist nationality ; few had dis-
interested literary values. Some of the men I met had become
gnarled and bitter by the corroding thought of injustice which
they grafted from the general to themselves. This in-driving
had warped them; their expression of feeling was from
personal to general, and their emotions became rhetoric.
The men in the company thought the English were con-
temptible. They were cowardly; their word, as far as Ireland
or Imperial possessions were concerned, could never be
trusted. When I argued the question of cowardice, giving
instances of English at the front throwing themselves on top
of grenades to save their comrades, I was told that the story
was all 'me eye.'
Only by fighting had Ireland ever gained its own self-
respect or any practical advantage. The only way to speak
to the English was down the barrel of a rifle. When I spoke
of the army, meaning the British, I was understood to mean
the Volunteers, or I was asked pointedly what the hell did I
mean? We were the army! There was with some a grudging
respect for the Unionists, blueguts; they were a planter race
who held the land grants they had won cheaply, or by the
50
sword, but they gave their blood to the Empire. The sho-
neens--those who through snobbery, acquired wealth, in-
clination or steady bootlicking, had reached an intermediate
position, neither food, flesh, nor good red herring--were
held in supreme contempt.
I had to prevent my people from knowing of my activity;
but my new friends were remote from their lives. The per-
sonal isolation of people in a Dublin suburb, where one
scarcely knows the names of one's second-next-door neigh-
bour, was an additional protection. My sympathy with unrest
was known, however.
Amongst the books at home was a copy of Wolfe Tone's
Autobiogaphy, published by his son in America in 1826.
The leaves had not been cut. I read Tone slowly. He had
been the first to unite Catholic and Presbyterians in the
national effort. In his time the North was the most strongly
revolutionary part of the country; clearer-thinking than
romantic Munster, which smuggled men abroad to fight for
foreign kings. Other leaders, with the exception of Hugh
O'Neill, had been abstractions; at school we had read of them
in relation to events; they had nothing to do with living.
Tone was the first human note; 'drunk again' in his diary
meant much : it brought him down to mortal level. Too
many people had a leader's image in their minds that was a
cross between a Calvinist's ideals and a nun's; he must
possess the virtues they lacked:
And righteous men shall make our land
A Nation once again.
Few of the boys I met had studied Tone, Fintan Lalor, or
James Connolly. I had often listened to their quotation of
Fintan Lalor: 'Somewhere, somehow, and by someone a
beginning must be made.' But not 'Political rights are but
parchment. It is the social constitution that determines the
condition of the people.' Irish history had not been written;
it was the history of the underdog.
We dismissed the agony, blood, and misery of the trenches
as we dismiss another's sorrow. There is an Irish proverb:
'It's easy to sleep on another man's wound.' When I read the
casualty lists for news of my brother I found friends and
acquaintances amongst the killed and wounded. I could see
mother's face when she read the morning paper and a hand
involuntarily going to her throat if there came a sharp knock-
ing at the door. It might be a telegram: 'We regret...' from
the War Office.
The first Russian Revolution came; the provisional govern-
ment and the coalition under Kerensky. We were pleased; we
had read of Siberia, secret police, and underground move-
ments, but none of my volunteer friends spoke of Lenin or
the 1905 Revolution. Since the execution of Connolly there
had been no revolutionary leader; no one made a contact
between extreme labour and the separatists. Our company
strength was mainly working men; but I was too intense on
the new spirit of volunteering to feel their other allegiance.
The volunteer spirit in essentials was hostile to Labour,
afraid that any attention to its needs or direction would
weaken the one-sided thrust of force.
Five
CE/ilidhes--Irish dances--were always crowded. There, one
met only people who were all right, meaning separatists.
Volunteer dances to collect money for arms were supposedly
for some imaginary club or literary society, as they should
have otherwise been suppressed. In between each dance were
ballads, jigs, old songs, and fierce recitations:
In Dublin's town they murdered them
Like dogs they shot them down.
. . . . . .
May peace and plenty be her share
Who kept us from want and care.
0 God bless England is our prayer.
Whack fo the diddle ol the di-do-day.
When we were savage, fierce, and wild,
She came as a mother to her child,
Gently raised us from the slime,
Kept our hands from hellish crime,
And sent us to heaven in our own good time,
Whack for the diddle ol the di-do-day.
52
Or the anti-recruiting:
God save the King and God save Ireland!
Get a sack and start the work today;
Pick up all the socks you meet,
For the English Tommies' feet
When they're running from the Germans far away.
In Dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow through the streets
broad and narrow,
Singing Sinn Feiners pro-Germans alive, alive O!
Alive, Alive O,
Alive ,Alive O-O,
Sinn Feiners,pro-Germans
Alive, Alive O.
I got to dances by climbing out of the back window by a
ladder or the drainpipe when all were in bed. Often I took a
chance. I went over the back wall before father had gone
upstairs, At dawn I was in my bed.
I brought over much from my other life. I made excuses
in my mind for bad manners, sloppy clothes, sweaty hands,
bombastic ignorance, but the clash lessened. I lived on a
mountain top where there was no need for speech, even. I
felt an understanding, a sharing of something bigger than
ourselves and a heightening of life. People could be more
expressive, natural, and affectionate. They were direct, and
immediate contact was not difficult. Older people had no
conscious outthrust of age or experience; we all shared the
adventure. The important ones did not surround themselves
with barriers of authority or of organized dignity. I could
not see myself now. I could not see my friends through the
movement; the critical faculty came up every now and then,
but I hit it on the head.
I joined the Five Provinces Branch of the Gaelic League.
Night classes were well attended; people seemed eager to
learn the language, and to use whatever words they knew in
the middle of an English sentence. The League had been
founded by Douglas Hyde, a Trinity man. It had helped to
preserve and teach the language, gather to some extent its
folklore and foster literature. Out of this movement had
come respect for the wealth of a mere peasant's tongue and a
fresh source for those writing in English. Many, because of
53
it, had taken on a new interest in the country ; to some it had
given a background through cultural association. All con-
temporary Irish movements might be said to spring from it.
Most of the officers and men in the recent rising had had some
knowledge of, or had been students of, Irish.
Through ce/ilidhes and general association I got to know
Cumann na mBan and Fianna. Cumann na mBan, the
League of Women, had been organized as an auxilary to the
Volunteers. The girls were formed in companies and or-
ganized by districts. They were expected to be trained in
first aid, to prepare field hospital supplies and general equip-
ment. They organized concerts and dances and helped the
Arms Fund. They were not controlled by the Volunteer
Executive. Fianna E/ireann had been started by the Countess
Markievicz. They were scouts trained to the use of arms,
modelled somewhat on the ancient Fianna of the legends.
But that part of training depended very much on who com-
manded the company; usually they were prouder of the
arms-bearing part. When eighteen years they passed to the
Volunteers. Fianna and Cumann na mBan had helped in the
Easter fighting.
In the University, Volunteers from different faculties knew
each other and kept together. We subscribed to Irish papers,
learned the latest songs, wrote very bad verse, and read books
on Anglo-Irish poetry. We used the Sinn Fein post when
writing to each other in Dublin. Special stamps were sold by
trusted news agents and letters could be left with them for
quick delivery. The British opened mail and it was no use to
leave anything to chance. Walking across town during the
day, I met men from other companies and was always sure
of a hearty greeting in Irish or a half-military salute. We
discussed such important matters as whether or not we should
salute our officers in public. They must have liked the honour,
despite the danger, for none of them forbade it.
In the College we disliked those who spoke in favour of
the European War, yet saw the fight from a safe distance.
They looked down on everything to do with an Irish-Ireland
movement as if it would contaminate their social atmosphere.
They sneered at the Volunteers, hinted at supplies of German
gold, walked proudly with a background of the climbing
urbanity of Jesuit schools. With some, one found that rebel-
lion had its vintage ages. They could talk with savoury pride
of a real or imaginary ancestor who had carried a pike or
54
sword in '98, or had helped Emmet in 1803. That period was
accepted, it had gone into song and everyday speech; Moore
had sung of it in London drawing-rooms. Eighteen-forty-
eight was respectable; there had been much romantic and
propagandist poetry written and one futile gentlemanly fight.
Eighteen-sixty-seven was doubtful; little poetry, much or-
ganized purpose, which was not apparent in the capture of a
few barracks ; there had been few gentlemen. Nineteen
hundred and sixteen, only a year ago, was a dirty stab in the
back. There were others who belonged to the Gaelic League
or who played Gaelic football and hurling. Boisterous, very
contemptuous of Rugby and golf, and soccer, tennis to them
was the last straw. They spoke of the English with inherited
contempt, attended public meetings in the streets, approved of
physical force in talk, but made no attempt to join the
Volunteers,
D.O.R.A., Dora, as the Defence of the Realm Act was
affectionately called, added new Irish clauses. Anyone whose
'behaviour is of such a nature as to give reasonable grounds
for suspecting that he has acted, or is acting, or about to
act in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or to the
Defence of the Realm,' could be arrested. Men were sen-
tenced for 'making use of language calculated to cause dis-
affection,' for whistling derisively The Peeler and the Goat'
when passing police; the air had once been the marching
song of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Oh, mercy sir, the goat replied,
Pray let me tell my story O,
I am no Rogue, no Ribbonman,
No Croppy, Whig, or Tory O,
I'm guilty not of any crime
Of petty or high treason O,
I'm sadly wanted at this time
For this is the ranting season 0.
It is in vain for to complain
Or give your tongue such bridle O,
You're absent from your dwellin' place
Disorderly and idle O,
Your hoary locks will not prevail,
Nor your sublime oration O
And Peeler's Acts will you transport
On your own information O.
At the Abbey, Lady Gregory's play The Rising of the
55
Moon was banned by the Castle. Formerly it had been con-
sidered by the separatists to deal with the police too kindly.
The Royal Irish attended all meetings, concerts, and Gaelic
sports; if unable to take a report in writing their 'mental
notes' were accepted as evidence. In Dublin a meeting was
broken up by police, the crowd resisted, an inspector of
police was hit on the head with a hurley--later he died. The
carrying of hurleys was prohibited. A new song to the air of
the 'Wearing of the Green':
Then shoulder high your hurleys, boys.
And keep your rifles bright;
The mangy bulldog can but bark--
He's got no teeth to bite.
I was hemmed in during a baton charge in Westmoreland
Street, a heavy baton walloped off my shoulder. I jumped
for the large target of a policeman's feet, and with the help
of a grocer's curate from my company toppled him over. A
squad of police charged to rescue him ; we ran with his baton.
The power of the Irish Parliamentary Party seemed to be on
the decline; three men had been returned in bye-elections
on the understanding that they would not attend the English
Houses of Commons. Tri-colours were tied or nailed to old
castles, telegraph poles, wires, and trees. The police tore
them down. The branches of trees were lopped and the trunk
greased or tarred, then the flag floated. Authority now rested
with the individual policeman or British officer. The official
mind thinking in schedules was not able to hold its own
against quick wit and gay carelessness.
Prisoners in Mountjoy Jail, treated as criminals, demanded
political rights. They were refused. Thomas Ashe and others
went on hunger strike. A school teacher, he had fought, in
North County. He was of powerful build. He had been con-
victed on the 'mental notes' of an R.I.C. man. He was popular
with his comrades. More men attended the parades of our
company. We felt that something would happen. Forcible
feeding began; bedclothes were taken away from his cell,
which he had tried to wreck before the strike. The wind was
cold and damp, his cell windows were broken. My examina-
tions began in the University; but I could not think of
anatomical relations or of hydrogen-ion concentration and
basal metabolism. Something was bound to happen. Liam
Archer had told our company, tightening his mouth: 'This
56
sort of thing won't continue long; we won't stand by and see
a volunteer officer fight by himself.' My food did not taste
the same. I was disgusted when I found myself as hungry as
ever at meals.
Thomas Ashe died. Examinations were now of no import-
ance. There was a special mobilization of the company. Men
in the Volunteer reserve, who could not attend parades, were
in the ranks. The company was practically at full strength,
that in itself was exciting. Diarmuid 0 Hegarty inspected us.
He spoke slowly now; the Irish Volunteers were going to
give Commandant Ashe a military funeral. The Brigade would
be mobilized. Officers and men would carry small arms and
twenty rounds of ammunition. Our pockets were to be
emptied of papers before we paraded on Sunday. We would
be told by dispatch of the mobilization ground. We read into
his words what he didn't say.
Next day in the University we discussed Sunday. The
British would interfere, they would never allow companies to
march in military formation, wear uniform or the firing squad
to carry rifles. On the streets more tri-colour buttons, Fianna
Fail cap badges of the Dublin Brigade, and crowds after
dark. An inquest was held, the jury found that 'the hunger
strike was adopted against the inhuman treatment and as a
protest against their being treated as criminals.'
I cleaned and overhauled my rifle and revolvers and
polished the brass clasps on my accoutrements. I might be
recognized by my people or by some of my loyalist friends;
that could not be helped now. On Sunday morning I took
father's leggings and borrowed a slouch hat which I pulled
down hard on my forehead. Inside my coat I carried my
thirty-eight in a thin, kid holster. I had one hundred rounds
of ammunition with me in different pockets and a first field
dressing and bandages. We had been told to bring twenty
rounds but I wanted to be sure. I expected that the British
would try to prevent or break up the funeral.
Our company fell in at the top of Whitworth Road. Across
the canal was the grey bulk of Mountjoy Prison. Other
companies fell in. We shouted to them when we were allowed
to stand easy. We, 'F' Company, were sixth in order down
the road; behind us stretched the rest of the battalion. That
gave us a feeling of strength. Byrne the Boer again came out
of myth. A tall figure in uniform with linked chain epaulettes
57
on his shoulders; he inspected each company, then from the
top of the road ordered us to move off. His voice carried well.
We halted outside Glasnevin cemetery whilst a curious crowd
watched us. I made a mistake in taking a turn. My section
glared at me. One said 'What the bloody hell do you think
you're doing?' I felt miserable as we stood to attention. I
had let down my company before the public. We were
detailed off in sections. Mine was marched down the road
towards Finglas village; we halted and formed across the
road. Cars and people on foot were not allowed to pass our
cordon. During the day we wondered what was happening in
other parts of the city. Late in the evening after the crowds
had gone we rejoined our company and marched past the
grave. We reformed again and swung down town, singing.
We were dismissed at Parnell Square. The Volunteers had
held the streets of the capital, had kept order, had marched
in the forbidden formations, had worn uniforms. A firing
squad had carried rifles and had fired volleys.
The Irish Constabulary, on military lines, had been
organized by Sir Robert Peel in 1822, hence 'peelers' and
'bobbies.' Recruits had to have their own and their fathers'
records looked up in the local barracks; if there was no taint
of rebel blood they went to Dublin Castle for examination
and if approved of, to the depot in the Phoenix Park, for six
months' intensive training. They were, unlike the police of
England and Scotland, independent of the local authorities,
and could not be dismissed even by their Inspector-General
without the sanction of Dublin Castle. Officers were nomi-
nated by the Chief Secretary, and after training became
District and County Inspectors--D.I.s and C.I.s. They were
a costly force.
Throughout the winter of 1917 all organizations increased
in number. Arthur Griffith, President of Sinn Fein, had been
its founder. It was organized in clubs, and councils whose
area corresponded with that of Parliamentary divisions. An
elected executive dealt with policy. Sinn Fein intended to
fight elections on the abstention plan until there would be
enough elected representatives to form a government. The
various movements were lumped by the British as Sinn Fein;
sine fine, they pronounced it. At a general convention of Sinn
Fein the constitution was changed. Eamonn de Valera was
elected President.
58
"...Sinn Fein aims at securing the recognition of an Indepen-
dent Irish Republic. . . .
". . . a Constituent Assembly shall be convoked, comprising
persons chosen by the Irish constituencies, as the supreme
national authority to speak and act in the name of the Irish
people, and to devise and formulate measures for the welfare
of the whole people of Ireland."
Directors were appointed to organize what would be later
departments of government. Cathal Brugha was responsible
for Ministry and Commerce. Diarmuid Lynch, a former
Lieutenant of our company, dealt with food control.
At a secret convention of the Irish Volunteers Eamonn de
Valera was elected President; Cathal Brugha became Chief
of Staff and I.R.B. controlled the resident executive of the
Volunteers in Dublin and neighbourhood. The Irish Republi-
can Brotherhood, the I.R.B., had been founded in 1858 by
James Stephens as a secret oath-bound society to bring about
Irish freedom by armed force, It had been called the Fenian
Brotherhood and its members Fenians. Now it was spoken of
as the Brotherhood.
The organization unit was the Circle of ten men camou-
flaged under stranger names for meeting ; each Circle elected
a County Centre. In Ireland the thirty-two counties were
divided into eight Electoral Divisions. There were three be-
tween England and Scotland. These eleven each elected a
Centre to the Supreme Council which then co-opted four
more. The Supreme Council declared itself to be the govern-
ment of the Irish Republic, and its President was the Presi-
dent of the Republic. It had power to levy taxes, raise loans
and make war. Through its Military Council it had planned
the Rising of 1916. Again reorganized in internment camps
and gaols it was getting a hold on all separatist organizations
by placing men in key positions. As well it had men who did
not take an active part in Irish Ireland life; they worked
quietly as professional men, in Government offices and in
civic life.
Cattle, oats, dairy produce, and food stuffs had been
shipped in excess to England, which relied largely on Ireland
for the feeding of her people. The Irish Food Control Com-
mittee protested, but the power was with the London Food
Controller. Sinn Fein tried to organize a food census and
attempted to warn the people of danger. The famine years
were yet living memories--over a million had died.
59
I got a mobilization order. I cut my work in the dissecting
room. I met two men from 'F' Company at the corner of
the North Circular Road; soon a group collected from our
battalion. Boys came on bicycles and tram cars. A milkman
drove up, he handed over his horse to a friend to finish his
round. We loitered about in threes. Down the wide road
from the cattle market cattle and pigs were driven to ships
at the North Wall. Drove after drove of bullocks went past,
drivers whistled and shouted and thwacked mud-splashed
rumps of their beasts with ash plants. A herd of pigs came
poking their noses from side to side, halting to sniff after
jerky runs. They climbed footpaths, went into open garden
gates, reluctant, as if they sensed their fate. A sharp order,
the pigs were surrounded; protests from the startled drivers
were ignored; with wild whoops and in protective formation
we rounded our spoil towards the corporation yards beside
Binn's bridge on the canal.
We stood amongst carts, dust buckets, shovels and brushes
until butchers arrived. The air quivered with the desolation
of dying pigs. We took off brush handles and pointed them
with penknives as we guarded the yard. A force of Dublin
Metropolitan Police in charge of a resolute inspector arrived;
tall burly men marching in stolid heavy footed ranks. There
was a talk with Diarmuid Lynch, the Director of Food Con-
trol, whilst we laughed at the police. We looked at their long
black baton cases and heavy helmets, and wondered what
they would do. 'Stick your pole in their guts; bayonet work,'
said the milkman, 'if they look for trouble.' The police sur-
rounded us. More volunteers arrived, another batch of police
strengthened the cordon. At dusk the procession started off,
the police made way, then fell in behind, Drays had been
requisitioned, the still bodies lay uncovered as we moved
across the city, our advanced flank and rear guards with
brush handles and butchers' knives. Through O'Connell
Street, past Trinity and a turn into Dame Street. Where
were we going? we wondered. This went past the Castle. Past
Dublin Castle; surely the soldiers would be turned out; we
readied our spears. Up the hill by Christ's Church cathedral
and down the old streets of the Coombe. Where the hell
were we going? At Donnelly's bacon factory we delivered
our dead. The seizure of the pigs caught the imagination of
the people. As a result Sinn Fein markets were held in some
towns. It was arranged that the surplus food of one county
be exchanged for the needs of another. The resurgent
Nationhood was planning.
***********************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT GOES ON AND ON
We're leaders of this mighty Irish Nation
Though some folk say our leading days are done.
But don't forget what e'er may be our station
The Constitutional movement must go on.
Chorus:
And on and on and on for ever more.
Gather the Party round Sinn Fein a scorning
And let your speeches roll across the floor,
For the Constitutional Movement now take warning
Must go on and on for ever more. . . . Amen.
We've Home Rule now the Statute Book adorning,
It's there to be seen by every mother's son,
We brush the cobwebs off it every morning
For the Constitutional movement must go on.
Four hundred pounds a year is very handy,
It helps the Party now to carry on.
In London, boys, we all can act the dandy
For the jobbery and corruption must go on.
Now Ireland can no longer be excluded,
Lloyd George he flung his speech across the floor,
No matter what you think about conscription,
But the Constitutional movement must go on.
When Lloyd George will threaten Ireland with conscription
We'll stop him with our gas, led on by John,
And the Freeman will write a grand description,
For the Constitutional movement must go on.
61
Gothic
Six
MARCH--AUGUST, 1918
IT had been increasingly difficult to avoid suspicion at home.
I had to listen to my comrades being laughed at and their
motives questioned. Our set did not believe in giving their
services voluntarily; they were satisfied and the existing
order was good; was it not 'the Government'? An idea
would be viewed from the point of gain; what good would
it do one personally? If instead of gaining one would lose
friends, position, status, liberty, then madness lay that way.
There was no sense in it; sense being the standard by which
they interpreted other ideas in terms of their own. Often I
flared up and said what I thought about the situation, then
again I would sit quiet, listening whilst I boiled inside. I had
to invent too many excuses. Already it was like a guerilla
war. In my own territory which I knew I could cover my
tracks carefully, appear somewhat disinterested to friends of
the family, meet my ordinary acquaintances who were pro-
British, and yet keep in touch with my friends.
My point of view would never be listened to, much less
tolerated. My brother could join the British Army, that was
respectable, acknowleged as such by clergy and laity. I
would associate with people who were looked down upon;
once they had been called the 'mere Irish,' now people of
Irish birth had got into the eddies of the British caste system.
Once the English held the country solely by means of garri-
62
sons; in the last century by garrisons and society; now by
patronage, caste and its outlying webs in the smallest towns.
The farther from the centre the more illogical and perverse
it became. The Irish, always hateful of change, now held to
the new mentality; patronage threw them some chaff, but
they could not contribute to the constructive building of
their own country, and political impotence clove to their own
meaningless interests.
Some day or other an explanation would be demanded;
I would be given a choice of paths, or police interference
might decide. I would disappoint their hopes of a profession
and be a black sheep. I carefully oiled and greased my rifle,
wrapped it in oily rags and made my brothers promise to
take care of it. Then I left home in March of 1918.
My body was hardy enough. I had an Erewonian contempt
for disease. At home we each went our own way, there was
not much sentiment. The younger members laughed at families
who sang the praises of their own, at sisters who adored their
brothers. The bond was one of good fellowship and reli-
ability; we supported each other by an understanding which
could meet outside blame or praise dispassionately. Mother
was methodical; we had been well cared for. Father had
given me a respect for law, a conventional approach to
accepted authority, deeply felt kinship with the dispossessed
people, and a belief that the British Navy would end the war.
The elder members of my family said sir when they spoke to
him. I contributed my own haphazard thought on the ultimate
outcome of our actions and their meanings, and a temper
which I could obligingly blame on my 0 Malley name.
The Dublin Brigade Adjutant told me to report to Dick
Mulcahy in Dungannon; he gave me my train fare. I travelled
with some Dublin officers. Before we reached Drogheda our
carriage was filled up by men of the Royal Irish Constabu-
lary, who on first entering, spoke with Southern accents; but
for the rest of the way hardly opened their mouths although
no order had been given. They were fine-looking well-built
men. Their movements, even their lack of movement, con-
formed to an outward induced sense of authority as if they
wore an extra skin. They had a ceremonious dignity about
them that made ritual out of what would seem to us unimpor-
tant details. They had a black swarthy complexion, the only
colour there was came from a patch of claret cloth backing
their cap badge, the crown above the harp, and the salted-
63
butter yellow on the sergeants' V's. Their uniforms were
blue black with a touch of green, the colour of the cheap ink
we used at school. The colour darkened their appearance.
They carried batons in heavy leathern cases, carbines and
bayonets. They wore padded cupola helmets. Their great coats
were rolled neatly and slanted across their chests.
We, on the opposite side of the compartment, looked at
them curiously, talked of the East Tyrone election and
laughed; we wondered if we should soon have broken heads.
But in between the laughter and the chat I had an empty
feeling pressing cold on my stomach, as I had always when
I returned to school after the summer holidays. Life had been
sheltered and remote enough from actuality up to this.
In Dungannon I reported to Dick Mulcahy, Assistant Chief
of Staff. He had been in my class at the medical school;
but I had been too much in awe of his rank to speak to him.
He was seated at a table in a small, bare room writing.
I saluted: 'I have been instructed to report to you, sir.'
'By whom?'
'By the Dublin Brigade Adjutant.'
'Your name?'
'0 Malley, "F" Company, First Battalion.'
'Can you handle men?'
'I have helped to train a Fianna Company on the North
side.'
He was in grey green uniform. It fitted well. He wore a
soft, slouch hat, one side was pinned up by the Fianna Fail
badge of the Dublin Brigade. He looked neat and trim, quiet.
He had a shrewd, cold look. There was little expression on
the muscles of his mouth or cheeks when he spoke. He
spoke slowly, stressing words nasally. His face was of the
thin type, clean-shaven with bushy eyebrows.
'You can remain with a family in Main Street. I'll
instruct Captain Donnelly to let you parade a half company
tonight.'
I wondered if my word of command would be good and
if I would make any mistakes. I went over drill movements and
commands as I walked to the square in the evening. I marched
the men as far away as I could from onlookers. I was able
to handle the half company; my assurance gained as I
changed to extended order.
Mulcahy spread an Ordnance Map on the table. 'You'll
take charge of the Coal Island district with the rank of second
lieutenant. I'll send some officers to help you later.' He pointed
out company areas and gave me a list of officers. Most of
them were O'Neills. The many-times disinherited clansmen
had crept back slowly to their old lands and the names of
the planter stock that had held the lands were now a dim
memory. The men told me of the O'Neill legends.
I drilled and skirmished up and down the streets with the
men who came with hurleys or straight long sticks. We
stood misdirected volleys of stones and eggs as we protected
meetings. I met Dublin officers : Peadar Clancy on the shores
of Loch Neagh, and Simon Donnelly who in Dungannon
showed me how to give calm orders when men were excited.
They accepted me. No one commented by look or word on
my inexperience. That began a friendship with these Dublin
men whom I had not known before.
Mulcahy told me to report to the Director of Organiza-
tion. I found Michael Collins in his office on Bachelor's Walk,
Dublin. He was pacing up and down. We shook hands. He
jerked his head to a chair to indicate that I should sit; he
took a chair which he tilted back against the wall. On shelves
were green membership cards, heaps of the Irish Volunteer
Handbook, and stacks of white copies of the organization
scheme. Behind his desk was a large map of Ireland marked
with broad red streaks radiating from Dublin. He was tall,
his shoulders were broad; his energy showed through rapid
movement. A curving bunch of hair fell on his forehead; he
tossed it back with a vigorous head twist.
'I'm sending you to Offaly, there's an election coming off.
I want you to organize a Brigade in that county. There are
a few good chaps in Tullamore and they're "on the run."
He had a strong singing Cork accent; his brown eyes studied
me fixedly. He pointed out companies on a map and mentioned
officers' names.
'It looks like conscription,' he said, 'That'll make some
slackers wake up.'
He pointed out communication routes on the wall map.
I was to improve and keep them tested by despatch riders.
He gave me a bundle of organization schemes, instructions
for the preparation of emergency rations, lists of equipment
that could be made locally. 'Read that and see what you
think of it.' He handed me notes on the destruction of rail-
ways, bridges and engines with and without explosives. It was
signed by Rory O'Connor, Director of Engineering. He
65
crossed to the window whilst I read. 'My bail is up,' he said.
'They're looking for me now.' 'They,' meant the 'G' men,
who carried out political arrests in Dublin. Collins had been
arrested for a Volunteer recruiting speech ; he had been
released on bail. That was unusual. Volunteers were not
allowed to accept bail. 'Two nights ago "G" men brought
off a raid; they found empty packing cases and a pile of
cartridge wrappers in a store. Bruton said: "This looks as if
there were brains behind it; I bet it's that fellow from Mount-
joy Street." ' Collins laughed; it meant himself. 'Good luck
now, Earnan,' he said, as he shook hands. As I walked across
O'Connell Bridge I wondered at the risks he ran, coming and
going to and from his office, whilst detectives watched for
him.
Austin Stack of Kerry who had recently fought a jail war
in Belfast was in Tullamore with Darrel Figgis. Stack had
a quizzical turn in his deep brown eyes which he half shut
when he told a long story. He was grave and quiet; he spoke
slowly. Figgis was not popular; it was thought that he was
too vain. Stories were told about his Christlike beard. His
manner, his insistent focus of attention for his words, was of
the porcupine quill effect of an artist amongst those who
thought of nationality alone. He was egotistical; it could be
seen in his face and mannerisms; his image was reflected in
the half suppressed smiles of his listeners. He had come
from another life; he would find it hard now, I felt. I had
read his novels; Children of Earth was the best book I had
read about the West of Ireland. He was pleasant when he
talked to me of his books; but he had an unfortunate habit
of making enemies.
Eamonn de Valera was due to arrive. There was intense
excitement ; work speeded up. Volunteers. Cumann na mBan,
and Sinn Fein Clubs arranged a parade. I heard a new song:
'Convict 95,' his number when on penal servitude.
'Twas in Kilmainham prison yard our fifteen martyrs died,
And cold and still in Arbour Hill they are lying side by side,
But we will yet pay back the debt for the spirit is still alive
In men who stood thro' fire and Blood with Convict 95."
Eoin Plunkett was with me in English's Hotel when
de Valera walked in. We made a machine spring to atten-
tion and remained tense, glued with admiration till he spoke
to us and asked us to sit down. He was tall and lean; his
66
hair rifted on to his forehead, His face was long and sallow.
He wore rimless glasses. He had a very deep voice that welled
up, a fairly immobile face save when he spoke, and then the
muscles, to one who had watched them in repose, played
tricks. On the platform there was a hard unemotional feel
to his voice and he twisted his body in emphasis.
His gravity we noticed most; he was patient and kindly
to the many demands for his signature. 'Have you seen Dev?'
I would be asked in the country. It was easy to take on heroic
build if one had seen or talked to any of those whom the
people admired.
An Irish Convention called by Lloyd George had been in
session for nine months; Sinn Fein refused to send representa-
tives. It met and talked. The Irish vote in Australia had
helped to defeat conscription there; a second referendum
would succeed, Premier Hughes said; if the English could in
any way settle the Irish Question. Irish Americans fighting
for small nationalities and to make the world safe for democ-
racy made their government anxious to have some patch-up
in Ireland. The first draft of a Conscription Bill was passed
in England the same day that Lloyd George announced the
failure of the convention; an emasculated Home Rule Bill
was to be given as a gift.
In England conscription had been imposed by degrees; in
Ireland all males between eighteen and fifty-one could be
taken. As a nation Ireland was not deeply concerned with
the world war. Propaganda about territorial violation and
outrages could be paralleled at home. The people had long
watched politicians play their thimble trick at the Imperial
circus: 'Walk up, gentleman. See freedom is here. You cannot
lose. You give your youth and you take your chance.' The
wild Irish who always looked for fight, who were never happy
unless smashing heads with ponderous shillelaghs, now wanted
to fight to prevent themselves from fighting. What an Irish
but; the dear, delightful Irish, so picturesque and such
charming brogues; they were broths of people; they were
entirely.
A meeting of political enemies was held in Dublin. They
issued a statement: 'The passing of the Conscription Bill
must be regarded as a declaration of war on the Irish people.'
The Irish Parliamentary Party left the House of Commons
as a protest. Labour carried out a day of general strike. A
parish fund was organized to raise money.
67
In Offaly committees and subcommittees worked on Trans-
port and Food supply; statistics were compiled; offers of
help came from strange places. I paraded battalions in Tulla-
more; we skirmished and manoeuvred through towns and
the country side followed by police. Officers were arrested and
at once replaced. To save the officers I commanded the
companies of a parade in turn. I was not interfered with.
In small towns I drew my gun when police asked me my
name.
In daytime I could now enter a town to practise quick
mobilization. Shop boys, carpenters, shop owners, clerks, fell
into line quickly. They practised bayonet fighting with brush
handles up and down streets; they sat on pathways or in
halls to listen to my talks from the destruction of railway
plant to street fighting.
Men relieved each other during the day to mould lead to
buck shot; gun cartridges were collected and refilled. Jewel-
lers and locksmiths made revolver springs; they repaired
weapons. Telegraphic clerks held classes with buzzers and
tappers or taught Morse to signallers; harness and boot
makers worked at belts and equipment, smiths and carpenters
made pikes and pike handles. Cumann na mBan sewed signal-
ling flags and haversacks. They gathered medical supplies,
made splints and packed first field dressings.
Shops were raided for cartridges and detonators, quarries
for explosives. Volunteers came to houses whose owners were
hostile or had permits from the police; the police searched
Volunteer and friendly houses for arms. One raiding party
often followed close on the other.
Railways would be destroyed when conscription came;
through comnmunication routes by road were worked out.
There were many branch lines in Offaly and Westmeath.
Some companies were always on duty. Day and night,
dispatch riders on bicycles tried to improve time speeds. All
dispatches had time sheets; the time was checked by each
company through which they passed. The time sheet from
Dublin to Castlebar or to Tralee would be lengthy. Dispatches
were hidden in the collar or tie; sewn up in the coat, put in
a part of the bicycle or in socks. The dispatch might be a
smelly remnant when it reached its last station.
I was told that warrants had been issued for my arrest.
I changed my sleeping quarters frequently. In Clare I slept
in the house of a publican. The owner came into my bed-
68
room one night. He found two improvised hand grenades on
the floor and a revolver beside my bed. He hurriedly made
piles of empty porter barrels at points inside the back wall
to help my escape.
Three Royal Irish halted me in Philipstown. They carried
revolvers in black holsters. 'What's your name?' the sergeant
asked in a deep voice; the thumb of his right hand was
stuck behind his broad flat belt.
'My name is 0 Malley, do you want more information?'
I half drew my gun from inside my coat.
The police were irresolute. They had evidently intended
to arrest me. I waited. The sergeant took out a notebook;
he wrote quickly with a pencil. They watched as I cycled
away.
People remarked that officers had been afterwards arrested
for drilling when I had been in charge or for carrying out
my orders. Some said I was a spy and that the police did
not want to arrest me. A few women said I was leading the
boys astray. I met mutterings in many forms.
In an island of the Bog of Allen which covers a large part
of eastern Offaly I had a farmer friend. 'We'll give them
what's what in the bogs,' he said, 'if it wasn't for them bloody
peelers less than a snipe 'id never get in here.' He had a white
horse for me. 'When the fighting begins up you get and lead
us all against the English.' I liked the white horse. He was
a fine mettlesome beast and he could 'lep a house,' but he
savoured of the range mark. I could see myself stuck up to
my middle in bog water or crawling close to gorse and
heather instead of leading a procession against the nearest
post.
************************************************************************
I was in Athlone. I had met an Irish battalion sergeant-
major from the Castle barracks. He had been fifteen years
in the British army and had seen much fighting. A tall man,
sturdy with independence; he was resilient in well-trained
muscle. He had a well-handled, pointed moustache. He was
willing with some soldiers to help us capture the magazine;
they would fight, if necessary, during the raid, and they
would join us when conscription came. I received a dispatch
from Collins; I was to go to South Roscommon at once.
**************************************************************************
Arrests increased. Courts martial sentences ran from a few
months to five years; a boy was given a month for carrying
69
a Sinn Fein flag; a man five months for 'being in the
company of boys carrying a Sinn Fein flag,' a man one
month for 'whistling derisively at the police'; two years for
singing 'The Felons of our Land,' a song written fifty years
previously. A sentence of from six months to two years for
having a copy of the Irish Volunteer paper, An t-Oglach,
which was printed and distributed in secret. Our men had
been captured when armed. G.H.Q. issued an order to all
armed volunteers to resist arrest.
I read the order to four companies on parade in a demesne
beyond Ballintubber. Two police, one a sergeant, had followed
a company from County Galway. They heard me read the
order; they took notes. I gave a lecture to the men; then
manoeuvred them across the estate. We were able without
permission to select our manoeuvre grounds. The police
kept close to me that day. In the evening returning home
with Brennan, the Brigadier, three of them came into a shop
in Ballintubber. I drew my revolver; they left the shop.
I had a half-battalion parade to inspect in County Galway
one night. My bicycle chain broke; I walked pushing the
bicycle along a muddy road. I crossed the bridge on the
Suck, which was the county boundary, at Ballymoe. Beyond
the whitewashed police barracks a sergeant and a constable
stepped from the footpath and fronted me. 'Halt,' the sergeant
shouted. He took a blue paper from a tunic pocket. He began
to read it aloud. It was a warrant for my arrest.
I drew my revolver; as we looked at each other the
sergeant said 'Draw,' the constable drew his Webley.
The sergeant had a fair moustache, red hair showed at
the sides of his soft service cap; we had met in the demesne.
'Fire,' shouted the sergeant. I had a mixture of respect for
law and the idea the other fellow should fire first. I felt a
sharp thrust in my wrist as I half turned to fire twice at the
constable who had run to a doorway. I pointed my gun at
the sergeant; he did not move nor did he put up his hands.
He shouted orders; police rushed out from the barracks.
I threw my useless bicycle to the ground. I rushed up the
street. Shots followed me. I sprawled and nearly fell as I
felt a burn in my right ankle. I took the first corner at
racing speed and dashed at an impossibly thick hedge of
thorns and brambles. I got through. I ran through the fields
till I was tired. I came back to the road, crossed it and lay
down. My wounds began to pain now.
70
Thorns and sharp brambles had cut my face and hands as
I had crashed the hedge. Blood ran down my neck and onto
my coat. An artery in my left wrist had been cut by a bullet
and my hand was slippery with blood. I tore a piece of
gauze which I always carried then made a tourniquet by
twisting a pencil through my handkerchief. My ankle was
numb with pain; the sock was tightly stuck to the flesh.
I could bandage the ankle afterwards, the important thing
now was to find exactly where I was. I was in County
Galway; I did not know that county save through map study,
and though I had inspected companies there I did not know
any houses where I might stay.
Darkness came quickly. I spread out my map on the
ground whilst I searched for matches. Rain fell. I heard the
noise of bicycle chains; men halted to talk outside the hedge;
they were police. Rain drops pattered off my map; the drops
sounded like revolver shots; the linen map would make more
noise if I tried to fold it. The voices stopped. I gripped hard
on my thirty-eight handle. Two birds flying low wheeled
suddenly when they saw me; they quacked harshly--wild
duck. The police did not notice them.
By match light I cut away my sock and pulled off clinging
shreds. I had a bone wound but not a deep one, the bullet
had passed through. I used the remainder of the iodoform
gauze and bandaged the wound tightly. I limped when I tried
to walk. I found my exact position by using compass and
map. I decided to wait until dawn; I would then wade the
Suck and get to the Roscommon side. I had no coat; I was
wet from the rain, and cold. I put my wrist inside my shirt.
I could hear curlews whistle to each other and there were
rustles in the bushes. Later I heard an otter's low bark and a
splash as he slipped into water.
In the grey of dawn I stepped into the Suck. It was deeper
than I had thought and very cold. I came back to the bank
and tied a tin box of cartridges to my wounded wrist, then
holding my gun out of the water, I swam. I saw two bog
larks go up high to sing in the morning. I was in a marshy
land amongst rushes; farther on I found quaggy bog which
squelched beyond my knees. I heard the bleat of a young
lamb; then it sounded like a kid. There was someone lost
beside myself. I circled around looking for the lost lamb.
I imitated the noise. The sound came again and then I laughed
as I saw what it was. Above me a jacksnipe was rising in
71
spirals then curving down with a rush; the beat of his wing
made a noise like that of a young goat. I must have been
close to the nest and I might have saved myself trouble if
I had remembered the Irish name for jacksnipe, mionna/n
aerach, the airy kid. Perpendicular shafts of silver rain fell
to the west, then grey clouds went away and the sun came
out.
I stumbled across drains which I could not now leap and
crashed through hedges on my right side. On a hill crest in
the distance, a house which I mistook for Ballintubber
Barracks dogged me. I twisted trying to avoid it, but it still
looked down on me. I went ahead then. Miles beyond the
barracks a man ran towards me. 'Thanks be to God, it's you,'
he said, 'the peelers are searching the Galway side and the
soldiers. They have an aerio-plane.' He was a Volunteer.
I again washed and dressed the wounds in Brennan's of
Castleplunket. I borrowed a bicycle; with scouts in front and
behind, I cycled beyond Roscommon to the Shannon shore
on Loch Reagh. I was very stiff; I had to be lifted off the
bicycle.
'I guessed it was you,' said Collins when I saw him in his
office on the Liffey bank, 'your shooting is certainly not your
strong point.' I had been moving from house to house at night
as a general round-up was expected. It came. Three weeks
previously Dora had been altered so that Irishmen could be
deported to England without trial.
Now, newly elected T.D.'s and the Sinn Fein Executive
were arrested and brought by the destroyers to England.
The new Chief Secretary Shortt said: 'the number of Irish-
men and Irishwomen who are in co-operation with the
German enemy is very small, but many of them might
unknowingly become involved.'
The leaders out of the way, Conscription would be easier
to enforce. The round-up had been expected ; deputies had
been appointed to direct Sinn fein; the leaders waited for
arrest. But the army thought otherwise; the Staff kept out of
the way. Collins going home to Mountjoy Street early in the
morning saw troops raiding McGarry's in the same street.
'I waited till they had gone, then I slept in his bed; I knew
it would be the safest bed in Dublin,' he told me.
**********************************************************************
I lived under the bare sandstone ridge of Slievebawn. I
was glad to be close to a mountain again; for the past three
72
months the Hill of Allen, a mound, fort, or moat, or the line
of Eskers running across the midlands had been the only
uplifts since I had left the Slieve Bloom mountains. To the
west from Slievebawn's top I could see a mesh of lakes and
small streams. To the east were bends of the Shannon as it
ran to Loch Reagh; in the North was country rising to Arigna
and mountainy rugged Leitrim.
The Black Pig of legend had shown himself. His huge bulk,
bristling spine ridges and wicked glaring eyes had been seen
on dark nights beyond Elphin. People were afraid to walk
the road after dark. The Black Pig had always meant trouble,
sorrow and war. Around the fires I heard versions of St.
Columcille's prophesies. The dark shadow of the Pig loomed
through them. The Spaniard would help . . . the last great
battle of the Gael would be fought in the valley of the
Black Pig . . . women would walk a day's journey without
seeing a man.
Across the Shannon a man with two thumbs on his right
hand had been straying the roads of Leitrim, things had been
heard at night near the caves of Rath Croghan; there had
been blood in the sky. Legends were remembered by older
people; great happenings were looked forward to.
A man near Strokestown told me of the Pig. Words went
away from him as he stumbled in description...'as big as a
house. Man, dear, and a back . . . God help us . .. I wouldn't
be seen near the place for all the gold in the Bank of Ire-
land...take my advice, now, like a good gossoon and don't
meddle with it.' He had talked to someone who had seen the
Pig at the back of the schoolhouse. If I went there at mid-
night and called three times the Pig would appear.
I knew of the Black Pig's Dyke through successive lines
of ramparts and entrenchments that guarded the changing
prehistoric boundaries of Ulster. I had seen lengths of the
ramparts in different counties. The Pig had wound its way
in and out of pagan and Christian belief. It meant some-
thing now, whatever it was, and though a series of debates
with myself did not give any logic to my action, I was going
to call it out.
One dark night I walked down towards the schoolhouse,
my hobnailed boots for company in the stillness. I was
nervous enough, even though I put my hand a few times to
the handle of my thirty-eight, yet I felt inclined to laugh at
myself for being a bigger fool than I thought I was. I was
73
at the school, before midnight. At twelve o'clock I shouted:
'Come forth,' Silence. 'Come forth,' then a pause. I heard
my own voice when it had gone away. 'Come forth,' but no
ridge of spines of yellow eyes came out to frighten me.
I cycled past many a broken demesne wall, once the sign
of entrenched ascendancy, now the symbol of a passing order.
The walls were built when the day's labour of a tenant was
tuppence; bullock's blood had been added, it was said, to
bind the mortar, and people's blood, too. The Big House
might be spruce, or gaunt in decay; weeds on the avenue and
families without issue. Virtue and strength was going from
the leeches who had sucked life from the people. The arid
brittleness or the harsh brilliance of the ascendancy mind
remained. I made the men manoeuvre in demesne land to
rid them of their inherent respect for the owners. Even yet
their fathers touched their hats to the gentry and to the
sergeant of the police.
I cycled towards Reilig na Ri/ the royal burying place of
Connacht. Seated on Rath Cruchan I thought of Nannie and
her stories of the Ta/in. I could not imagine where she had
learned the story, for the Red Branch tales were not known
to the people. I had read many versions of the Ta/in, but
I remembered her stories well. I had searched for place names
and fords mentioned and had followed the route of the
invading army that had left Cruchan as far as the Leitrim
border where police raids often made me sleep across the
Shannon for the night. From the top of Cruchan Queen
Maeve had reviewed her warriors and allies before they left
to invade Ulster. I could see low hllls, stretches of lake-plain
towards the Shannon, rings of earthen forts and an odd grove
of trees with the smoke of turf floating about.
The police did not bother the hill country; towards Arigna,
the land was rugged with small stretches of wood. Plantations
were scarce enough; the war had made the unfortunate
country barer than ever: soon it would rival Iceland. Near
Loch Meelagh there were ferns and dense growth, green
sedge blades flowering brown and purple and a damp leafy
smell of humus. Below the Curlew Pass, Loch Key with its
wooded islands and legends. I rowed to the islands; from
the Rock of Courage, I used my field glasses on Rockingham
House. Lord French, the Commander-in-Chief, was there and
we were interested in his entertaining and the state of his
health. Over the swarthy, cold looking shores of Loch Allen
74
rose Sliabh an Iarainn, the Iron Mountain; one could pick
up stones weighted with iron in the Shannon. The R.I.C. had
few friends here; I walked where I pleased, but farther south
it was more difficult. Police and troops from Carrick tried to
scent out the classes which I held for officers.
A long barn smelling of oats and horse harness might be
our classroom or a schoolhouse. Seated at the desks the boys
and men noted my diagrams and chalk headings from the
blackboard. On the roads our scouts were placed; they held
bicycle lamps with red and green glass. A red flash meant
something strange or uncertain; a succession of red, enemy
drawing near. Outside, boys waited for the flashes or patrolled
the outskirts in case of a surprise approach. The mobilization
ground was always carefully scouted; a despatch might have
been captured and enemy might be lying in ambush for us.
Once an excited scout rushed into the schoolhouse and
shouted breathlessly: 'They're coming . . . They're coming . . .
Police,' then he fled. I ordered the officers to parade behind
the school. They gathered their note books, rushed out in
panic and began to scatter. I followed and threatened to
shoot if they did not at once fall into line. The police had
heard my shouting. Another scout to report that they were
retiring. Military and police tried to capture us when on night
manoeuvres, but this was good practice. Our attacking and
defending parties used to carry out a rearguard action; and
our scouting improved. We never lost a man.
Late at night I left a class. I went across fields to come to
the house I slept in. I halted in a path on the edge of ripen-
ing meadow. I crouched down. I saw three forms standing
beyond the next hedge. Clouds hid a thin moon. I worked
back to a small lane running up to the house. I moved up it
slowly. I could hear whispers, feet moved. Perhaps they were
not peelers. The moon was in hiding also, but it peeped out
and came into the open. I saw the glossy shine on a peaked
cap and a dull glow on carbines strapped on their backs.
I walked away. I did not know who were my friends in
the neighbouring houses. I had been used to getting around
quietly; the people at my house would not tell the neighbours
I had been with them. Always I had a local man with me,
who was known, when I came to a new house. If I knocked
at a hostile door the police would hear about it; they would
concentrate on the area and search it thoroughly.
I had walked for an hour. I was cold. I was going to pull
75
down hay from the next rick I met and sleep on it till morn-
ing. I passed a small thatched cottage. I heard the sound of
voices rising and falling. The family was saying the Rosary.
I listened. An old man began the 'Hail Mary,' voices joined
in the response. At the end of the decade another voice began
in Irish: 'Se/ do bheatha, a Mhuire, ata/ la/n de s' a girl's
voice came through the answers: 'A naomh-Mhuire, a Mha/thair
De/ . . .'
The Litany ended. I was ready to knock when a woman's
voice began the prayers for the dead of the family and their
relatives. An 'Our Father' and three 'Hail Marys' for each.
The trimmings, as they are called, kept on. Many the time
I had felt my knees getting sore on the rough flags of such
a kitchen. Would they never end? At last--a prayer for
Ireland.
I knocked. I heard whispers inside. Light shone out as
the door opened slowly. I could see an old man's shape.
'Who's there?' then 'Ce/ad mile fa/ilte, why it's himself,' said
a boy. I walked into the kitchen. 'We were just talking of you
before we began the Rosary,' said the boy. He had been a
scout for three nights at the schoolhouse. The family had
waited up till he had come back from a fair. The father and
mother shook me by the hand telling me I was welcome.
'You're cold, a mhic,' the woman said. 'Push in and take a
hate of the fire. Bridge, hurry and ready the table.' She hung
the kettle from a black crane above the crimson turf. She
added sods from a skiv and twisted knots of bog deal. The
fire blazed up. Soon I was warm. I watched the rinsing of
the tea pot; the pot was put to draw on pieces of broken
burning turf to one side. I ate thick cuts of white cake roofed
with strong, salted butter as I drank. We sat around the fire
and talked until the woman of the house said, 'Whisht, maybe
he's tired, God help him.' The boy made down a wooden
settle that served as a seat in the daytime. I slept on the flags
near grey white ashes that covered fresh turf.
76
Seven
AUGUST 1918--FEBRUARY 1919
COLLINS was now in Saint Ita's, the first school founded by
Padraig Pearse. The room was called the dug-out. It had been
a cellar of some kind or a storeroom; the door was not easy
to find. I had a moustache, a bushy unkempt growth; it
changed my appearance, and gave me, I hoped, the weight
of age. Somehow a moustache made one more serious-minded.
The door was half open; I walked in. Collins was working
at a big wooden table, his back to a bare white-washed wall;
a pile of addressed envelopes in front of him. He stood up
quickly when he saw me. He looked as if he had been taken
off his guard. 'What the bloody hell,' . . .he began. I laughed;
he recognized me. I had forgotten about the moustache. He
continued to write; the pile of envelopes increased. I watched
him; there was envy in my look for I found it hard to make
enough work to keep me busy. After a time he looked up:
'Would you like to do work in London?'
'Yes.'
'It's I.R.B. work and important.' I had taken the I.R.B. oath
the previous year. 'It may lead to something; you'll have to
impersonate a British officer. You've done that before, haven't
you?' I nodded in astonishment. I wondered how he could have
heard of it.
It had been this way: In 1917 my brother wounded in the
advance against Bulgaria was home on leave. He was a
lieutenant in the Dublin Fusiliers; around town he wore
mufti. I thought that if I could take his uniform when he
was out I would be able to buy a gun. I needed a good
revolver; every weapon counted, and civilians would not be
given arms without a permit. I made a parcel of the uniform
and brought it across town to the digs of a medical of my
year, Dan Crowley. My brother was six feet one and altera-
tions were needed. With pins, safety pins and thread Dan
77
made the tunic fit; the slacks were well up to my chest. We
took a taxi to Callaghan's of Dame Street, military tailor
and gunsmith, where I looked at small arms and ammunition.
I had six pounds with me: that would buy a shiny thirty-
eight Harrison and Richardson revolver with two hundred
rounds. 'Where's your permit?' asked the attendant.
'I did not think an officer need one; I'm just home from
the Front,'
'It's a regulation, but you can easily get a permit in the
Provost Marshal's office. It's in the Castle, down to your left
towards the City Hall.'
I thanked him, went out to the taxi and saw Dan.
'I'll have to go to the Castle; nothing doing here without
a permit.'
'My God, don't do that, it's pure madness. You'll be had
like a rat in a trap. It's never worth it.'
But I was going to see the thing through now. I looked
at my bull-dog forty-five, an ancient six-chambered weapon
with five cylinders loaded, I put it in my front trousers'
pocket, intending to fight it out if I was caught. I adjusted
the Sam Browne belt to cover the second button of my tunic.
'You remain here,' I said, 'if I'm coming back at all I'll be here
in fifteen minutes.' He shook my hand firmly.
'Beannacht De/ leat, anois--it's no use talking to you.'
I walked down Dame Street towards the Castle, turning to
the left when I saw the heavy gates of the lower Castle Yard.
I was nervous; this was Dublin Castle, the symbol of all that
was hateful in the British domination of Ireland. The sentry
at the gate saluted by touching his hand to the butt of his
rifle. I returned the salute. A little farther on were two tall
Dublin Metropolitan Police. They saluted as I came near.
'Where's the Provost's office?'
'It's up there, sir'; one pointed 'Beyond the detective office;
go through the big door.'
The detective office; well, I was not known, but my eyes
strayed towards it as I walked stiffly across the yard past the
Chapel Royal.
I walked upstairs to a landing where was seated a sergeant
and his guard. They came to attention; he saluted.
'Where's the Provost's office?'
'Up the corridor to the left, sir.'
I wondered if I should change the name I had intended to
give--Sheehan. I had selected it because I knew him, and I
78
had his card with me. What if the Provost knew him?
I knocked, a voice said, 'Come in.' There were two officers,
one studied a chart on the wall; the other was seated at a
desk writing. I crossed over to him and saluted.
'I want a permit for a revolver and ammunition, sir.'
'What calibre and how much ammunition?' he asked, reach-
ing for a form.
'Thirty-eight and two hundred rounds.'
'Your name?'
'Jack Sheehan.'
'Regiment?'
'Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Third Battalion.'
I filled in the form. 'I'll give you a permit to remove that
sword-frog of yours,' said a voice behind me. I turned round.
The officer who had been looking at the chart was facing me.
'I'm sorry, sir. I've just returned from Salonika.'
'All right,' he murmured.
The form was countersigned. I saluted; thanked the officer
at the desk and left the room. I saluted the sergeant, the
police, and the sentry more nonchalantly; I felt more sure
of myself, but I took a good deep breath when I turned into
Dame Street.
Dan was sitting despondently in the taxi. 'Did you get it?'
he asked.
I handed the form to the assistant in Callaghan's with the
money.
'You have only signed for a revolver,' he said. In my
excitement I must have forgotten the ammunition. 'Will you
go back to the Castle?'
'No, I'm going South this evening. Can you get the permit
for the ammunition and send the parcel around to the
Wicklow? Here's my card.'
'Yes, I can manage that, sir.'
I bought a copy of King's Regulations and Small Wars:
Their Principle and Practice in Ponsonby's on my way to
Dan's digs. Three days later the parcel was at the Wicklow
Hotel.
After a parade in 'F' Company I told Captain Archer, who
was curious to know how I had so much ammunition. He
laughed. I expect he must have passed it on to Collins.
'Do you see any difficulties?' asked Collins.
'I want a Cox's cheque book--they are the army bankers.'
'Right, you shall have one. In London you can get in touch
79
with Sean McGrath and Art O Brien. I'll send word to them
beforehand and I'll give you instructions as well. Anything
else?'
'Can I carry a gun?'
'No, you mustn't resist arrest and you'll have to recognize
the Court and take your medicine; maybe you'll find yourself
in the Tower,' and he grinned. 'If you succeed, I'll send over
other men and you can direct them. It may have big results.'
I saluted. He stood up and grasped my hand firmly. 'Beir
buaidh agus beannacht De leat anois, Earnan.'
I met the London Irish, handed over my despatches and
stayed with men who were well known to Scotland Yard.
A friendly tailor took my measurements, and soon I was a
captain in the Durham Light Infantry, with a wound stripe
and a detailed knowledge of the regimental history and con-
temporary actions of my battalion. With zeal I saluted every
'brass hat' I met. There was a certain element of humour in
the undercurrents of the situation which distorted casual
contact with brother officers and civilians.
I brought a small amount of ammunition and a number of
revolvers, but I needed a permit. I was told by the gun-
smith I could fill a form at the War Office. Art O Brien
said it was foolish to visit the War Office. He sent word back
to Dublin, whilst I visited gun shop after gun shop and
pleaded hurry; but it was of no use. The second-hand stores
gave me a little, but it was a slow process. At the Front officers
could use small arms of calibre other than the army revolver,
but they had to supply their own feed. I could get a permit
for a fairly large supply of small arms and ammunition for
other officers of my regiment, I felt, if I went to the War
Office. I reported regularly at the Gaelic League hall in
uniform, under protest, and at Mooney's pub, where across
the creamy pints of my companions, I told of my ill success
and listened to their conspiratorial whisperings; a very differ-
ent atmosphere from the Irish one. I changed my addresses
a few times, and always received a hearty welcome from
exiled Irish, some of whom risked their Government positions
by having me in their homes.
One felt the war in London: food ration cards, women in
khaki, wounded soldiers, the great number of 'brass hats' out
of all proportion to other ranks, darkened streets and mourn-
ing. I had a good supply of food cards; my friends and I
could eat as we wished. The English did not talk about the
80
war ; nor did they grumble. Munition workers were rich;
their women wore fur coats and jewellery; hate from civilians
cleft the air. On the surface the nerves of the Empire in crisis
seemed sound enough.
Walking around watching the wealth and power of the
West End and the squalor and filth of the East End I could
feel our own unimportance. We were puny, the lion would
only have to yawn to crush us. I feared only the provosts
and their assistants. The identity of officers was often asked
to discover masqueraders who were having a good time with
false checks and uniforms. If I dressed in ordinary clothes
there was the danger of being questioned also. At the time
anybody staying in England, Art O Brien told me, even for
a few days, was liable for military service.
I had been told by Collins not to tell my mission to anyone
save to those whose names he had given me. In Liverpool
I met Cathal Brugha; when he asked me what I was doing,
I said I was over on special work. He did not question me
further. He wore a double reefer jacket; he looked at times
like a seaman; of medium height with broad shoulders,
steady grey blue eyes and a determined chin. He wore a green
tie. That to me typified the man. It seemed the symbol of
his nationality in a hostile country. He might change his
appearance, but the tie meant the cause to him. He was the
most uncompromising of all the army officers. He was over
on special work himself; if conscription was attempted in
Ireland the first blow would be struck by shooting the British
Cabinet. Men had come over from Ireland for the purpose
and were waiting.
I went aboard with a ship's crew at Liverpool and was
taken care of by the gunner of the anti-submarine gun. He
was drunk. As I lay in a sailor's bunk he talked: 'If I can't
give the gun to the lads before conscription comes, then I'll
have a slap at the first torpedo chaser I meet.'
Collins was in the Mansion House attending a Sinn Fein
convention. I waited outside for him. When the delegates
came out I saw him with a scarf wrapped around his neck
and chin. Members of the detective division were in wait for
him, scattered through the crowd, but he attended his meet-
ings regularly. In the dug-out we studied a map of Donegal.
'You'll freeze to death up there,' he said, cheerfully.
The county had a mountainous core extending in every
direction. The mountains made communications difficult,
81
railways ran in the extreme north and south with the main roads.
The nature of the country meant two brigades. One, West
Donegal, ran along the coast from Bundoran to Burtonport;
on the north coast there were no companies. In the east there
was some depth where the country was less rugged; the land
flattened out through the Lagan planted by the Scotch, and
through Strabane, Letterkenny and Barnesmore Gap,
My name was Gallagher now; I tried to clip my words.
In the valley of the Finn, the people called me Kelly, think-
ing Gallagher was my real name. In some places I had
three names and once four. A strange name would easily be
noticed and, if warrants had been issued, the R.I.C. would
be inclined to pay more attention to it.
We had no means of buying arms except from our Quarter-
master-General; but a few revolvers, some ammunition and
maybe a rifle or two each year did not make much difference
in the arming of a county. The farther away the area the
less chance of getting arms from him. In Killygordon, in the
valley of the Finn, we decided to hold up the guard on the
R.I.C. barracks, whilst the morning patrol was out, and seize
rifles, revolvers and ammunition. The barrack routine was
carefully observed. On the morning we had decided for the
raid I heard that the sergeant's wife had been confined over-
night in the barracks. If there were any shooting it might
have a serious result on her. Reluctantly, for I was leaving
for West Donegal, I postponed the attempt.
Fear of conscription passed away with the European War.
The numbers in the Volunteer companies decreased and
we had more opposition. In houses I could feel an atmosphere
of the thing half said, an awkward silence or a sudden rush
of speech. I would read their thoughts in what they did not
say or through plays of words and indirectness. I would
grope for words in return and an out of proportion sentence
would become strain, and I would feel myself inarticulate. I
would be drawn into the feeling of that house and be glad to
get away, but there was no discourtesy. The sons of the
house might get a lash of the tongue, but it would only reach
me indirectly. Donegal was not good; the material was there,
but they had no leaders; the Finn valley was the best in the
east.
Cycling was hard in amongst the mountains; the roads
were boggy and rutty, running through waste heather. A
wind from the north-east cut across the country, often I
82
had to lie down and put my back to the wind; its full force
in my teeth stifled me. The coast was bare, with hardly a
tree. Trees did not grow well in the sodden salt air; inland
they were bent by the wind. Mountain valleys running north-
west broke up the chains, in them were long, narrow, deep
lakes. To cross Donegal from east to west one had to switch
in angular zig-zags from north-west to south-west. The moun-
tains were fine; Errigal towering high like a pyramid, a flame
when it caught the evening sun on its slanting crags and
Muckish, Pig's Back, always sheer. The grained red granite
of the long Barnesmore Pass opened its thin bright gullet in
the distance.
At Bloody Foreland, the sunset ruddied and drew blood
from the cliffs, the white dome of Slieve Sneacht became
rose. I met a man on horseback: he talked,
'Do you know why the bishops are against Sinn Fein?' he
asked. 'Because themselves and the priests have all their
money in war bonds.' The people seemed open and
friendly. I had known the Brigadier, Joe Sweeney, in the
University; a student at Pearse's school he had fought with
the Saint Enda's Company in Easter Week. The brigade was
poor, there had been little supervision. I followed the com-
panies along the ins and outs of the coast to the cliffs of
Glen Columcille and Slieve League, along the pleasant bays
between Killybegs Harbour and Donegal town. The brigade
ran through Ballyshannon with its precipitous streets to the
long sea rollers of Bundoran. Drivers on the Donegal Light
Railway were friendly. They often stopped to pick me up on
the line or to let me down before the train drew into a
station.
I spent some evenings with Arthur Darley. He played folk
songs on his violin, his own composition: 'The Lament for
Michael Dwyer' and others, and a fine version of the 'Lark
in the Clear Air.' Tall, gaunt, and courteous he eagerly gave
me the airs I asked for. His playing was a direct extension
of himself, simple, sincere, with a clear restrain.
The general election came, and it was easier to avoid
attracting attention. The Sinn Fein election system had been
thoroughly organized; the ground work had been covered
months before. There was no dearth of workers; canvassers,
bill posters, motor drivers, boys with whitewash to decorate
bridge parapets and dead walls. Rival posters flaunted each
other or were imposed and superimposed until by their
83
weight they peeled off. Republican flags hung from old
castles, until the peelers, in despair, tired of trying to take
them down. Successive directors of elections were arrested,
but others took their places.
Through all their work was eagerness, talk, and gaiety.
This was an important election, the result would show if the
people wanted the sovereign independence of Ireland. Irish
Labour withdrew from the contest. Redmondites, Unionists
and Sinn Fein could fight it out.
Sean O Muirthile seemed to be in charge of the election
campaign in the West. A big, burly man with a thick mous-
tache and a prosperous air, pudding rolls at the back of his
neck; he gave the organization a strength of bullock fed
ease and was, I'm sure, considered a man of weight in con-
trast to the young organizers and passionate orators. I did
not like him from the first. He tried to control the Volunteer
forces for election purposes; but he had to change his mind.
I was told later that he was important in the Irish Republican
Brotherhood.
He spoke Irish fluently, interlarding his remarks with
stories about his work in the Easter Week Rising, in which
he had not taken part, and with short humorous stories
which appealed strongly to his listeners.
One wild stormy night I went with two speakers to a
village on the coast near Dungloe. We were greeted by men
and women along the roadside holding flaming torches at the
doors; the blackness of the winding road was dotted by the
leaping flames of light as the car moved on. An old man
spoke in Irish, a rush of words, soft, sibilant, vibrant; all I
could catch was an occasional 'is'. I listened in a glow to
the inflections of his voice, interrupted by cries of 'maith thu!'
from the crowd.
Again I visited the companies from Ardara where home-
spun is made to enrich retailers far away, to the Rosses, the
Irish-speaking district. Bare, boulder strewn land backed by
purplish heather and misty mountains. The people lived close
to the soil pushing back the soft bog and making it give food;
a barren troubled existence. Yet this country grips their body
and soul; it haunts the imagination in its cruelty, strength
and beauty and the bleak coast with its wild angry sea,
changing skies, crashed rocks, as if old gods had sported
with pieces of granite mountain, can be recalled when sleek
fat land is forgotten. There is a hunger for the soil, and
84
elemental feeling that even the stranger or foreigner can sense.
There was little tillage, very little grass save under the lee of
the rocks where it was sweet. There was no wood for firing;
in places no turf. The coarse top scraws were dried in the sun.
The sea had smashed the Rosses into islands, slashed out bays
from the land and spattered it with lakes.
Sea gulls with despairing cries flew in before storms, wind
roared inland, seas crashed in awful desolation and the air
was misty with spendrift. Steel grey mornings came with
daffodil skies, days of brilliant hard sunshine and sunsets of
pale rose and mauve. White fronted geese in wedges flew
overhead, their sharp penetrating cries came down the wind
or their foolish laugh, and gannets with ruddy throats cruised
slowly or dropped suddenly for fish. There were nights as if
I was on a fishing boat at sea; house lights dipping through
the washing of rain and wind blowing salty in the throat.
'A stranger' I was spoken of in their houses. It would be
easy for information to be brought to the police, but though
the people talked much amongst themselves, as if making up
for lost time when they met, yet there were walls between
them and the outside world. Tales of the Spanish Armada,
ships that had been wrecked off Arranmore, stories of the
O'Donnells and Fionn...Ghost stories with the by-ways of
elaboration so that with a wrench 'to make a long story
short' they came back to the subject . . . . Spirits, good and
bad left at cockcrow. . . . The dead walked around, there was
an acceptance of their presence, no horror and little dread,
the wall was thin between their living and their dead. The
fairies; accounts of their shape and the clothes worn; their
fear of iron, and the prayer when they see a sudden unex-
pected swirl of dust for 'They're surely in it.'
They were hardy. The boggy land and faulty drainage
predisposed them to tuberculosis. Never the poor mouth,
always an attempt to have an egg for my breakfast, which
with many a sleight of hand I induced the children to help
me eat, I preferred the Rosses and the North where I founded
companies and felt at home. It was a pleasure to see a clump
of trees ; but, if they were in any quantity it meant good
land which had been planted by English or Scottish settlers.
The election results were a surprise : seventy-three Sinn
Fein, twenty-six Unionist, six Irish Parliamentary Party.
Thirty-seven of the elected Sinn Fein T.D,'s were in prison.
On the road near Glenties I was halted by a police patrol,
85
all of them huge men, but perhaps the darkness and my
imagination heightened their stature. I had no light on my
bicycle. They questioned me in deep-sounding weighty voices.
What was my name? Where did I reside? What was my
occupation? 'Gallagher,' I said, 'from Killybegs.'
'How long are you in Killybegs?'
'Not long--some months, I came from Letterkenny.'
'But you don't belong to Letterkenny. What part of the
South do you come from?' This in a Southern accent.
My clipping of words did not amount to much. 'I'm from
Castlereagh,' I said. I held my bicycle with my left hand and
drew my revolver. I held it by my side wondering if the
thirty-eight bullet would go through a heavy police great
coat. There was a pause. 'I think there's too much water in
the lamp, because the acetylene does not seem to work,' I
said. 'I'd be the last to go without a light on this switchback
road if I could avoid it.'
'All right, Mr. Gallagher; but don't let us find you with
an unlighted lamp again. Good night.'
I was cycling towards Lettermackaward in the Dungloe
direction. I was close to the long bridge on the Gweebarra
River. The road ran above the sea. I heard a noise of wail-
ing. I wondered what it could be. I could not see any lights
of houses, nor, though I had passed here a few times in day,
could I remember houses. The wailing increased, then it fell,
and seemed to moan itself out. I lifted my bicycle over the
ditch, drew my revolver and made in the direction of the
noise. All was silent now. Suddenly the sound began again.
I gripped the butt tightly as I tried to make my way in the
darkness. The sound increased. My knees trembled, and I was
afraid to advance. I turned and ran for my bicycle, scrambled
across banks until I reached the road; then pedalled with my
head well down until I became tired.
Another night, in the rain, I took a wrong turning. My
bicycle pushed up a narrow stony hill path. I used so much
force on the pedals that I had to stand from off the saddle
hoping anxiously that the chain would not break with the
pressure. When I reached the hill top the bicycle ran wildly
down the far side swerving as it bumped. I jumped off as the
brakes were bad. I heard a clang far below. I searched but
could not find the bicycle. I continued on foot. Next day the
remnants were found on the rocks beneath a high cliff.
The officers were slack. They talked but none were willing
86
to come with me when they had to. I could feel the rugged
wild nature of the land, the craggy, cliff-bound or shelving
coast with its jutting headlands and small bays; but for the
most part it was a blur, undetached from the bleakness of
my mind and the bumpings of my body on the penance of a
bicycle. 'What the hell was I doing this for?' I often asked
myself on a stormy night trying to follow a by-road. I would
argue the question, cursing myself for having to drive the
men but finding no solution; I was driven myself more than
they were if they only knew it. I had to keep my ammuni-
tion and gun well hidden. The danger of what might happen
in a raid would be given a definitely objective fear, if my
thirty-eight was seen; often as a result I was asked to leave
the house.
My thoughts and moods came between me and the land-
scape. Often at the end of a day's cycling or walking I would
have a hazy idea of my journey. I had made the mountains
scowl and the landscape become bitter when I failed to
improve an area. But that would not last long. Stretches of
wild sea or bogs and lakes amongst the rugged soggy moun-
tains would bring some peace. There the elements were raw
and pure nature was uncaring savage real ; one saw its
core, Spring would come, then I could at least sit down
without being sodden or cycle without being drenched.
I was beginning to realize that I knew nothing of organiza-
tion. It was a conservation of energy, a directing of control
into proper channels ; but here I was doing the work of
brigade, battalion and even company staffs, fraying my nerves
with irritation, bulling around as they might say. The officers
were happy-go-lucky ; organization, like their former views
in politics, was something to delegate to another person.
There was a Headquarters, that was their work. Short of
kidnapping officers I could not see how I would make them
inspect their commands. Inspection parades were no index
of the ordinary. I knew that every effort would be made to
have a good muster, men from neighbouring oompanies
would be lent surreptitiously; a G.H.Q, officer was an event;
at councils, where I listened to and noted their reports,
figures were often cooked.
After parade an escort would come with me at night ;
they filled their pockets with stones in case we should meet
police. Often their presence nearly brought me to trouble.
Near the sea, at Meenacross, I formed a company, I was told
87
police would raid at night the house I was staying in. The
acting company captain had been twenty-five years in the
British Army. I went over the approaches with him and the
lieutenant. We selected a small sand cutting near low dunes.
I worked out the men's positions with them on the sand. I
had already told the men to parade with any arms they had.
At midnight everyone of the twenty-five was on parade,
ten had weapons; they varied from two single-shot Martini-
Enfields to muzzle-loaders. The captain then realized we
would attack the police cars. He protested; it would be
hopeless. As I grasped his shoulder he quietened. He again
became the sergeant-major, the muscles on his chest expanded
as he clicked his heels. 'Very well, sir.'
Unarmed men went out as scouts or filled their pockets
with stones to help our first volley. We heard the wind
moving inland and sea breaking on the sloping shore. At
dawn I dismissed the men.
I climbed the gleaming Errigal; it had two peaks, but
they merged from below. The Poisoned Glen was shut in
by the barren reach of Dooish and the white cliffs of Slieve
Sneacht, Snow Mountain ; Dooish, Black Back, was too
boggy to climb. On a warm day I sat out on Horn Head;
the light was clear and the breeze was as mild as in Spring.
The cliffs had a white back to their blaze of colour. I looked
through my glasses at the birds; I had never seen so many
and their notes were harsh as if they had colds. Red beaked
puffins with a hoarse grumble, dark shags in strident croak,
sheldrakes with green heads and white collars edged with
orange mixed a growl with a quack and clumsy green backed
cormorants had a sharp cough. Their colours matched the
cliffs.
I had the address of a man in Fanad Peninsula. I might be
able to start companies there, although they would be iso-
lated. In the distance were the red sands of Rosapenna; on
the estuaries, orange-legged oyster catchers waded. Fanad
was remote, wild, out of the world. Near a small lake at the
foot of a hill was the shop of the man I was told was
friendly. He bade me welcome. I could stay as long as I
wished. He would help me all he could with the young men,
but there were no Volunteers in the peninsula.
I remained a week in Fanad, organized two companies,
then left by road for Letterkenny. A dispatch from the
Adjutant-General had been sent by road from that town to
88
Donegal ; it had followed me along the coast through the
Rosses. I was ordered to report to Dublin at once.
Eight
MARCH--MAY 1919
DAIL EIREANN, the new Parliament, had met in the Mansion
House, Dublin, in February, in defiance of the British pro-
clamation that forbade all public meetings without a permit
from the military or police. The meetings had been open to
the public. A provisional ministry had been appointed.
The Declaration of Independence had been read in the
Dail. . . .
"Now, therefore, we the elected representatives of the ancient
Irish people in National Parliament, do, in the name of the Irish
Nation, ratify the re-establishment of the Irish Republic, and
pledge ourselves and our people to make this declaration effec-
tive by every means at our command.
"We ordain that the elected representatives of the Irish people
alone have power to make laws binding the people of Ireland
and that the Irish Parliament is the only Parliament to which
that people will give its allegiance."
Later the Democratic programme was read :
"The Nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and
women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the
Nation's soul and all its resources, all the wealth and all the
wealth-producing processes within the Nation."
At the dug-out in Saint Ita's I met Cathal Brugha, Dick
Mulcahy and Mick Collins. Brugha was Chief of Staff,
Mulcahy, Assistant Chief ; Collins, Director of Organization,
Adjutant-General and the unofficial Quartermaster-General.
Collins in riding breeches and brown leggings was striding up
and down the narrow room cursing; his strong Cork accent
more emphasized. Mulcahy looked at Cathal Brugha, who,
thin-lipped, wide-mouthed, sat at one end of the bare wooden
89
table. Brugha had never talked much to me ; always he
seemed to be holding himself in check. He showed little of
his many wounds save round his mouth and eyes; his face
was often grey. When he had to talk he spoke with directness
and finality as if the matter had been thought out and was
now finished. Mulcahy never said anything stronger than
bloody ; he did not smoke or drink. Cathal Brugha neither
cursed, smoked nor drank. Collins was an adept at all three.
The situation in Clare had provoked the outburst and the
long silence. Collins's thick shock of black hair bounced up
and down his forehead as he walked the room. The Chief of
Staff explained the situation in Clare; all three had been there
recently. There had been a brigade in Clare ; headquarters
had been at Meelick, a few miles from Limerick City, al-
though Carragaholt on the Shannon was nearly sixty miles
away. Control was, as a result, uneven. The county had
gained strength in recruiting, and the Staff had divided it into
three : East, Mid and West Clare Brigades. The Brennan
brothers Padraig, Michael and Austin had helped to build
the Irish Volunteers in their county. Padraig and Michael
resented the formation of three independent brigades ; they
wanted to form a division to control the brigades. The Bren-
nans had minds of their own, but they were not sufficiently
impersonal. Padraig Brennan had been dismissed. Michael was
now in charge of East Clare.
Collins during a pause said, 'the bloody bowseys.' Mulcahy
did not speak. He was always calmer than Cathal Brugha,
less taut and more impersonal. His lean jaws seemed to pre-
vent emotion; his eyes seemed to avoid it. One always felt
a quiet insistence, a tinge of something that has no human
warmth, but there was always confidence. 'You will have
difficulty and opposition,' Cathal Brugha said, 'but you know
how to manage situations by this,'
The brigade Vice-Commandant, Maurteen Devitt, and the
Quartermaster, Peadar O'Loughlin, were on the run in their
part of Mid-Clare. They had more time for Volunteer work
and knew the by-roads and the general direction of police
patrols. Maurteen was thin in body, pale faced and energetic
with a sharp turn of tongue in speech and wit; satiric.
Maurteen Devitt's father was an old man, an Irish speaker,
his favourite curse being, 'the curse of the crows upon you,'
but he sympathized with us and did not regard us as half wits,
as many others did. Once I arrived early in the morning, tired
90
out, as I had walked a long distance. I knew the sons were
out at a dance and that the father was alone. He came to the
window and when I told him I wanted to get in, he said:
'Be off with you, Patsey Mitchell, you playboy.' I mentioned
my name but he did not seemingly know it, as it had not
been spoken of in the house, although I had been staying
there some weeks. He cursed me fluently, ending up with the
curse of the crows; I knocked again, but as he became more
exasperated I gave it up, buttoned up my coat and went to
sleep on the ground. One of the sons found me in the morn-
ing sleeping, white with hoar frost. The old man always bore
this in mind and never ceased to blame himself whenever he
met me.
In the night-time I often sat opposite to him in the fireplace
listening to his talk. He always wore an old hard hat, light
green with sun, brown mottled in spots with a torn brim and
a dint on the top. He had a hoar stubble of a beard. He
slurred his words in English through gaps in his stained teeth,
but Irish seemed to flow swiftly enough. He had a great
friend who came often; then they spoke Irish all the evening ;
sometimes the old man would translate or begin a story
in English with many pauses. He would hold a match in his
broken clay pipe or a piece of glowing sod, then puff, hold
the pipe in one hand, talk, draw on the pipe to find it had
gone out. Time and again the pipe went out; intent on the
story he used it to emphasize words. Refilling the pipe was a
ceremony. The 'baccy was pared from a hard black piece of
plug or twist, ground slowly between the palms and rammed
down into the bowl; some of the last pipe's ashes were
placed on top, then a tin cover with a hole in the top. The
pipe was cleaned by sticking the bowl in the red turf glow.
Sometimes they'd laugh together and shake their heads with
delight when speaking of Pedlar McGrath or Sean O'Twomey.
Some poems he would not translate ; they seemed to enjoy
them all the more. 'The ould fellow is worked up,' Maurteen
would say, when he began on Rafferty or Donnchadh Ruadh
MacNamara. Then I regretted I had not studied Irish
thoroughly. I knew next to nothing of these poets save in
translation. But here the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
lived again, for these two men could tell story after story of
the poets' pranks, drinkings and songs, and describe them as
if they had lived in the same parish. They recited verses of
men whose names I did not know. I think the only thing that
91
left me with a shred of reputation was that I had a battered
copy of the Love Songs of Connacht.
Old Devitt and his friends were like the others I had met in
this stretch of Clare and in the Rosses. Their sense of litera-
ture was on the lips and in their faultless memory. In craggy
Carren an old man recited the whole of The Midnight Court
for me. They were not literary nor had they any pretence to
learning. The extension of their knowledge made them simple ;
they were not conscious of it, but they knew more of poetry
as a living feeling than anybody else I had met save poets
themselves. They could curse hard and long mostly for em-
phasis and the sound of words, but also in anger.
What I liked most about him and others was their indepen-
dence, their air of being true to themselves. In the towns
people conformed their suppressed selves to an outward con-
vention ; here they created their own environment in and
through themselves. They had no feeling of equality or in-
equality, but a definite reality, and it would be a long time,
I knew, before I could ever hope to have anything as real in
myself as they had.
They had a sense of life that made them fresh and interest-
ing to listen to and the flavour of a life of the open air was
in their words and thought. They were starkly real like chunks
of their own earth when they spoke of the land, its irritable
uncertainty and its aching sweat, but a feeling for words and
phrasing would lift a talk about manure.
Old women screwed with rheumatism, their faces like
ploughed fields, took snuff or a draw of the pipe in the corner
while they fingered their beads. These were the obvious signs
of outward realism and the harsh background of their lives;
but there was a deep content, an ease in life and a depth in
themselves that could well up nourishment. They were able
to entertain and amuse themselves easily. Song was a definite
expression as natural as talk, and they all sang. They sang at
the end of a hard day's work and were refreshed or musi-
cianers used fiddle or melodeon in a manner peculiar to
themselves. In spite of aching land work they had the leisure
of the wealthy and they made use of it simply and fully.
Gentleness and fierceness, lack of sentimentality and a definite
concreteness merged with poetry and sharp realism in speech;
kind towards suffering and callous towards cattle and dogs
and their burden-bearer the skinny ass.
92
On Sundays we manoeuvred one battalion against another,
companies marched eight or nine miles to the mobilization
centre. Officers and men wore what uniforms and kit they
had. Police and military followed us; we carried out tactical
exercises whilst both our parties watched for and avoided the
real enemy. The numbers gave the men more solidarity and
confidence. During a practice attack I once watched an
officer from Milltown Malbay, who had been in the Irish
Guards, train his men to advance under cover. He carried a
haversack full of clay balls and from behind belaboured his
men when they did not keep close to the earth.
I gave military books to the officers and typewritten notes,
lectured to them and endeavoured to make field work and
study interesting. It was a difficult task. All day they worked
hard at their farms or in the towns; when evening came there
was an added task. It 'put years on them,' it was 'cruel hard'
to study. To get reports was like drawing teeth; they hated
'the pen in the fist.'
In the daytime Peadar and I, sometimes Maurteen Devitt,
worked out schemes on our maps. We studied the country
carefully, night found us far away from where we had set
out that morning. From Spanish Point to the Cliffs of Moher,
or we worked up inland from Mullagh Mor to Burren where
the hills were terraced in solid limestone rock.
The jet blackness of the rocks near Black Head changed
to blue and grey as we went inland. The mountains were
moulded in stone and shaped in recessive curves or angled
like pyramids ; in the valleys rock masses were piled like
worn out cities and small stretches of plain had the breadth
of desert. The bare impact of curve and line was very satisfy-
ing and opened up a sense of infinite distance. Light played
strange tricks at dawn and dusk slanting colours across great
stone tables where crevices spouted out a glare of wild
flowers. Through Burren there is little soil; the dull grey
surface is broken by the light-tan walls of a cannonaded
castle, gutted early churches or the massive walls of stone
forts. Hither Cromwell had forced the first batch of delanded
Irish from other provinces. They found 'not enough wood to
hang a man, enough water to dround him or earth to bury
him.' Up there we often made a wild rush for the door when
we heard the noise of a lorry; but it was always the sound of
a separator working in an outhouse or room.
Memories of the bitter land war in Clare remained. My
93
guides at night told me bloodthirsty tales as we crossed the
country ; they knew what happened at each cross roads. Here
a peeler, land-grabber, agent or landlord had been attacked
or killed. Houses yet kept steel shutters from the days when
a landlord's house was held in a state of seige, and when they
wore suits of mail. Police in huts still guarded land-grabbers,
Peadar was a fine companion, alert, alive, his blue eyes like
the sea beyond Moher, with a touch of green. Very steady
eyes, an enveloping smile which took one under its protection.
His cheeks dropped sheer from slightly prominent cheek
bones; his jaws were long. He had big, strong hands which
crushed each other when he was excited. Both he and Maur-
teen could change in anger ; Peadar with a deep furrow and
a glinting eye; Maurteen with a rattle of words and a white
tenseness. Peadar loved growing things, and had a passion
for cattle, stopping to chat about beasts and discuss their
points on the road, with workers in the field or in the house.
Once we went to Gort, where he was unknown and at ease,
to buy sheep. He must have handled quarter of the sheep at
the fair before he spat on his hand and gave a hard smack
to the seller's hand to settle the bargain of black mountainy
sheep, and those almond-eyed devils for clearing fences, horny
ewes. He raddled their necks afterwards, 'Let's have a few
more bars of that bucko,' he'd say. That bucko meant
Francois Villon whom I translated whilst Peadar listened or
tried to put my words into Irish.
I saw Clare through Peadar. In the east of the Brigade I
did not have the same contact. Ennis was Brigade Head-
quarters, but in name only as the resources of a large town
were not being used to slowly build up a centre from which
strength could radiate.
We visited the Aran Islands and around the fire at night we
talked sitting on very low stools, on the floor, or with backs
to the wall. And when it was my turn to tell a story, Peadar
and some of the boys who spoke English helped me out in
translation. Some of their stories seemed to have had no be-
ginning or end. They seemed mostly to like smartness in the
hero, a kind of cleverness bordering on trickery; their tales
of Fionn were such; accounts of people on the mainland with
a stress on meanness, or some fantastic tale so elaborate that
one could sense improvised embroidery. Stories that were
direct or that had much concrete description, I thought, they
94
would like. I told them of Tyll Ulenspiegel, some of Hak-
luyt's sea tales, Bricriu/'s Feast and Burnt Njal. Tyll Ulen-
spiegel and Bricriu/ were favourites ; they rocked with delight,
and I had to repeat them often and eventually hear their own
versions ; but their greatest joy was in the story of Mac Datho's
Boar.
Everyday conversation and small events were dwelt on ;
states of the tide, weather, puffins, sea birds, clouds, fish and
the behaviour of animals all received weighty attention. They
had a medieval quality of wonder that came when a world
was unexplored ; beyond the small known horizon there lay
Cathay, the Seven Cities of Cibola, or the Land of Promise.
Some of the men and girls had been in America. Their stories
were strange enough. Boston and Philadelphia took colour ;
American families and their ways were made as humorous as
the stories of Americans about Irish maids, but often it would
seem that they believed their fantastic additions more than
the actual happenings. I wondered what it would be like to
live always on the island, would stories become threadbare
and comment boring, and would their jealousy of each other
and their secretiveness affect us?
*************************************************************************
Peadar went north to get particulars about police huts
which we intended to attack later. Near Ennis was a police
hut, an armed patrol guarded stretches of the road at night.
With two Volunteers I waited for the patrol. They passed us,
rifles on their shoulders, as we were crossing a road in the
dark ; my men had blackened faces but the police did not
halt us. After a time we heard the police returning. They
were talking. My companions put the barrels of their shot
guns across the ditch, waiting. Then I felt that if the police
would not put up their hands at my shout, or if they tried
to use their rifles my men would shoot. When the police came
nearer I could hear their words which seemed to be impor-
tant and out of all proportion to their sentence. But I did not
call on them to put up their hands. I knew my men would
shoot to kill. When the police passed, one said: 'That was a
good chance, why didn't you shout?' But I had no reply. I
could not give the order; shooting like that did not seem fair.
There was no moral element in my thoughts. We waited until
the patrol repassed, and again I let them go, cursing myself
for the second irresolution. 'We'll leave them be,' I said, in
gloomy silence. The men went as far as the house I was to
95
sleep in. I did not explain to them; but I knew they were
disgusted.
I went to West Clare. Here was a gentleness and out-of-
the-worldness that Mid-Clare had not. The land was sodden,
tufted and low lying. A long triangle with the apex at Loop
Head ran two sides into the water, the Shannon formed one side,
the Atlantic another. The tide came fifty miles up the river
which was seven miles wide at the mouth. Inland from rising
ground I could see the wooded edges of the river across on
the Limerick and Kerry shores, far away the rounded breasts
of the Paps and the higher mountain beyond Killarney.
I listened to stories at the firesides. I was told again of the
co/iste bodhar, the death coach with its headless horses, the
drivers carried their own heads under their arms. People were
strayed at night in certain places, often on the unseen path
between earthen forts, although they knew the ground as well
as they knew the palm of their own hands, but they wandered
around all night, They could be strayed crossing one of their
own fields, almost within sight of the house. The cure was to
turn one's coat and cap inside out. It was bad to build on a
path between forts ; 'they' always had their revenge ; things
were moved about in the house; the foundations shook. The
priest might say a Mass in the place but that sometimes did
not make any change.
On the road to Kilrush was a figure with a long hand eight
feet long. It followed travellers at night stretching out this
long hand as it tried to grasp them by the back of the neck.
On dark nights cycling without a light so as not to warn
police patrols of my approach, I instinctively turned my head
at times to ensure that the long clammy hand was not reach-
ing out, whilst again I searched the darkness for the forms of
the patrol. One incarnation seemed as real as the other in this
country. But all I ever saw was a white ass lying on the road.
Once I ran into one; its colours merged in that of the moon-
light.
'God help the creatures,' said an old man near Kilkee one
night as we were talking of the many ways and plans of
England to settle us. 'Musha, they haven't much sense. They'd
best set their hand to Balor's advice.' Then he told us of
Balor of the Evil Eye. He sent his men to fight the Ildana,
Lugh of the Long Arm ; when the people in Ireland were
beaten, his warriors were to tie their cable round the Island
of Erin which gave him so much trouble, attach it to the
96
sterns of their long ships, sail home and place it to the north of
Lochlann, where none of the Irishmen will ever follow.
'And if I could ever meet that foxy schemer, Lloyd George,
I'd tell him that.'
In West Clare a butterfly appeared with green, white and
yellow stripes. We called it the Republican Butterfly ; the
people said that they had not put much heed on it before
and it was looked upon as an omen. Dogs seemed to sense
that we had the same beliefs as their owners. At night when
I had to pass through backways and haggards of farm build-
ings the dogs seldom or ever barked; though some were re-
puted to be wicked, I could approach them in the darkness.
The constant feeling of danger saved my senses from being
blurred and made for wonder in what I might otherwise
accept. Tired out at night when I came to a house I felt the
gift of shelter; when I stirred the covering of white ash and
added sods or used the bellows the expected glow seemed as
mysterious as the first fire. And when I had made tea for
myself in the quiet and empty kitchen and had stretched my
muddy boots to the blaze I could smoke a pipe in contented
peace. If I stayed for any length in a house I would be
known by my step or whistle.
One night I was going across country from the Shannon
shore to O'Donnell's of Tullycrine. Art, the eldest boy, for-
merly a school teacher, was the Brigadier. There was a full
moon; I could see the glint of the moon's path on the waters
of the Shannon. As I crossed a field, gun in hand, and ap-
proached a loose stone wall, I saw a figure move up along
the wall; a crouching figure. I halted; lay down; the figure
disappeared. I moved on slowly, crossed the wall and again
I saw the figure moving down the wall of the next field; it
carried something in its hand. I took cover ; faced it ; the
figure disappeared. I went towards the wall, but I could see
no movement. I was near the house. I had to be careful for
police might have received information ; they might be wait-
ing in ambush. At the next wall I found out what it was. The
moon had thrown my shadow on the wall ; I was trailing
myself.
I fought a six-shot duel with a police sergeant whilst volun-
teers tried to disarm constables. The rifles taken were recap-
tured by police and seven arrests were made, amongst them
Art O'Donnell, the Brigadier, whom I had made keep out of
our raid. He got two years' hard labour. I was in disgrace.
97
The police put out the report that I was a spy. I had, they
said, pretended to shoot at the sergeant and, being a good
shot, I had put a bullet through the peak of his cap. They
made it appear as a good joke against the local Volunteers.
Some of the men evidently believed the police account, and
that did not tend to make things pleasant, nor did it prevent
police from raiding for me.
I had arranged with Mid-Clare to attack some police patrol,
posts and huts ; East Clare, without my knowledge, had been
asked for the loan of rifles. The attacks were to take place at
the same time, but three days before the night agreed on I
was told that some of the East Clare men had made arrange-
ments to tear up the railway lines, destroy communications
and carry out an operation on an extensive scale, and that
the police through random talk knew of the undertaking. The
Bishop of Killaloe had been advised. I countermanded all
preparations.
The men were inclined to talk somewhat loosely ; the
people gossiped and chatted in their homes, at fairs and
markets with the result that the enemy intelligence system
was enabled to collect information, sift and co-ordinate it.
It proved to us that it would be impossible to carry out
operations on any comparatively large scale and that, for the
present, isolated attacks would be sufficient. We had thought
in terms of a general, simultaneous rebellion throughout the
country; now Headquarters endeavoured to teach us to train,
arm and equip and to carry out minor operations for the
seizure of arms. An t-Oglach, the Irish Volunteer paper,
printed monthly on a handpress in Dublin, was sent to all
brigades. The British raided ceaselessly for it and tried hard
to find the way in which it was distributed. When one was
found with it a stiff sentence was given. Articles in it outlined
Volunteer policy and point of view,
Dick Mulcahy had come to Limerick with Frank P. Walsh
and Edward Dunne of the American delegation, elected at an
Irish Race Convention in Philadelphia, to recommend to
President Wilson Ireland's case for representation on the
Peace Conference. I was instructed to bring the Clare senior
officers to the city.
Limerick was tense with excitement. A volunteer, Byrne,
who had been on hunger strike had been removed to hospital
under a police guard. An attempt at rescue failed. A police-
man on duty, acting on his instructions, shot the prisoner
98
dead. He, himself, was killed and another policeman wounded.
As a result Limerick was proclaimed a military area; a kind
of curfew operated; workmen could not cross the Shannon
without a permit. Refusing to ask for permits, workers out-
witted the patrol and pickets daily. Armoured cars ran
swiftly up and down or moved slowly and truculently; their
machine-guns swung from turrets on the people, barbed wire
entanglements guarded all approaches, tanks threaded their
massive way, patrols marched up and down in full war equip-
ment. It looked as if a stage scene had been prepared for the
visitors, in which business men and workers lost trade and
wages whilst the military played at being soldiers. I paraded
and introduced groups of officers to the Assistant Chief after
a public meeting. He told me to go to North Tipperary next
day.
******************************************************************
THE MAN FROM THE DAILY MAIL
The country is a mass of seething passion, 'tis Sinn Fein through
and through,
The peelers they are joining the Dalcassions, and their password
Thiggin Tu.
Every dog has a tricoloured ribbon attached firmly to his tail
And it wouldn't be surprising if we had another rising
says the man from the Daily Mail.
The other days I rambled down to Clare, boys, and in an old boreen
I saw a squad of bold and busy ganders dressed in orange, white
and green;
They practised the German goose-step as they warbled Granuaile;
The country is all shaken or I'm very much mistaken
Says the man from the Daily Mail.
Every bird, upon my word, is singing treble I'm a rebel,
The hens and the jades are laying hand grenades over there now,
'tis quare now,
Every cock in the farmyard stock crows the triumph of the Gael
If ever I try to hold them, sure they'd shoot me as a yeoman,
Says the man from the Daily Mail.
99
Nine
MAY 1919--APRIL 1920
I HAD a new sense strongly developed and I relied on it at
times as I would on my sight. On the roads at night in North
Tipperary I would turn back with the feeling that something
was going to happen. Next day I would find that soldiers had
been holding a cross roads in front of me or that the house
I was going to had been raided in the night. The sense of
danger threw out its warning signals which could be disputed,
but not argued away. I would sit by a hedge to discuss the
new situation with myself, but I would act on the warning.
Night manoeuvres of our battalions under the drum of a
harvest moon made the enemy more active ; cycling back
from them or from classes I felt my way in the dark slowly
working through their outposts or slept out till dawn.
Collins sent me north to Inishowen to raid for 200 Ulster
Volunteer rifles. The Ulstermen had their rifles hidden, but
the police did not raid for them. I was to draw men from
Tyrone and the Finn Valley. Frank Aiken from South
Armagh was to be sent to help me. On the strength of bad
shooting with the stiff trigger of my thirty-eight I was given
a Webley forty-five. 'Now get the rifles,' Collins said. 'and
for Christ's sake, Earnan, learn to shoot straight or I'll lose
you one of these days.'
My new gun helped me to cut my way through police at
a station in Tyrone. I attended a meeting of Ulster Volunteers
in Derry hoping to get information about arms. But beyond
the experience of sitting with sturdy men whom I liked and
who would have given me little mercy if they had found out
what I really represented, I did not gain anything. The Derry
Irish Volunteers had a hazy knowledge of garrisons and
wireless stations in the peninsula. Derry commanded the
narrow neck of lowland that cut off Inishowen from the
100
rest of Donegal. Troops if warned could with ease hold this
neck and keep us from getting through. Cycling with a boy
from Carndonagh I explored the iron-bound east coast and
chatted for information at bars with British ex-officers. The
raid came off in a wild storm; our procession of cars blun-
dered through, but we found no rifles. It was dawn before
we passed through Derry.
Collins put me to work on organization with Seoirse
Plunkett in the dug-out. We arranged card-indexes, checked
lists of officers, read reports and filled in maps. I could not
understand why G.H.Q. kept lists down to company officers.
It would seem enough for them to have the names of brigade
staffs and to note outstanding men. In the case of a raid the
British would be able to supplement their expensive police
reports and surmises with evidence. For a while I worked on
home communications endeavouring to speed up our delivery
of dispatches throughout the country. I dealt with foreign
communications through which touch was kept with England,
the Continent and America ; that work meant some know-
ledge of the underground by which men were sent quietly
from Ireland and back again. I learned about the devious
ways of getting in our small amounts of arms and ammuni-
tion from abroad.
The intelligence system had organised the Post Office,
made use of friendly warders for communication with pris-
oners in gaols and collected information through detectives
in the 'G' Division and the R.I.C. Police and military codes
were changed often now, the information in their messages
had frequently to be acted on at once and it was essential for
us to have their key words. Well-planned gaol escapes had
released important prisoners from English and Irish prisons.
The prison system itself suffered, gaolers found it difficult to
adjust their regulative minds to the disrespect of prisoners for
their rules.
I stayed with Count Plunkett. He was erudite ; he could
talk with ease on any subject save contemporary art. Moderns
could not paint, he thought. For hours he would sit talking
about some unexpected aspect of a little known writer, and
when I tried to test him by looking up abstruse details for
my further questions in an encyclopedia, I found he could
change the bare facts by radiating life. Eoin Plunkett was
attached to the Engineering department, his chief was Rory
O'Connor. A discussion beginning with an Italian primitive
101
would criss-cross and end in an elaborate analysis of a new
type of light machine gun or the mechanism of an imaginary
weapon which we could not use.
***********************************************************************
I could see the various movements as a whole now and
watch development. Officers and men from Sinn Fein clubs
came to see Brugha, Mulcahy or Collins. Mulcahy probed
and asked questions. Collins seemed to establish his personal-
ity quickly in the mind of the visitor; he was hearty, boister-
ous or quiet by turn ; he was uncouth, as judged by my
early standards. He had a habit of baiting Tom Cullen, the
assistant quartermaster, and a few of the Dublin men. That
I hated. I could understand, take or make use of a tell-off,
but the prodding got on my nerves. One day I told Collins
I could not stand it and I left the room in a rage. He never
baited anyone in my presence afterwards. He always backed
up an energetic man, and would stand firmly by him in
difficulties, especially those due to excess of zeal. I told him
I was tired of fiddling with files. 'All right, Earnan, straighten
out North County Dublin ; it's a hopeless area, but you won't
mind that.' He laughed at my disgusted face. He stood to
attention and clicked his heels when I saluted.
Sinn Fein and all separatist organizations with their weekly
papers had been suppressed ; later, organizations were pro-
claimed. A one-day raid took place by the British all over
Ireland. Courts martial sentences increased to five years ;
political prisoners were now classed as criminals. Markets
and fairs were prohibited in Tipperary and other counties.
There were changes in the H.Q. Staff. Diarmuid O Hegarty,
whom I had stood in awe of in 'F' Company, left Com-
munications to be Director of Organization ; Collins organized
the Intelligence service as Director. Hegarty's long cow's
lick fell over his right eye ; he had an untidy collar, an
angled tie and a dishevelled appearance. He seemed to take
life easy but he worked hard. He had a muttered rapid
speech ; his mind worked quickly, shrewdly and surely. There
was purpose and a kind of amused kindliness when I dealt
with him on army matters, but he dismissed my loose-leaf
sheet suggestions and brain waves, which I had carefully
thought over, to a drawer. He used clear, clever imagery,
often biting. I admired his type of quick intellect, often dis-
guised by a surface implication of casualness.
Gearoid O'Sullivan, the Adjutant-General, was neatly trim
102
and a contrast in clothes to the rest of the staff. He was
bouncing and alert, his teeth came together and his jaws
stuck out as if he was being resolute when he talked of
unimportant things. He managed his office well. I had heard
him being smart at the expense of officers from the country
whom I knew ; he did not suspect their worth and judged
them by their sloppy clothes and deferential willingness. He
was a pale reflection of Mick Collins, he said 'bloody bowsy'
as Mick did, and shook his chin in a similar way.
Collins decided to stop smoking; he smoked thirty Green-
castles a day. He drank, but I never saw signs of drink on
him, except in 1917. Now he neither drank nor smoked. He
showed me a copy of the oath of allegiance; members of the
Dail were to take it. The Volunteers were to become the
Irish Republican Army and they would take the oath to the
Republic. Up to this Volunteers had been responsible to their
Executive of sixteen elected in convention. It would need
another convention to change their constitution, but the Staff
would not take that risk, although a Sinn Fein convention
had been held secretly in Dublin. 'That will give us more
status,' he said, 'and it'll help some to realize that they're
not joining for fun ; what do you think of it?'
That night I inspected a company in Santry. I read the
oath to the men. It sounded significant in the small bare
room.
"I [AB] do solemnly swear, or affirm that I do not and shall
not yield a voluntary support to any pretended Government,
Authority or Power, within Ireland hostile or inimical thereto;
and I do further swear or affirm, that to the best of my know-
ledge and ability I shall support and defend the Irish Republic,
and the Government of the Irish Republic, which is Dail
Eireann, against all enemies foreign and domestic, and that I
will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and that I take
this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose
of evasion. So help me God."
Officers and men came to attention; one by one in front
of the company they took the oath. The fourth began 'I, A.B.,
. . . I, A.B. . . .' then paused whilst he groped for his name,
overcome by the solemnity ; his throat moved, then he
repeated the words.
Collins read my week-end report. 'Who the bloody hell
gave you permission to administer the oath? I never told you,
and it hasn't even been ratified by the brigades.'
103
I wandered for months through the small lakes and little
hills of Monaghan. I saw sieges of heron in the reeds and
waited for bat-tailed otters near Carrickmacross where they
are said to pass through when going from one lake to
another. I was able to disprove the lines :
"From Carrickmacross to Crossmaglen
You meet more rogues than honest men."
I was at the taking of Ballytrain Barracks--the first barracks
taken north of the Boyne--with Eoin O'Duffy, the Brigadier;
a policeman who had been praying during the attack was
blown by the explosion of our gelignite through a partition
wall without injury. There were, I think, nine police and that
meant nine bright carbines, bayonets, revolvers, hand grenades,
Very lights and ammunition.
O'Duffy was energetic and comanding. I had seen his
typewritten reports at G.H.Q.--very few reports were type-
written. His area was fair, but no command could be
managed with anything like efficiency until at least two of
the brigade staff gave all their time to the work. Men con-
tinued to earn their living and carry on army duties after
working hours until the British made them go on the run.
The Tain nearly brought me to trouble near Ardee. The
name meant the Ford of Ferdia; here he had been buried,
after death at the weapons of his friend and enemy, Cuchu-
lain. I cycled to look at the burial mound close to the stream
in the town, but I ran into police who tried to halt me in
the street. I back-kicked one in the face with the studded
strength of a heavy boot, then drawing my gun on his
partner, who was trying to open a holster flap, I cycled out
of sight. Later I found that the grave had been cut away
during a deepening of the stream.
****************************************************************
ASHTOWN ROAD
(Attack on Lord French)
On a cold December's day a motor ploughed its way
Mid bullet splash and spray on the Ashtown Road,
In that car the living tool of England's hatred rule,
And there began the duel on Ashtown Road.
Young Savage undismayed with bombs and hand grenade
Attacked them unafraid on the Ashtown Road.
But a bullet laid him low from the rifles of the foe,
Yet another debt we owe for the Ashtown Road.
104
Ten
I RECEIVED no guidance or instructions when sent out to
organize a county or a brigade. Collins would hand me a pile
of copies of the organization scheme, add some typewritten
notes reminding officers that their reports were long overdue ;
then I was left to myself. Usually I received the names and
addresses of a few senior officers, the names of likely men to
approach in an unorganized part of the country, and an
introduction in writing from Collins in his clear legible hand.
The Irish Volunteers were organized by counties at first;
each of the thirty-two counties was a prospective brigade
area, but often there was but a skeleton of a brigade, later on
there might be three brigades in some counties. The organiza-
tion scheme had to be elastic. A company contained one hun-
dred and twenty men, four sections and eight squads ; in
practice the number varied from full strength in some city
companies to an average of thirty or thirty-five, but the '
parade strength would be twenty or twenty-five. Officers were
elected by the company on parade ; captain, lieutenant, and
second lieutenant ; the voting was by ballot. Section and
squad commanders were appointed by the captain at a com-
pany council of his lieutenants. When there were enough
companies, five to eight, according to regulations, to form a
battalion, officers met to elect a Commandant, Vice-Com-
mandant, Adjutant and Quartermaster. The lieutenants of the
Special Service were appointed by the Commandant. In like
manner the battalions elected a brigade staff. The average
parade strength of a Brigade in spring of 1920 was close on
nine hundred men.
Each battalion was expected to have self-contained special
services : Engineering, Signals, Communications, First Aid,
Transport and Supply, Intelligence. Each section was sup-
posed to supply men to these services. On paper special ser-
vice officers were appointed, but there they stayed. To make
105
them function it would need classes for instruction in the
different branches and a class for officers and section com-
manders, but such classes were to be found only in the cities.
Owing to the unwieldy natural configuration of the counties,
brigades, as time went on, often took slices from adjoining
counties, or valleys determined on what battalion of the slope
a company would lie. Strategical considerations were given
a little more attention. A battalion formed on a town as a
nucleus from which to expand ; but except for the cities, the
main Volunteer strength was in the countrymen. The bat-
talion was built around a source of enemy strength ; there
was a definite objective in the military or police barracks. In
the country, sections were expected to have a tangible opera-
tion in mind; railway bridges, stretches of road, or a river
crossing. In general all such organization depended upon a
general, simultaneous rising of the whole country.
The point of view had been changed with the stress on
guerrilla warfare ; but the operations' organization around a
definite objective was the same. Each brigade was not again
considered as a unit in itself ready to co-operate in a general
scheme ; but with stress on minute attention to its sporadic
efforts at developing a fight. An important town was often of
no more importance than the headquarters of a country sec-
tion of ten men. A decent operation survey of the country
would have shown the importance of certain cities, towns and
localities ; these might have been organized at once before the
British occupied them in force and were able to overawe later
attempts. There was no operations branch at General Head-
quarters ; there were two or three untrained organizers for
the whole country. They had to diffuse themselves, take on
all the developing departments of G.H.Q. without advice from
any of them. The organization department followed too much
along the lines of a political party. A meeting was called to
discuss the formation of a company, officers were elected ;
names were forwarded to Dublin and a company or battalion
existed on paper and worked out its own salvation after that.
The chief trouble, as I saw it, was in changing this paper
basis. Officers would have to think in terms of organiza-
tion, then operations, and the advantages or short-comings of
their commands. They would need administrative and then
tactical training. Organization applied to the skeleton of a
brigade, or to strategical and tactical considerations based on
possible operations, or on the enemy's intentions, as shown
106
by the positions held by him, could be worked out without
professional knowledge. The officers brought some enthusiasm
to the new work, offset by a sense of dependence upon
authority for guidance in what they considered a new un-
known and difficult element. Otherwise intelligent men could
not think in terms of their medium; they created their own
difficulties. Military work had always been looked upon as a
marvel, something remote and other-world like.
A stranger was always listened to with seeming respect. He
might settle or walk upon a difficulty which would perhaps
result in hostility or jealousy if a local man tried to fix it.
A man of outstanding character in the neighbourhood would
be listened to, but there were cross currents difficult to find.
Generally it was best to make judgements independent of local
feeling.
I found the country strange. Life had been very sheltered
at home. We had been well clothed and cared for; neatness
had always been insisted on. I did not understand the people.
As a boy, I knew the islanders in Clew Bay; I had gone on
visits to my uncle's farm in Roscommon but that did not
give me understanding. The people laughed at pranks for
which they would have punished their sons. Races at full tilt in
asses and carts on narrow country roads, games of Indians
in the bottom lands riding naked on the backs of tearing
hunters after a swim in the Suck.
The food was good, but rough and badly cooked. Bulk
seemed to matter most. Tea, eggs, bacon, stirabout, potatoes
and cabbage were the usual food; tomatoes, lettuce, celery,
beans, and fruit in general were unknown. The lack of green
vegetables was said to be due to the famine years when the
people ate nettles and grass. Mangels and turnips went to the
horses, pigs and cattle, they bubbled and smelled with cab-
bage in cast iron cauldrons. Herbs, tansy, mint, and wild
garlic were used sparingly. I gave a tomato to a man I knew
at a fair. He eyed the shining scarlet. 'What kind of a thing
is this?' He bit into it, then spat out the pulp in disgust.
'Man, dear, do you want to poison me?'
In some places there would be apple cake, but the fruit
would have made the outside soppy. Eggs were almost always
boiled--scrambled eggs were unknown. Once, when I ex-
plained about scrambled eggs, there came loud laughs :
'Turkey-food,' a girl giggled. Later came the soft liquid mass
that young turkeys liked. I liked milk squirted hot to bubbly
107
froth from the teat. Baker's bread and bullocks' meat they
bought on market days. I enjoyed large oven cakes, slidder-
jacks, potato and griddle cakes. The oven cakes were divided
into thick white cuts, the smaller ones were split into farls
along the line of the cross always made in the dough, and
then eaten hot, dripping with freshly churned butter.
Soon I learned to dread bacon and cabbage, The bacon
was often home cured. It hung in long narrow flitches from
hooks in the smoke-blackened ceiling where it seasoned. It
was fat--and I did not like fat. At home I was told it was
good for me and I had tried to hide it under potato skins,
cover it with bones, or get it into a piece of paper in my
pocket. The cabbage was boiled a long time, and it was not
strained. I ate the mate--as it was called--because I did not
like to offend the people, They were kind, they had taken
more care with my food, and they would consider me stuck-
up. They were very sensitive, as a rule. For two years I ate
bacon and cabbage or, if I had the option, changed to tea
and an egg. Sometimes the tea was stewed. The pot 'took a
heat' by the fire from the early breakfast, or was allowed to
draw too long. Strong tea that a mouse could trot on. Stewed
tea took away hunger.
There was no organized hygiene and sanitation was of the
sheltered hedges. They did not take care of teeth, they were
careless of health. Wettings went unnoticed, umbrellas were not
carried, even in the towns they would be thought unmanly.
Galoshes or light overshoes were a genteel monopoly. Lack
of general regard for health and personal comfort had be-
come close to affectation with us. It was a sign of manliness.
A similar disregard was echoed in the carelessness of faulty
agricultural method, a reaper and binder blocking a gap in
a hedge through the winter, decaying teeth, and a shame about
disease as if it were a personal blemish.
I slept in huge four-posters with canopies ; often there was
a series of feather mattresses and a covering of reddish quilts,
whole or patch-worked, with an oppressive sense of weight.
Often I was given the best room in the house, but generally
I slept with some of the family, or lay on a settle, in a warm
kitchen. In places the boys dressed in front of their mothers
and sisters. This to me was an ordeal. I had not their natural
outlook. Furtive attempts to pull on my shirt and trousers,
hasty dives back to bed whilst the women of the house or
the girls, without concern, went about their business filling
108
huge black pots with vegetables and mash for the pigs and
hens, or baking cakes in the round, flat-bottomed ovens.
I was given a small basin with less than two inches of water
to wash in. The family did not wash daily. The basin was
placed on a stool in the kitchen with a piece of washing soap.
I was expected to wash before the women folk. Later I was
able to take the soft rain water from the barrel beneath the
eaves and wash in the open.
The girls wore rough, heavy boots for farm work, laces
often untied, dresses to the ankles, many petticoats and dis-
hevelled blouses. Sunday was the day for a real clean up.
Sunday clothes were worn; all turned out rosy from soap and
excitement on their way to Mass on an outside car or trap,
mostly in asses and carts, or on foot by the short cut of the
Mass path.
I did not play cards. In my spare time I read my military
books or wrote essays and instructions. In the night-time after
parades or councils, I sat in 'the Room.' It had curtains, a
sideboard, an ornamented tea cosy, and a few books, old
school books, Moore's Almanac, a religious monthly, sometimes
a collection of sound books which had been read, studied and
pondered on. The family bible would be used only to insert
the dates of the birth and death of children. There were
coloured postcards, family portraits, one or two sententious
religious oleographs, hideous in mawkish colour, artificial
flowers, and an autograph book; a picture of Robert Emmet,
Parnell, or Daniel O'Connell, or postcards of the Easter Week
leaders. There were Saint Patrick's Day cards from friends
and relatives in the States : Paddy and his Pig, a shillelagh
like a bludgeon waved in the air, corduroy knee breeches and
colleens in costumes never seen on land or sea. The seven-
teenth of March must be thought of there as a sentimental
orgy in which everything related to Irish life is carefully
eliminated.
The Room was seldom used. The family ate, sat and talked
in the kitchen, the main door led into it. The Room had a
dank smell, and though a fire would be lighted it could not
draw the unlived-in dampness and lack of cheer out from
the wooden floor or the heavy tablecloth.
More than often I sat in the kitchen on a su/ga/n chair; my
back to the lamp which stood on the window sill. I could then
listen to the talk when I tired of reading. I joined the groups
around the fire. Talk and stories were punctuated by draws
109
from clay pipes and by spits. The pipes had once been white ;
but use had turned them a shiny brown black, and their
stems had broken off; sometimes just the bowl and a short
toothy stump remained. They smoked heavy strong cut plug
tobacco ; it was pleasant when one got used to it. Baccy dur-
ing the European War was scarce and precious. The blasts
out of the pipe were a great solace after the day's work; they
were lost without a good draw. The pipe might pass from
mouth to mouth around the fireplace. Once in a smithy I saw
a blacksmith hand his pipe to a man who had asked for a
draw; he cracked off the tip with his red hot pincers when
the pipe was handed back.
From the nook alongside the fire I watched the turf blaze
and glow. Shadows and patches of light were thrown up on
to faces. Often I stared into the rosy red core of the embers
watching the figures; and traced them running from one fan-
tastic form to another.
The life was hard and close to the soil ; up early ploughing,
harrowing, cutting turf, mowing, weeding. Footing turf and
draining was about the hardest work. At its worst there was
variety; change in the type of work and unending vagaries
in the greatest of talk causers, the weather. There was the
uncertainty of farm work and the waverings of market prices.
On the roads one said 'Good-day' to everybody met with;
'A soft day'; 'A soft day, surely, thanks be to God.' A chat
over a hedge : 'God bless the work.' Older men and women
were called by their Christian names. In some districts where
there were many of the same surname there would be handles
on the houses, Michael Nora's, Andy John's, and the sons
might be John Mary Ruadh.
The house that took in a daily paper would be the teacher's
--the Master's, Mr. So-and-So, or the Big House ; mostly the
people were content with the Weekly Freeman, or the weekly
local papers from the nearest big town. Around the fire the
people talked of daily events, the weather, crops, letters from
friends and relations in America or foreign parts; here was
their paper ; a living warp and was spun of their own
thoughts, fancies and doings. Now and again a biting turn of
phrase for in their nature was the old Gaelic satire; sharp
and direct or twisted endlessly like a su/ga/n being made across
the door into the cobbled street. Malice and spleen might
burst forth suddenly or heavy hearty cursing. Words were
often used as a club, a means, not an end in themselves.
110
There was a love of discussion and argument that would
take up a subject casually without belief and in a searching
way develop it. That might mean a pleasant joking or an
ornate, shrewd and enjoyable development for him who sus-
tained his unbelief and heated words from his opponents; or
anger from all in the end as the baiter was drawn into the
net of his own words. Anger they played on often as on fiddle
strings. Deferential to a stranger, they evoked in themselves
a sympathetic mood, changing gears in conversation to suit
his beliefs and half believing them through sympathy whilst
he was present. Afterwards when they checked up on them-
selves it might be different ; they would laugh at the stranger's
outlandish opinions when their mood had hardened.
Always for me there was the relish of a phrase; they were
conscious of it also. Acute, natural observation was con-
verted into shades of meaning ; some improvised as they
talked, they became more extravagant, and delighted listeners
helped them over appreciative stiles. Proverbs were many,
even in the English-speaking districts, but the Gaeltacht alone
kept the richer anthology, remembered from old literature ;
quotations from poets and stories, sayings of ollaimh, and
their apt use.
At a wake, turf spreading, hay gathering, threshing or a
meitheal to help a widow woman or neighbour in difficulties,
I could enjoy their co-operative sense ; hard work together
was a relaxation ; bantering jokes, songs, a racing competition
in individual work and a natural place for match-making.
The weekly market was a break in routine. The men were
able to drink double or triple porter to their hearts' content.
Then the boisterous drive home, often without lights, career-
ing along the country roads in a bone-shaking cart.
The countryman to himself was worth what he had in his
pocket at any given moment. The land was his wealth; un-
like the townsman, he had few ornate possessions. He would
look with envy at the many knick-knacks and furniture of
town house. His total wealth would be greater, but his living
was simpler. He had no useless possessions. He had not to
keep up appearances like the townsfolk, he had not their
mannerisms, fashions, or interest in superficial values. Yet
the countryman would think of the townsman in terms of the
prosperity that his own sons might strive for.
The boys worked into manhood without pay. If they were
given a sixpence or a shilling on a fair day it would mean
111
a deal, but the sons of a house had their own means of
getting money. A bag of 'praties sold on the sly, the hansel
money when a beast was sold and the readjusted sales price,
or a gathered dozen of eggs. The girls had less say. Even their
marriages were arranged. The parish matchmaker, I often
listened to, as he wound his sinuous conversational way
amongst the tussocks of the parental bog : 'A fine upstanding
man with five milch cows, two springers and ten fine head of
cattle.' The parish priest might carry out the deal : 'It's well
to have the children settled early.' From the fortune that
came in with a girl, the husband would be able to have his
next eldest sister married off. If there was not enough to
fortune her to the satisfaction of her boy's parents, it meant
a runaway match, if she had spirit--and America.
The Jansenistic older priests, hard, austere, some more
human as they grew into age bore on the people: sermons,
advice and the-to-be-feared calling from the altar submerged
them in a facile but unreal submission. Some priests were
hostile to dancing and gatherings ; they interfered in every
aspect of life. The lack of organized social intercourse made
the young discontented, especially in the towns. The wise
domination of age, to some hard and harsh in the soul as the
cancer of foreign rule, made volunteering an adventure and
a relief. Parish priests were managers of national schools.
They had the power to appoint and remove teachers. Some,
hostile to the movement, dismissed young men and women
who were separatists. They found work in England or turned
their hand to anything they could find or joined our export
of youth to America. We had other exports: priests to the
mission fields of the British Empire, artists and writers to
London because our nation did not support them.
There were certain hide-bound conventions within which
the people moved and solved problems by formula. To them
there was a normal in life and in individual human conduct.
Life was simple, as it were, between good and bad, easy to
classify, accept or reject: anything outside of this was not to
be tolerated, sympathized with or understood. Life was to
be lived in compartments, but some disputed in their hearts
though they accepted the outward interpretation. Advice on
life, action and procedure in terms of observed normality was
always forthcoming.
The movement had created for me as for others a code of
ethics that disciplined. There were no affairs ; the nearest
112
approach to them were the furtive hole-and-corner meetings
that took place. I did not drink now because I was too active,
and partly because it was easy to slip into heavy drinking in
the country. Drink meant an open mouth, talk and rumour,
It was easier to discourage drink among the men if one did
not drink oneself.
The people were conservative ; they had a hatred of change.
They had been driven in on themselves too long, clinging for
centuries to Gaelic usage in land and law, and suspicious of
changes that had been forced on them by the conquerors.
What was good enough for their fathers would be good
enough for them.
I had left home with suits neatly pressed and cleansed, an
ample supply of ties, collars and shirts. In time my store
disappeared. A spare shirt and a few socks were all the
clothes I needed. I was glad to leave aside a collar. It was a
badge of distinction seldom worn by countrymen save on
Sundays and Fair days. At night the shirt and socks or suit
beside my bed would be taken away to be sewn, darned or
washed, and clean clothes left in their place; if I stayed two
nights my socks and shirt would be back at my bedside. All
this often without a word.
My clothes were now a composite collection from many
counties. I had my coat from Donegal, my waistcoat from
Dublin, my trousers, very voluminous, formerly belonged to
Michael Murray of Newmarket-on-Fergus, and he was some-
what rotund; my shirts and socks generally belonged to the
county I happened to be in at the time. My trousers billowed
around my legs in folds, the waist had to be folded and
refolded beneath a belt. Michael Murray had girth.
My hat I seldom wore when passing through towns and
villages; when I was given it I do not remember; it was a
faded green. Sun and rain had each in turn touched it
strongly. There was a bullet hole on either side of the crown
near the top. Once in Clare, Peadar, Maurteen and I were
cycling from Ennis to Kilfenora. At a cross-road we saw
police with carbines ; at the same time came a command
'Halt there!' We drew our revolvers and fired, running for
cover. The police used their carbines. It was near sunset. We
had carried our bicycles over the ditch. When twilight
came, Peadar brought our bicycles across the next field whilst
we replied slowly to the ragged police firing. Then we crawled
away, reached our bicycles and cycled into the welcome
113
friendly darkness. When I arrived at Maurteen's house I
found the bullet hole in the hat. The most obvious sign of my
light-headedness in the eyes of the old people was my not
wearing a cap or hat; the men usually wore their hats, even
in the house, and they always thought I would catch cold
in my bare head.
My boots reaching to the knees were my own; they were
heavy, but being well oiled, kept out rain. They were con-
spicuous, however, and when worn about Dublin must have
attracted some comment for few, save the Plunketts, wore
them. At night when moving across country and jumping
ditches filled with water my long boots brought me into
difficulties. I had not the agility of the countrymen in jump-
ing with heavy kit. When we crossed country at night with
a local guard we endeavoured to avoid the honour of taking
the lead, for one profited by the leader's stumbles and
splashes. We made use of a long length of stick to probe our
way when the darkness was intense. I had a good sense of
direction and was able to retrace my way at night after I
had once crossed country, but I went astray occasionally and
blundered around. Fixing a landscape was often like
remembering a face.
I was on the outside. I felt it in many ways by a diffidence,
by an extra courtesy, by a silence. Some were hostile in their
minds; others in speech; often the mother would think I was
leading her son astray or the father would not approve of
what the boys were doing. We of the Volunteers were talked
of at first: 'Musha, God help them, but they haven't a stim
of sinse.' Yet there was a tradition of armed resistance,
dimly felt; it would flare up when we carried out some small
successful raid or made a capture. Around the fire it would
be discussed ; it would heighten the imagination of those
who were hostile. In their minds a simple thing became heroic
and epical. Perhaps the sense of glory in the people was
stirred, and the legend that had been created about myself,
whom they did not know, helped them to accept me as part
of it.
I felt that I should be able to fuse with my material, the
people, so that I could make better use of it; yet look at them
dispassionately, as if from a distance. My approach to
teaching and training of the men was impersonal; they would
have to learn to do without me, to depend on themselves
and avoid too much trust in what they considered leadership.
114
This often meant a cold quality creeping in, but few could
mingle with them without gaining warmth.
At the beginning it was the poor who stood by us in the
country, and with them mostly I stayed; in some parts the
standard of comfort was better, as in North Tipp, or when
I was in a town house ; but food, irregular meals or con-
ditions did not matter to me whilst I was trying to
improve a command. The life of the people was hard enough,
but money or comfort were not standards that interrupted
their content; above all they were alive and personal. The
struggle with the soil rarely ground them down.
At home gatherings I sometimes felt the people withdraw
their already partly granted family intimacy; the eddy that
had taken me in would fling me out again. I would be like a
hole in the wall then. That was all right, I thought later.
They had their own dignity and aloofness; there was a seem-
ingly unconscious boundary beyond which I could not get.
In time I learned to judge men by a look, bearing, inten-
sity or deliberateness of speech. I had to make quick decisions
about them for the time I remained in any area was short.
Each county was different; the map boundaries in many
places seemed to make a distinction. The land seemed to
determine the nature of the people often enough; whether
pasture, grazing, tillage; good or bad; nearness to the sea;
whether remote from towns and cities ; hilly, mountainous,
or undulating, Sometimes I came to a townland where there
was a company of twenty or thirty men and boys. Tall, well
set up or lanky, eager, lithe, willing to learn and anxious to
take risks. Six miles away across the barony the people were
cowed ; the men had no initiative. They were irresolute.
The Captain of the Company sometimes made the difference,
sometimes the men themselves, but in parts it was the nature
of the land and the long struggle against odds that had told.
Areas of country had a habit of going to sleep. They would
wake up after a century or more and step into a gap. This
unexpected quality was there in what I knew to be a bad
area. It might awaken of itself : the times and situation might
start the spark.
The selection of their own officers by the men was a
difficulty. Election was traditional. Had they not elected
their Tanists?--but then the selection had been limited to a
caste. Often at first I felt the choice was faulty ; the men
must know in their hearts that the new commander was no
115
bloody good. He was chosen because he was from the town,
a strong farmer, or a neat hurler. I knew that another candi-
date would not be put forward when a name had been pro-
posed. After the meeting men would speak their thoughts on
the way home. It would be too late then. A disposition to
please rather than to be direct; a desire of not wishing to
start ill-feeling or begin trouble ; irresoluteness, or not think-
ing things through were at the root of it; a moral cowardice
with extenuating undercurrents of a candidate's influence,
position or power.
The clan spirit as such, deeper than the isolation and
accent of individual counties, had to be overcome or switched
to rivalry in organization and action with those across the
border. Distrust and jealousy had to be fought by fostering
their own development in command ; the dead weight of
tradition grinding us between millstones had to be diverted
to a new outlook and in a new hold on the present.
I grew a moustache to change my appearance in towns.
Some of the officers were elderly as judged by my age. They
might be thirty-five or forty, and I felt a diffidence in giving
orders. In a short time this wore off. The men had learned
to judge of themselves. Hard work, zeal, ability, driving
force, eagerness and enthusiasm; all these in their eyes con-
tributed. Sometimes the man who would have made a good
Volunteer, if left in the ranks, was now neither a good
officer nor a good Volunteer. The responsibility of fighting
the empire with his untrained men must have changed him.
Later I set the election system aside. I picked an eager boy
and appointed him captain.
I was lonely. It was hard work, this constant supervision,
insisting on work being done. Often in an area where the
spirit was poor one seldom or ever met with boys who could
influence the others or whose eagerness would give warmth
and cheer. Then life seemed as if I was wearing damp clothes
on my skin, and the light and colour went out of the land-
scape ; yet I would be caught up by a silver mercurial sunglint
on water or by the peace of twilight.
That was heartbreaking when I felt I had to keep driving ;
but when I met a keen boy or man the day became brighter;
I could lift my mind from drudgery and responsibility. In
bad areas senior officers did not come round with me. As
they did not know even the physical nature of their com-
mand they would have to rely on me for information. They
116
would have very little personal contact outside of their head-
quarters town or battalion. I felt them more than ever iso-
lated. I could not do much good. I knew the random threads
of my work would not be gathered up; in time the instruc-
tions, orders, notes would be forgotten. I felt that I was a
burden imposing on the people's hospitality. The people
would be indifferent if the officers were dispirited. Conversa-
tion would become hushed when I appeared. Often I slept
out under a hedge or rolled up in hay which I had pulled
down from a rick or cock. On rainy nights I was wet through.
I ate hedgehog in late winter or stewed hare with wind red
tinkers in their camp on the sheltered side of a hedge. They
accepted the length of strong cut plug I usually carried with
me for other people's emergency smokes. They were curious
for they knew there was something strange ; but I would lead
their few questions away to their own activities and likings.
Many of the men had been reservists, but their great foes
were the police who interfered with their frenzy of drink and
stick-walloping in the towns.
There was always the solace of the men in the ranks; why
did they turn up week after week for the same monotonous
minor movements? They must have felt the lack of imagina-
tion of their officers. They were not being trained in the
use of arms; two or three men in a company would have
held a rifle in their hands, and their drill was too ragged to
give them a composite sense so that in danger they would feel
each other and act together. Anyhow they would seldom
have to fight in large bodies, but they were not being trained
to any decent squad or section sense. Yet there was a certain
co-operative value in meeting boys who thought as they did.
During the European War the English found that the
platoons of a company had to be self-contained for trench
warfare. We would have to think in terms of the quarter
company, the section.
To effect any change I would have to remain four months
in an area and insist that some of the senior officers remain
with me. My temper was ready to fly when I found that men
had shirked duties and responsibilities. I did not remember
that they had been working hard all day. Only for a short
time in the day could they think in terms of military work.
On parade I would curse, tell off sharply the absent ones but
that lash-stinging would affect the relations between myself
and the individual men in front of me. Before Council meetings
117
or parades I lectured myself, composed my mind and
was perfectly at peace. Then I would go up in smoke at some
unexpected stupidity, prevarication or neglect and time passed
before harmony was restored. They might get certain satis-
faction when I sprawled over a rabbit hole, tripped in a
hedge, or fell in a dyke of water weighed down by heavy
knee-boots when jumping in the dark, or when after long
shouting my crisp-enough voice broke and trailed to a falsetto
squeak.
By degrees the stern parental discipline was broken, and
youth learned a certain independence. Dispatch riders had
to leave their work, ride off on horseback, bicycle, or walk on
foot across the fields. A raid by police or soldiers on a house
meant the threat of another raid, and arrests broke up the
family circle. In gaol, boys learned to carry on a gaol war;
they mixed with men from other provinces and widened their
national horizon. Men had to leave home to avoid arrest,
then they were 'on the run.' Girls in Cumann na mBan had
First Aid Classes and weekly meetings to attend ; their officers
had to cycle to meet others at the District Council. Gradually
sons and daughters built up a small life of their own. Now
fathers might attend the village Sinn Fein Clubs to discuss the
situation or to debate and carry out instructions forwarded by
the County Secretaries.
One had to fight against unpunctuality, lack of method,
carelessness. Time did not matter to a countryman who
judged time by the sun or his stomach. Dawn, breakfast,
noon, dinner, afternoon, tea. One tried to make them appear
neat on parade ; boots brushed, coats buttoned up, but the
outward discipline would be nullified at home. Inward disci-
pline, the urge from men themselves to do what each con-
sidered his duty, was hard to build up. That was a thing of
the spirit.
There were so many shades and half shades. The force of
a flame like spirit; the owner had never to be reprimanded.
One knew that he would always do more than he should ;
with him one was at once closely knit. Something jumped
across the gap of personality and made a contact. He was
indeed a friend; a comrade with whom one could travel at
ease. Talk was not necessary ; an understanding had been
firmly set. There were others whose spirit was not strong ;
they joined from mixed motives, or because their girls egged
them on. It was hard for them. They created their own difficulties.
118
They saw the land ahead too much; they questioned
themselves at every new departure ; they were inclined to
count the cost. Talking to some made me feel how inadequate
speech could be: you said things that meant nothing unless
a man was attuned, and in the conversation there would be
two languages. I would fence for an opening, slowly or
quickly follow with words that might or might not have a
common value. At times one came across a man who had
been born free. There was no explaining it. One just accepted
and thanked God in wonder.
It had been difficult to avoid comment and observation
moving from one place to another. I had to remain in a town
or scattered village in bad areas. Any gossip would be sure
to get to the police barracks. I had to study the layout of
the town or village closely, its streets, by-paths and back
gardens. The neighbours would not know that a stranger was
near them; often the children of the house did not know I
was living with them, or they had to be kept from school
whilst I remained. It was hard to sneak about from place to
place, but as part of the game it was interesting. It would
keep the eyes and ears alert. I had to learn to efface myself,
to merge into the customs, speech and dress ; to withdraw
myself from my own work in such a way that my movements
and talk would seem natural. Almost by steady ignoring of
the fact that I had to move cautiously was I able to make
others think that my movements were not out of the way.
This alertness could be annoying. I felt that it might under-
mine courage and interfere with outlook. I would like to
stride down the town street rattling my hob nails knowing
that my gun could be quickly pulled if challenged by the
police; sometimes I did rattle past the open door of the bar-
racks. Perhaps the strain told in time; there was a constant
watchfulness, a training in obervation and minute detail, but
also, at times, was the sense of being pursued. My first few
fights left me unafraid, anxious to close at once, less inclined
to carry out our plan of running to fight another day. Later
we avoided towns and villages altogether ; avoided the danger
without making it the less.
My visits to Dublin were at intervals of every three months
or more, there I remained two or three days, and was able to
walk around leisurely and enjoy my leave, when not detained
at the office of the Adjutant-General. At Eileen McGrane's
flat I was always welcome; it was difficult at first to get a
119
place to sleep in as I did not know many Dublin people in
the movement; but after a few visits I was always assured
of a welcome by the Joyces at Saint Ita's School, Count
Plunkett, and by Mr. Sears who was a T.D. At times I slept
in his bed when, owing to suspected enemy raids, he could
not sleep at home. It was good to visit my friends, to sit with
others in the flat in Dawson Street, yarn, talk, or read or
listen to the latest Dublin gossip of which there was always
plenty, and discuss the endless permutations and combina-
tions of the situation till dawn broke. I occasionally slept
with Frank Gallagher whom I had first met in the flat. I had
found him covered with a rug pretending to be a bear, his
back to the door; he evidently thought I was some member
of the household as he continued his impersonations. There
was silence ; then he turned to find me looking rather
startled ; we both laughed and that served as our introduc-
tion.
In his room we talked far into the night. He was attached
to publicity where his imagination was restricted. He worked
out various fantastic inventions to outwit the British, and I
supplemented by others. An injection of the concentrated
essence of Irish freedom to be given to Lloyd George who
would then become violently Republican, and would startle
the House of Commons assembled to hear his budget scheme
by delivering a speech advocating Irish Independence ; a
machine on the vacuum cleaner principle to be placed in
position near Dublin Castle ; when operated, it would suck
all the anti-Irish element out of the seat of government ; a
patent for flattening out members of our intelligence service,
so that they could remain behind furniture in a room or
under a carpet in government offices ; and the organization
of a Suicide Club, the members to use rifles, automatics or
revolvers and inform the secretary, who would be either
Frank or myself, when the self-execution was to take place.
We would then collect the weapons. I described the different
counties I had been in since last we met. I took them in bat-
talion areas, related the doings and sayings of the people, our
adventures and misadventures ; the many amusing or grim
incidents that had occurred. What had been once misery now
in time was an experience, something to be broken up and
reformed as a laugh.
Eoin Plunkett of the Engineers would branch into techni-
cal abstractions at the slightest provocation. Seoirse discussed
120
the inner discipline as opposed to the mass automation of
regular armies. Rory O'Connor talked with a sense of
humour, the grooves tightening his cheek muscles while his
eyes smiled. He always had what I called an interior look.
One could become worn down with the continued banter and
chaff, the intimacy of this life which apparently did not leave
one shred of one's own. There was no such thing as a swelled
head in such companionship ; it could never stand the isolated
and mass attacks of kindly, malicious, or wry humour.
*****************************************************************
Two years had passed since I had left home. I had to carry
all my belongings on a bicycle when I moved, and what
clothes to discard and what books to bring was often a
problem. In winter I wore a heavy trench coat which clumg
to my back and sides with rain, sweat or heavy misery, my
clothes splashed with mud or water ; cycling up and down
hills with a pumping throb or down hill in the night with a
swish, my boot on the front tyre as a brake, cycling in the
dark with the help of my maps, mending punctures in match
or candle light, making the best of borrowed bicycles, some
smooth running; faulty ones with tight jibbering brakes, un-
even camel-humped saddles and slightly buckled rims. Cycling
without lights trying to follow the road from dim curving
hedges, or looking up at an indefinite streak of sky between
dark lanes of branches on nights aroar with wind, when only
the missel thrush, the storm cock, sang into the biting blast.
Robins and larks lifted rounded and clear song at evening
and the bird chorus of banded winter flocks came in day
time. Orange berries of the black thorn, dark purple elm
flowers, silver willow catkins and the tiny crimson flowering
of hazel stood out against masses of bluish willow thickets,
darkened boles and leafless branches. Kestrels struck at tiny
finches and small wrens made thin points of sound in the
furze.
I looked forward to spring : broken land, brown umber,
upturned, earth smells awakened by the rain. The wild daffo-
dil quivering on pliant stem, purple-frittered wild iris, the
delicate cream of the primrose backed by its crimpled leaf
and the rich golden glory of the sedate crocus. Wych-elms
would have a leaf-like bloom, the larch furry catkins and
rosy blossoms, the hazel a pink flower and willow wrens sang
above purple ash bloom.
March was a harsh month: April showery and uncertain,
121
but flowers increased, sedgy meadow lands were becoming
lush, buds thrust upwards into leaves and in the orchards the
trees petalled. Then there was the cowslip in short grass, the
singing strength of blue-tit, thrush, yellowhammer and finch ;
the yellow bill of the blackbird pecked at the haws, and bees
hummed over fragrant willow catkins.
May brought the first assurance of dryness and a regular
stretch of sun, the cuckoo called softly in the distance and
the yellow water lily, known as the drowned leaf, spread its
floating coolness. Near the coast the light was pearly and
luminous and scents were stronger. I could leave my bicycle
one side and lie on my back on the grassy edge of the road
now to read Blake and Villon at my ease, or shout them aloud
to the surprise of interrupters, listen for varied bird notes and
follow the unexpected swoops of swallows as they dived and
dipped, wondering if they would ever strike each other.
Passing an old house or castle I could hear the rooks cawing
and watch them tilt in squadrons as they followed their leader,
all performing their aerial evolutions simultaneously with a
carrying noise of wing swish. At dusk the sound of them and
crows in the beech trees brought a sense of peace and of long
settled habitation. Out in the bogs in the day time men were
working at the turf banks, cutting chocolate rectangles with
their gleaming loys ; all hoped for fine weather as they
footed, spread, gathered and ricked the fuel. The rich drying
smell of it blew out on to better land. The yellow, amber bog
water shone below the heather clumps, bog cotton waved its
white tufts and foxglove blushed on yellow clay banks. June
brought the scent of wild burnet roses and yellow broom and
long, delicate evening light.
Summer came, my clothes stuck to my back, riding
breeches chafed, heavy boots wrinkled and dust worked up
to my fuzzy hair, but there were white and pink blossoms of
the rigid hawthorn and the rose of wild crab huddled for
company with matted tops, and their sweet fragrance across
the fields, with smells of mint, thyme and sweet briar. Berries
in the hedges, poppies bright glossing pages of corn, sweet
scent from the trams of hay in the air and a lingering waft
of wild woodbine on the roadside hedges. I would be offered
a large glass of fresh buttermilk from the churn when I
stopped for a drink of water, or sometimes get a shout of
welcome to drink from a can of tea, and back it with the
soft buttered delight of a hot farl of cake or a slidderjack.
122
There were nests of strong, rich, dark, wild honey to be
searched for in the clipped meadow lands; I watched hunts
for frightened rabbits or a hare gathered in trembling fright
in the standing islands of large hay fields. The glint and
sparkle of leaves and the contrast of their lighter undersides
swaying in the breeze, the fur-fur of weeds startled into move-
ment on the banks of a quiet stream or lake, the scarlet flick
of a kingfisher or a bittern trailing slowly across a lonely
marsh. Running water to be looked at from bridges. I
watched it ripple over stones in the bed and, listening to its
sound, was drawn slowly out of myself into its rhythm;
tracing the eddies I followed a bank until at a bend the water
became deep and quiet near one side. Water was always
fascinating to watch, running with the light touch of reflected
sun on its surface or sullen from the ruffle of wind gusts.
Up amongst the heather were mountain lakes, deep, old
and knowing, with the serenity of old age; removed from the
cares of the world, a prelude to the hills beyond. Mountains
rounded or irregular, bare of wood, showing a recession of
curve or a chain mass thrusting out in a drizzling rain separ-
ate echelons of its blended strength ; hills, hazy, purple,
mauve and lavender in the distance, changing colour as the
day advanced ; aloof or personal. Clouds forming, reforming,
hanging still, drifting leisurely or moving swiftly with dark-
ened menace, bog water with seemingly unfathomable depths,
quiet, mysterious, the bare black wall of clean cut turf over-
hanging. Rosemary and the delicate smell of the thorny wild
rose too easily wasted by the breeze, ferny larch leaves and
willows taking solace near a pool, the quick skid of a wild
duck taking water or the startled warning as the drake thrust
forward into a swift feathery beat, wind like a cloud shadow
tipping the barley ears and hairy rye, the duck's egg splash of
lupin in unexpected ease and the glistening white of mush-
rooms, fa/s na h-0idche, growth of a night, against verdant
grass after rain.
The cold spell before dawn, the morning star that often
told us our watch was over as we lay under the ferns, and
that the sun and not our sense of direction would be our
guide, then the massed clouds and the first cold, faint streaks,
rabbits jerking their white scuts among the weeds and grasses,
the undulating form of a weasel slipping by or the shrill
scream as the death cry of a rabbit rang out, the thin squeal
of a field mouse and birds worming. A hum of insects as they
123
tuned up for the day's orchestra, the harsh rattle of the corn
crake or his hurried trot in the meadows, the chirp of young
birds, meadow larks soaring higher in sound and space mak-
ing the air thrill, grasshoppers noising, tweets of a zig-zagging
snipe in bottom lands and the tall stilted grey-blue form of a
heron in the distance holding himself in dignified slimness
Twilight, restful ease, the clear cut views of trees on sky-
lines and the blurring of shapes, the thickening of the hazy
plum-skin dusk, a swollen sun dropping quickly over the edge
of sight, soft lowing cows driven homeward to be milked,
house swallows diving from the eaves, the rattle of a cart in
the distance, sometimes the honk of wild geese swift flying in
a 'V,' and a wrench as I thought of the split wasted lives of
our Wild Geese in foreign armies.
Night noises; rustles in the bushes and tall grass followed
by silence that seems more hushed, the curlew with its sound
of mournful remembrance echoing to die away slowly, the
barking of dogs disturbed by something, which I could not
see, or their attempts at conversation across the uplands, the
drift of words coming out of the distance. The strong smell
of turf, a homely smell that left its tang in the air, light
shining warm and rosy from a window ledge out of the dark-
ness, the murmur of the Rosary deepening as the family
answered the response, the low furring of the owls in a
startled ground flight, a hedgehog crossing the road. Trees
thrusting upwards with added power or bulking sideways ;
they were arrogant at night, they filled the mind and they
ruled the dark. Trees, shrubs, bushes and woods took posses-
sion and through them old nature showed its untamed
strength and freshness and made us see how small we were,
stars helped them to widen the external world. Familiar land-
scapes changed, hills played tricks in the moonlight and roads
became mysterious.
Around the turf fires when the family had gone to bed I
could hear the chirping of crickets as I sat on a low stool or
settled back in the whitewashed seat inside the wide fireplace:
were they not lucky even though they did eat socks hung out
to dry--but only the socks of strangers. Beetles crawled
across the flagstones, you'd be let off a year in purgatory if
you stepped on one. Hitches of fat bacon hung from hooks
in the ceiling, rows of delph mugs on the dresser reflected the
turf light; then the covering of the glowing sods by fresh
124
turf and white ashes so that the fire would itself slumber till
morning.
Corn and hay cocks, chestnut flowers, the dripping mustard
of locust trees shared the flaxen or gold hue with yellow rag
weed and the heavy gold of meadow sweet. Lilac scented blue
near tufted clusters of mauve rhododendron, oak leaves in a
now startling green twisted their paler backed powder, tall
avenues of beeches burnished smooth stems and brown twigs.
Autumn: grey still, placid days, windy skies and a whiff
of yellow death in the air, the first cold leaves dropping to
dance in form and pattern of their own, whins yellow on the
hillsides glowing after rain against deep green luminous after-
grass, rowan trees with the scarlet lips of their berries, and
brambles of the blackberry bush torn when the soft fruit was
reached for. The big bellied harvest moon floated heavily on
still clear nights when one walked around anxious to avoid
bed ; the symphony of subdued colour on stacked oat sheaves,
corn and cocks of hay, on meadow land and trees and hedges.
The jagged branches of the sloe, almost black from under-
neath, showed the powdered blue dust of its berries, so did
the damson and wild plum. Green linnets shot through thick
leaf clusters in the orchards, golden-crested wrens pecked and
thieving blackbirds chortled on the glossy, brown red boles of
cherry trees. Starlings suddenly swooped on to a field in the
evening to rest. Heather was thick on the mountain sides and
moors; it was fine to stretch down on the earth and watch its
mooded colours near by and see it merging into the clear cut
blueness of distant, soft folded mountains. There was a still-
ness in the air as the evenings began to close in ; beech woods
were leafy gold, delicate branches of the maidenly birch
waved with a shivering nervous stammer against velvety white
bark ; oaks twisted their bare limbs and fallen chestnut foliage
rustled in a deep leaf whirl underneath the stretching spread
of the branches ; the wych-hazel sprawled indolently proud of
its yellow streamers.
October with its lash in the air, the snap of frost made one
feel extra strength and take deep virile breaths. On hardy
nights I often fell from the bicycle trying to guide myself and
look up at the crackling stars. Wet days when soft, gentle rain
fell unnoticed until one realized that clothes had become
sodden; stinging rain that whipped the face and stung, teem-
ing on the land, but with a taut challenge that one accepted.
Hands became blue on the handlebars, and it was hard to
125
draw a gun quickly, gloves were in the way of a grip. Novem-
ber brought more stillness and the delicate softness of late
autumn sky, with its nonchalant disturbance by wind. The
bare strength of the country showed lean and hardy, form was
more emphasized with the dropping of the more eye-
filling beauty of colour and covering. The austerity was
softened by wispy branches, slim grace, or the fantastic
gnarled, twisted boles and out-thrusts of crab apple, oak and
the water-loving elm.
There was always a memory to help when I became des-
pondent; the roads I mucked through had been followed by
many another trying to do what I was attempting; the hill
I climbed or the townland I crossed at night with a company
at my heels had been named over two thousand years ago
and the tradition remained. Ruins in plenty ; ornamented
stone crosses, a castle battered by cannon or a shell from the
torch, a gaping Romanesque abbey or monastery, grave stones
of an ancient university centre ; a grass-ringed du/n or lios,
dolmen, stone circle, galla/in, moat or stone fort, earlier
monuments that took one back. Living Ireland was always
present to strengthen with its beauty when we became tired of
it all and doubting, to comfort us in despair and misfortune.
Winter again: looked forward to by some of the people
for its long evenings and chats around the fire or dances, but
dreaded by me for its long journeys in rain and mud, draggled
clothes clinging to the skin and drying as one moved on the
dreaded bicycle. Always in the end, however, there was the
pleasant soothing of dead weariness and utter exhaustion
when one went to bed seemingly too tired to sleep.
*****************************************************************
Through the country military were taking over workhouses
and courthouses for their troops, sand-bagged posts com-
manded roads and the people farmed the land and traded in
the towns.
Eleven
MAY--JULY 1920
DETECTIVES from the 'G' Division had been shot on the
Dublin streets. Soon this important political intelligence
126
branch was reduced. They had always followed at the heels
of our men; they knew all the important officers, T.D.'s, and
prominent men in other national organizations. Now they
moved about at bullet's risk. I met Sean Tracey's grin as he
cycled past me on a bicycle. He had grown a thin moustache
since I had met him with Breen and Robinson in North Tipp.
Seamus Robinson was given to pedalling also. Both were on
intelligence work; they were helping to reduce the number
of detectives.
'We asked Michael Collins to send you to South Tipp.,' said
Sean. 'He told us that Kerry had asked for you, but we'll
wear him down and we'll go back with you.'
Collins now had another office in Dawson Street, in Eileen
McGrane's flat, where I often sheltered. He was very busy.
He was raising the Internal Loan, de Valera was pushing the
foreign loan in the United States; but it would be necessary
to prove that the people at home were willing to subscribe.
I was due for Kerry, he said. We went over a map of the
country; whilst he talked of the names of battalion officers,
'He's a good man, bloody good, you know; and he's a louser,
but it'll be hard to get rid of him.' Later in the dug-out he
told me I was to go to South Tipp. Raids were expected in
Dublin. I had seen men who looked like detectives near the
dug-out. Collins laughed: 'We'll know when a raid is coming
and we'll have everything packed up.'
Sean Tracey was Vice-Commandant and Seamus Robinson
was Brigadier. They met me in Tipperary town where I held
an officers' class. They had run into police at Goold's Cross
on their way down but had fought through. The Brigade ran
from East Limerick to the Kilkenny border beyond Carrick-on-Suir.
 On the south it was cut off by the Knockmealdown,
Monavullagh and Comeragh mountains; on the north were
the hills above Hollyford, the plain of the Golden Vale and
the Slieveardagh hills beyond Killenaule. There were eight
battalions. South Tipperary lay across communications with
the lower Shannon and the south-west. The land was fertile,
there was hardly any bog and roads were numerous. Moun-
tains rose sheer out of the plain as massives and the land
close to the mountains, unlike that in Donegal or North Tipp.,
was good.
There were strong military barracks at Tipperary, Cahir,
Clonmel, Cashel and Fethard. There were independent posts
as well and police barracks. Tipperary town had over a thou-
127
sand troops between the barracks, rifle range and hutments,
and Royal Irish Constabulary. The Sinn Fein Hall was our
usual meeting place ; scouts watched the barracks, the move-
ment of military and police, and guarded the approaches to
our class. Men on the run carried side arms. We were never
interrupted, though exciting reports came in at times, and
there was an added intensity in my listeners.
We worked hard to build up a good intelligence system. On
our knowledge of enemy movements and routine would de-
pend largely the element of surprise in attack. We sent
memoranda and suggestions to officers and men to help them
to analyze, sift and rebuild information ; but reports were not
forwarded: information had to be dragged out of the men.
Often we sent them information of the strength and move-
ments of garrisons in their areas. The officers could now see
what force was pitted against the Volunteer strength in each
locality. In the Tipp. battalion we would find ten of our
rifles and thirty shotguns opposed to eleven hundred and
fifty of the military and police; in the next battalion three
rifles and fifteen shotguns to eighty police carbines. There
would be less excuse for lack of action in a battalion not held
in strength by the enemy.
It was a satisfaction to have with me two who could think
and act for themselves, and who were prepared to fight it out.
They were good shots and without fear. We discussed the
nature of the country, training and operations continuously,
as we walked or cycled. I wanted to visit each battalion first,
then plan operations for the Brigade.
Three was an ideal combination ; two could always com-
bine to attack the ideas of one or to poke fun. Seamus was
pudgy and took short steps, which were hard on my long
stride. Brown eyes helped a grin when he played on words;
he liked to pun even to the limit of our groans. He had a
slight clipping speech which came from Belfast, a stout
stubborn underlip, sparse hair on a high round forehead. Sean
was taller, an easy smile or a long grin showed his teeth.
Glasses gave him a quiet appearance; he had a good strong-
thrusting chin. His humour was dry enough. He dealt with
men quietly. I envied him his ease ; yet he never allowed
slackness to pass by.
Seamus had little sense of direction even in daytime, and
in country he had travelled through many times. He believed
128
he had a good memory for country. At crossroads there
would be a discussion varying in degree of banter, helpless-
ness or annoyance. Seamus would assert that this particular
road was the way or short cut. He was always ready to
debate the rightness of his way. The result was usually the
same. Sean and I sat on a bank or lay hidden to watch his
short form walk out of sight. We knew he would return
when he had discovered his mistake to advance extenuating
circumstances, or we might not meet him till night-time.
During the day we eased the springs of our automatic
magazines in turn by withdrawing cartridges. Automatics
would have the hammer cocked with safety catch on; rifles,
if we carried them, had a bullet in the breech. If we met
trouble it would mean sudden, quick action in which every
second counted. At night, revolvers or automatics in hand,
we moved in file on foot along lanes and roads walking
quietly ; the collars of our coats buttoned up to cover the
white of our throats.
When we were hungry we spoke of the good feeds we could
have at certain houses. Seamus and Sean talked lovingly of
bacon and cabbage. Sean would smack his lips ; they both
knew I hated the dish ; the thought of it would make a
stretch of road bleak for me.
Our ancestors must have turned in their graves as they
listened to us. Why hadn't they fought as they should and
have ended the struggle? In the light of our experience we
cross-examined the dead, stripped them bone-bare of romantic
gloss and put ourselves in their places trying to get the back-
ground of their times so that they could be judged.
Why should we wear ourselves out? we asked on wet streaks
of days or when we had finished a battalion class at which
most of the officers were absent without explanation or
excuse. The idea of freedom would crop up as we carefully
studied the microscope of our maps and saw the possibilities
of the counties before us. Seamus was in advance of us in
thinking things out. We tried to peer into the future.
Our fight was a beginning not an end we knew, but in
what direction would it go? We could not say. In the country
the small farmers and labourers were our main support, and
in cities the workers with a middle-class sprinkling ; towns
we could not count on. The countryman, sympathetic enough
where a land revolution was concerned, was hostile to the
revolution of organized labour. The farm labourer could
129
understand the city workman, and was organized in labour
unions with him. The movement as a whole was hostile to
labour claims even though labour had helped to prevent
conscription, had not contested the last election, and was
now refusing to carry armed troops. In our minds Sean and
I left the building up of the Irish Republic to others. They
might be hostile to us, we sensed ; but we knew where our
sympathies were: with the labourer and small farmer in the
country, the workers in the city ; but that definite belief
would be again covered by my latent gentility. I could feel
my annoyance at the convictions of purely revolutionary
workers who stood outside of the nationalist movement and
a certain amusement at their arguments. The 'scrap,' how-
ever, kept us busy getting ready for action. Our generation
we often told each other would have to see this fight through,
release this dammed-up energy and our warped nationalistic
strivings and divert them to work out the direction that con-
trol of our own country would mean.
I was to administer the oath of allegiance to the Brigade
officers ; they would then visit the battalions. I had never
been asked to take the oath ; that would be a matter for
someone on H.Q. Staff. Seamus was opposed to it. Why
doesn't the Volunteer Executive call a convention to consider
such an important step? Headquarters had no authority to
hand over the control of the Army to Dail Eireann; the
Executive is responsible to us.
'To the Irish Republic and the Government of the Irish
Republic which is Dail Eireann' ; 'the Dail might go wrong,'
he said, 'it might accept less than a Republic. That clause
should be omitted.'
Sean and I laughed.
'I suppose the H.Q. Staff might go wrong also?' asked
Sean.
'Yes, it might.'
We laughed again. He looked at us sombrely with a dour
expression in his brown eyes and a pursing of his stubborn
lip. He dissected things too much, we thought. He analyzed
orders, sought for motives. Mulcahy and Collins admired him,
but they did not like him.
We sang old songs together, or whistled them when objec-
tions became too numerous. Seamus was trying to find a
marching song for the Brigade. He would try out the notes.
130
Sean's cracked spindle of a voice would join in and I would
help the discord.
Se/ do bheatha, a bhean ba le/anmhar,
Do b'e/ a/r gcreach thu/ bheith i nge/ighinn
A/r ndu/thaigh bhrea/gh i seilbh me/irleach
Di/olta leis na Gallaibh.
Oro/! Se/ do bheatha 'bhaile!
Bhfearr liom thu/ na/ce/ad bo/ bainne
Oro/! Se/ do bheatha 'bhaile!
Anois ar theacht a' tsamhraidh.
Ta/ Gra/inne Mhaoil ag triall thar sa/ile,
O/glaigh armtha le mar gha/rda.
Gaedhil iad-fe/in, ni/ Gaill Spa/innigh
'S cuirfid ruaig ar Ghallaibh.
Welcome back, woman of sorrow,
We grieved for you in chains,
Our fair land controlled by robbers;
Betrayed to the foreigner.
Ho there! Welcome home!
Better you than a hundred cows.
Ho there! Welcome home!
Now our summer comes to us.
Grace O Malley sails the sea
Guarded by armed youth,
Gaels are they, not English nor Spaniards,
And they will rout the foreigner.
We sat to watch a stretch of country, to pick out a distant
hill with my field glasses and follow the undulations of the
land across hedgerows, clumps of trees and rises. We listened
to the song of a bird, throaty, unconcerned with war or
peace. We looked long from a height, then studied our maps.
Place names in Irish we attempted to translate, or used the
Joyce in my haversack when in doubt about proposed
signalling or lookout station.
Seamus had not studied training, but he would take noth-
ing for granted. That meant long discussions about points
which had been gained by study, thought or experience. Sean
and I handed him the more detailed organization of the
intelligence service. He could draw up circulars and forms
to his heart's content. We two went together now to battalion
councils and to discussions on training and operations with
staffs.
131
We distributed one-inch contoured maps. The battalions
had first to define their area and dispute the overlapping
parishes next, then companies would fill in their maps, and
finally the sections. We listened to many hard fights over a
stretch of road or a piece of river. The officers had now
in concentrated form the extent and condition of their areas ;
they could read into them the possibility of development.
I set map problems for them and tried to make them believe
a map was one of their most important military aids.
Our dispatches were carried on trains by guards, firemen,
enginemen ; by road through travellers and vans, from
brigade to battalion headquarters, and from company to
company by our dispatch riders. The British had control of
telegraphic and telephonic communications, the postal service
and, indirectly, the press. They used codes and ciphers in
army or police messages. Lorries and aeroplanes carried their
dispatches ; there were wireless sets in the barracks. We
could never hope to compete with their communication sys-
tem. We could tap telephones on the roadsides or through
friendly operators get copies of code messages, but the de-
coding would have to wait until a policeman gave us the
changing codeword or our own Headquarters sent it to us.
We inspected positions that might prove useful in attack
or defence, noted sniping, signalling and good ambush places,
took ranges. I brought officers on staff rides and tactical
tours. I tried to make them familiar with the country they
knew, from the angle of possible action.
Training they were interested in. It was something new and
it gave them more confidence. The applied use of weapons
was not difficult for me to impart, but with rifles and
machine guns there was a deal of musketry theory to be
taught. The use of ground in relation to movement and for-
mation was easy, especially in scouting and reconnaissance.
The applied tactics of weapons in relation to protective for-
mation, ground and movement was harder.
The officers were not accustomed to handling men; only
by actual fighting would some of them gain assurance. In
their mind I knew they thought guerilla warfare should be
waged without any regular army groundwork in technique
applied to theyir own organization and mentality ; thus they
would not know how the unit opposed to them would be
prepared to act. Some small idea of actuality was induced
by tactical exercises or manoeuvres with an objective in mind
132
close to what we could expect in our type of fighting. Men
would realize for the first time as they crawled through wet
grass or tried a night advance on a town that the time for
easy going drill nights was over and that parade routine had
another aspect.
The trouble began when they attempted to train their men.
They were eager to learn, but officers lost confidence in
themselves when they began to teach. They did not continue
to read their notes or to meet together to clear up difficulties.
Often, I listened in anguish to officers run a series of pro-
gressive lectures of mine into one rapid sketch of packed
sentences.
There was a great contempt for the English as fighting
men. It helped untrained boys to operate against opponents
who had been maintained in the profession of arms, but
experience would train them to estimate enemy courage and
efficiency in their future appreciations of situation.
We handled our weapons constantly to get the feel of
them, and practised at odd moments with empty guns, a
used cartridge case prevented abuse of the hammer action.
We learned to disarm one another when suddenly held up,
practised snapping at moving objects and at sounds or flashes
in the dark. We made wooden grenades of the same size as
the hand grenades used by the British, small ones like the
egg grenades of the police, and large ones like our own
G.H.Q. grenades. We weighted them with lead and taught
officers and men to throw with some kind of accuracy.
Moving across country, we studied patrol formations, the
use of cover, learned visual training and judging distances,
worked out the various forms of fire that might be brought
to bear on imaginary enemies in different formations ; we
learned to run with full kit and to advance without losing
breadth. We were often accompanied by officers from bat-
talions through which we moved and we taught them what
we knew.
We were attempting to instruct our people, who, with the
brief exception of the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, had
been disarmed since the time of Elizabeth. Most of them had
never had rifles or revolvers in their hands; hardly any had
seen hand grenades. A number knew the shot gun, but since
1916 there was not much ammunition; a few had used ex-
plosives in quarry work. There was not enough miniature
ammunition to allow the men to practise. It would be diffi-
133
cult to build up confidence in a weapon unless a man was
thoroughly familiar with it or believed in it.
The uncertainty of raids by police and military made
houses unsafe to hide weapons in. Floors were now torn
up, drawers turned upside down ; mattresses, thatch, ricks
and oats were stabbed with bayonets. The country was damp
from outside rains. It was hard to get proper arm dumps
built, and harder still to have the quartermasters inspect
weapons regularly to prevent rust and ill care. Few knew
the mechanism of the collection of weapons to be found
within one of our Brigade areas. British long and short Lee-
Enfields, police carbines, Lee-Metfords, single-shot Martini-Henris,
 Sniders, Remingtons, Winchesters, German, Turkish
or Spanish Mausers, French Lebels, American Springfields,
Japanese patterns, Austrian Steyers and Mannlichers, old flint
muskets, muzzle-loading Queen Annes. Revolvers : the
Webley, Colt, Smith and Wesson, Harrison Richardson, bull-
dog patterns. Automatics : the Naval Webley-Scott, Colt,
Browning, German Mauser or Parabellum, Steyer. Machine-
guns were rare : Parabellum, Vickers and the German
Spandau, the French Hotchkiss, the Lewis gun. There was
gunpowder, gelignite, dynamite, blasting powder and odd
slabs of gun-cotton. All these had been bought, captured in
action or taken in raids on private houses. It was impossible
to extract a reliable list of names, arms and stuff from a
brigade Q.M. Companies were afraid the battalion wanted
to distribute some of their arms to other companies ; the
battalion was afraid the brigade would transfer stuff to other
battalions. The brigade always made the poor mouth to
G.H.Q. to extract more arms. Short of being a very compe-
tent fortune teller I could not assess a brigade's armament.
We had to fight against carelessness, faulty method, sloppi-
ness, lack of confidence and bad schooling. In rural schools
boys had been taught to be good clerks or civil servants. They
had not been trained to solve the living problems of their
agricultural settings. Men did as their grandfathers had done,
thinking in brawn : 'fine upstanding men they were, God
bless them, eating nothing but praties and buttermilk, and
they could mow or swing a flail the live long day.' Often
they were cocksure and bombastic; they had nothing to learn
and they suspected all ideas.
I was a captain on Headquarters Staff, impressed with my
own energy and snappishly eager to pass on my approach to
134
military procedure and technique which I had studied, and
then resolved in my mind. The reality of the fight was covered
in their minds, they thought in terms of the land, blurring
their sense of responsibility with slipshod attendance at
councils and classes. There was an inability to become aware
of the extent of their resources in people, in the nature of the
countryside and in their men. I knew well they thought I was
a bloody nuisance and a red-headed bastard--this out of ear
range ; my periodic swoops could be smoothed out by an after
lull.
In Tipp., landlords' estates had been broken up and there
were many small holdings. The men were more independent ;
the houses neater and better built than in other counties I
had visited. The men were tall and quiet; they had a deal of
purpose and were dependable.
******************************************************************
We moved into the hilly country near Glenough where the
people were sound. They were aloof from the towns and they
did not talk. I called up men for a two-days' course of train-
ing. I intended to form them into a reserve to be used later
as a small column. Now we had six men armed with rifles.
We cycled around the hills. People came to the half-doors to
look at us in wonder, but they would have to get used to the
open bearing of arms. It was strange for us to have rifles
slung across our shoulders and khaki ammunition slings slanted
on our chests.
There was a police barracks on a pass in the hills at the
village of Hollyford. The Hollyford captain described the
barracks, but I had no clear picture in my mind. I walked
to the pass. The road below ran with a stream through a cut;
above and below the village the hill slopes were steep.
Houses straggled on either side of the road ; the barracks
looked down on thatched roofs and zinc outhouses. It was a
high two-storied, white-washed building, larger than the usual
barracks and long. There were many windows protected by
steel shutters ; loopholes were cut in the walls. In front a
porch jutted out with slits for rifles. The gable-end near the
road had a window high up and loopholes on the ground
floor ; a lean-to building about fourteen feet high, loopholed,
ran from the gable-end to the rear. On the far side of the
road was a rugged stone wall. It would give us a little cover.
The gable-end might be blown in with explosives.
Seamus, Sean and I talked with the Hollyford captain that
135
evening in a small slated house a mile from the village. He
had close on a half-hundred of gelignite, a little blasting
powder, a few pounds of gunpowder, a good supply of fuse
and two boxes of detonators.
'Is the gelignite in good condition?' I asked the captain.
'I don't know, but I'll see.'
'And bring all the fuse and explosives you have,' said
Seamus.
We looked at my map, picking out the police and military
barracks marked in coloured inks. My notebook gave their
strengths. Within nine miles were four barracks; within less
than fourteen miles were Shevry, Kilcommon, Annacarty,
Cappaghwhite, Doon, Dundrum and Rearcross. Pallas, a large
barracks, was twenty miles away, Goold's Cross and Tipperary
twenty, and Newport twenty-seven. There were military
garrisons also at Dundrum, Tipperary and Newport. Newport
and Tipperary were the chief danger. We pencilled places
where the roads had best be blocked to hold up their
reinforcements.
The gelignite was frozen. Two men put on pots of water in
the kitchen to thaw it whilst we talked in another room.
There were eight rifles in the battalion; ours made thirteen;
about twenty rounds for each rifle and four hand grenades.
There were ten or twelve police in Hollyford.
The woman of the house made tea and potato cakes for us.
We sat at the kitchen fire. Jim Gorman, lieutenant of Holly-
ford, blinked the rain from his eyebrows as he shook himself
on the flagstones.
'The ground floor of the barracks is six feet higher than the
ground outside; you might as well try to shift the Rock of
Cashel,' he said. Gorman had leathern jaws tight with lines,
and blue eyes glinting out of a tanned face. He was an Irish-
Australian. He had fought through the world war and was a
crack shot. He had assurance. He could curse better than any
man in the hills. We decided to burn out the garrison by an
attack from the roof. We had, none of us, tried to burn out
a garrison before.
Next day we cut time-fuse in lengths, crimped them into
detonators and made improvised grenades from tin cans
packed with scrap iron around a stick of gelignite. I made
'bursting charges' by filling mustard tins with explosives. They
would, if tied to a stick, blow off slates and be effective
when dropped close to men. We cleaned shotguns, rifles and
136
ammunition, took Mills' grenades apart and oiled the
springers. Ladders were collected but none were tall enough.
The gable end was forty feet high. Two long ladders were
made by splicing two shorter ones together. A mason, who
had been a sailor, saw to that. I trained a group of men in
ladder-drill in the evening and after dark by making them
hoist the long ladders perpendicularly and place them against
the high gable of a house near by. Soon they were reasonably
proficient ; every man knew his place.
At eleven o'clock cyclists told us that Volunteers on the
outposts had begun to fell trees and to put stone barricades
across roads. They would cut telegraph and telephone wires
at midnight. As I inspected outposts in the Kilcommon direc-
tion, I met Jim Gorman. There was a good position in the
pass, but no stones or trees near.
'Can you block the way quickly?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, kicking a pile of picks and shovels with his
foot. 'I can have them throw the road over the ditch.'
Seamus and I were to climb the ladders. Sean Tracey
would take charge of the attacking party below, seven rifle-
men and five shotguns. We walked quietly towards the village,
picked men carried the ladders, others had zinc buckets of
paraffin oil. We halted close to the barracks. There would
be a night guard on duty. There were lights in a few houses.
Seamus and I had two revolvers each, grenades, bursting
charges, supplies of fuse, detonators and hammers to smash
the slates. On our backs a tin of petrol was tied, sods of
turf which had been soaked in oil hung around our necks
from cords. The oil sopped into our clothes. The men with
the ladders took off their boots; they tied them around their
necks. When Sean's men had found positions that commanded
the windows we moved towards the gable. The ladders were
placed in position. Seamus's was to one side, mine against the
chimney. I intended to sit on top of it so that I could fire
through the roof. I hoped the peelers would not use their
rifles through the flue. Buckets of paraffin and petrol were
placed on the ground near the ladders. I told the men to get
back as we began to climb slowly, weighed down by our
supplies. They refused; not until we were on the roof. They
were in danger. They had no cover. The loopholes looked
down on them.
We crawled onto the roof, smashed slates with hammers,
poured in petrol from our tins. We lighted sods of turf and
137
threw them through gaps. Flames came with a yellow roar.
We crawled farther along the roof banging with hammers. I
lighted the fuses of two bursting charges. We lay flat on the
roof. Then came two loud explosions, bits of slate flew ;
a piece hit me on the head. Police fired rifles and revolvers.
We poured in more petrol.
Flames flaunted out of the darkness. We got back to the
edge of the roof. Below I saw flashes through the loopholes;
police grenades burst. I climbed to the chimney; the top was
cemented over. I sat dangling my legs. Shots were fired from
the partition walls of the barracks. I used up both revolvers,
reloaded and emptied again. The police fired through the roof
of the lean-to building. I lay flat on the chimney. We emptied
our tins of petrol. There were great holes in the slate roof ;
smoke and flames were blown by the wind against, and away
from us. Our hands were burnt. Seamus brought up buckets
from below. I helped to carry them up and we poured them
in. Jim Gorman dashed across with two rattling bucketsful. I
flung in grenades; the second rolled and caught in the eaves.
As I gripped the hot slates I shouted to Seamus who was
coming up the ladder; his head was on a level with the roof
when the grenade exploded. It deafened him. I had told the
man below not to shout. A silent attack would make the
defenders feel the unknown quality of it; it would unsteady
their nerves and make them more uncertain in the darkness
of what was to come next. Below now I heard men taunt the
police and shout. My language out-coloured the flames, but
the shouting continued.
I went down for a rifle. Police had been firing at us
through the roof ; splinters of slate had been splashed about
by bullets. I fired a few clips through the roof of the lean-to
from the top of the chimney and down into the building
itself. That must have driven them out beyond the partition
wall.
The remainder of the building would not catch. We tried
to get across the eaves, but the heat drove us back. We
splashed in our last two buckets of petrol. Flames rushed up
suddenly and cut across the ladders. I got to the chimney.
I could see Seamus on his ladder clinging to the ledge. My
hands and face were burning hot, my hair caught fire ; I
rubbed my hands through it. My coat was alight. I could
not get down the ladder through the fire ; neither could
Seamus. This looks like the end, I thought, as I lay flat on
138
the chimney whilst the flames waved and thrust forward with
the wind. I fired quickly into the roof, the rifle was hot.
'Good-bye, Seamus,' I shouted. "Sla/n leat,' he said.
I could see a snatch of hills near by and the thatched
roofs of houses. Above them was light across the racing
clouds. I began the chorus of 'The Soldiers' Song,' but I
changed the words :
The barracks now is burning slow,
See in the East a silvery glow.
The flames went down. Seamus and I met on our ladders.
'0 golly,' he said,'I'm all burnt.'
Dawn came slowly. Towards the rear there was steady
shooting. I climbed down and crawled to the back of the
barracks. One of our men from Kilcommon was firing
ecstatically at a loophole in a steel shutter. There was a pile
of empty cases beside him. Stammering through a whirl of
curses in my mind I stopped. He looked too pleased for me
to let fly, but he knew what I felt from my face. 'Don't fire
again until you see a peeler's head,' I said. 'You know damn
well how scarce ammunition is.'
At the beginning of the attack the police had sent up
rockets and Very lights. Seamus was nervous about military
reinforcements. Sean and I argued with him. Our outposts,
he said, would not be able to hold up an attack now that it
was day. Reluctantly we went up the hill. When we reached
a crest we looked back. Smoke drifted slowly in the cool
early morning wind ; the police still drove off imaginary
attackers.
Seamus and I looked at each other. The hair was burnt
off his head, his face was black, red and blistered; he had no
eyebrows. My face felt strange. My eyelashes and eyebrows
had gone ; there were raised ridges on my face and head
and on the back of my neck ; my hands stung most of all.
Our clothes were burnt in patches, and soaked with oil and
petrol. We laughed at each other whilst we wrung our hands
in pain. We had failed to capture any rifles, but we had
driven in that post.
Seamus, Sean and I cycled in the wide valley between the
Galtees and Knockmealdowns. We had been refused a bed
in two houses. Sean and Seamus meant trouble, people knew.
Police and military had often combed the South Riding for
139
them ; there were two nooses waiting. 'Let's try Tincurry,'
Sean said.
Mrs. Tobin greeted Sean and Seamus with both of her
hands. 'How is every bit of you,' she said, 'you're heartily
welcome ; but Glory be to God, what happened to your
faces?'
Seamus, Sean, the battalion commandant and I waited for
half an hour for the Burnfort Company at Rehill ; it was
to burn the rifle range. We walked up the slope carrying picks
and shovels. The night was cold. We turned up the collars of
our coats.
'Maybe they have forgotten,' said Sean, in quiet disgust,
'or there's a dance somewhere.'
'We'd best start,' I said, 'and do as much damage as we
can.' We cut up and buckled the wire of movable figures,
smashed targets, broke up posts. As we went towards the
trenches higher up, we heard voices singing 'The Soldiers'
Song.'
'Go down to the road, and bring up those songsters at the
double,' I said.
Sean walked into the darkness. Later we heard a sharp
'Halt,' then two shots and scattered firing. A pause, and
then controlled volley firing. The bullets whizzed up the hill.
We lay close to the earth. That's strange, I thought, what are
they firing at? Our men couldn't have that number of rifles,
'I hope nothing has happened to Sean,' said Seamus, 'But
why should the men sing "The Soldiers' Song"? It must be
the military and they'll come up the hill. We'll cross to The
Glen.'
I watched Seamus and the commandant go up the moun-
tain. I was anxious about Sean, but I did not know what to
do. I did not know the mountains well. If I got close to the
road I might find out something.
Later I heard horses trotting up and down, then the sharp
snap of an order. Cavalry from Cahir Barracks. I lay amongst
ferns trying to keep myself warm.
The dawn was slow in coming, ferns rustled with a cold
ground breeze and clouds like muffled glass were lighted
from overhead in the East. Near me a tawny hare slowly
stood up, its long ears like a wooden toy, a quiver ran along
its flank; a vixen played with three brown cubs and rolled
them on the grass; she barked with delight. Edges of planta-
tions and tops of evergreen stood out; mist rolled away in
the valley, and I could see hedge enclosures and houses. I
crossed the road. If I could pick out the bronze-red sheen on
the copper beech in the front lawn of Tincurry it would be
easy to cross country towards it; but I was too far away to
see it. I crossed a by-road. Two cavalrymen on rising ground
beyond a bend in the road saw me as I got to the hedge.
They galloped down, shouting. I ran back across the bohereen
and lay down behind the stump of a fallen tree within fifty
yards of the road. I gripped my revolver with both hands for
distant fire. I heard the crash of their horses through the
hedge on the far side of the road. Like Brer Rabbit, of our
childhood books, I lay low. I heard them gallop away.
Smoke was rising from a chimney in Tincurry. Mrs. Tobin
came out when I shouted from beyond the stream.
'Glory be to God, it's you,' she said. 'Well . . . well . . .
well! Come in and warm yourself ; you must be perished
with the hunger. I'll ready the breakfast.' She swung a black
kettle on a crane above the embers. 'When you left the house
last night, I knew something would happen, so I took your
books and papers off the carrier on the back of your bicycle
and hid them. It was well I did. Two hours later police and
military from Cahir brought me out of my bed. They searched
the house upside down and they asked me about the bicycle,
but I said it belonged to some of the workmen. They were
hardly gone when in comes Sean. "Did Ernie or Seamus
come?" says he. "No," says I. Then he told me the whole
story. You remember the time when you sent him down to the
road? Well, he heard the men singing and when he got close,
he shouted to them "Shut up," and then "Halt," for they
were marching towards Cahir. He ran after them and there
he saw tin hats; Tommies, he said to himself, and he opened
fire. The soldiers threw themselves down in all directions and
they fired all around them.' She stopped for breath, her
cheeks shone with eagerness. 'But that isn't the best of it.
When Sean was making for Tincurry across the fields, who
did he meet but two of the Burnforts trying to smash their
handcuffs with a stone and they spancelled like two goats,
God help them ; then they told their story.
'They were late for the drilling and whilst they waited for
the rest of the men to come, up marched the soldiers from
Cahir and took them all prisoners--about thirty of them.
They handcuffed them arm to arm, then the soldiers, if you
please, stood round and sang the "The Soldiers' Song," and
141
they knew it, too. Sean, as I told you fired, the soldiers were
thinking of their sweet selves and the boys got away, all
save two. And that's my story from start to finish. Did you
ever hear the like of it? Wasn't it grand?' She beamed as
she poured out tea.
Twelve-year-old, fuzzy-haired Eva, who had often scouted
the neighbouring roads on her bicycle, came down stairs. She
had to hear the story too. Her speckled grey eyes lit up with
joy: 'Oh, show me your revolver,' she begged. She tramped
about the house in my Sam Browne and imitated the accents
of the raiding officers from the barracks. Two days after
there was a heading in the paper : 'Two Hundred Armed
Men Attack Military Patrol. Attack Beaten off, Prisoners
Captured.'
I went to the towns to sketch the posts and check up on
the routine of barrack life. I examined Clogheen Workhouse
which was held by military, and the police barracks. I made
rough sketches, then cycled on to the next barracks, Bally-
poreen. A girl driving a pony and trap halted me.
'Are you afraid of the police?' she asked.
'No.'
She drove on. That question was unusual, I thought, when
she was out of sight. There might be a catch in it; but she
might be all right. I cycled after her. I came up with the trap.
'Why did you ask me was I afraid of police?'
'I don't know. You're the first person I stopped.'
'But, why?'
'There are police lying in ambush behind the walls outside
of Ballyporeen Barracks.'
I thanked her and asked her name. She was from Mitchels-
town, County Cork.
******************************************************************
Ostracization of the Royal Irish Constabulary had been
enforced for over a year. They would not be served with drink
or food stuffs in many shops ; people would not speak to
them. Their patrols were disarmed and barracks taken by
surprise; individual police who pointed out houses and men
to the military were shot down. Many police resigned; there
were not recruits enough to fill their places. Their Inspector-
General had been given indefinite leave of absence. The
Deputy Inspector-General had been replaced by an Advisor,
a British General. Four Divisional Commissioners, military
men, had been appointed to more thoroughly militarize the
142
R.I.C. The commander of the troops, Shaw, was superseded
by General Macready. Shaw had asked for more troops. He
wanted to impose martial law through Ireland, but it was not
the policy of the British Government to admit that there was
a serious situation in Ireland. They had another trick in the
bag.
Macready at a Cabinet meeting was assured of full support
for his campaign. A Divisional Commisioner, Smyth, had put
it up to police in Kerry to shoot Republicans. Some threw
off their uniform tunics. Smyth had to seek protection in
another room of the barracks. All the Royal Irish were not
thoroughly dependable now. Later Smyth was shot dead in
his club in Cork City. In England ex-service men were
recruited for service in Ireland by advertisements in the
paper. Brigadier-General Tudor, who had reorganized and
improved police transport, was responsible for recruiting. A
knowledge of modern warfare was their chief contribution to
the maintenance of law and order. They wore khaki tunics
and black-green trousers whilst awaiting their R.I.C. uniforms.
The people called them the 'Black and Tans.' That also was
the name of a hunting pack of beagles in County Tipperary.
It was felt that they would quickly suppress what was known
as 'disorder.' They had burnt and bombed some shops and
houses in County Tipperary. '
*******************************************************************
Seamus, Sean and I were in the pleasant valleys of the
Comeragh Mountains on the Waterford side of the river Suir.
We were busy annexing a strip of another county, forming
companies and strengthening our position on the northern
mountain watershed before the Waterford Brigade would
wake up. Strategically, this area should belong to South
Tipperary, but the Waterford men would have less cause for
complaint if it was organized before they knew of its
possibilities.
Seamus and I cycled past military road posts and fortified
barracks in East Clare ; we left Sean behind to prepare an
attack on Drangan Barracks which would take place three
days later. Mick Brennan intended to blow in an end wall of
Sixmilebridge Barracks ; he wanted our advice about the
demolition.
Brennan, and visiting officers from across the yellow
Shannon, thawed out gelignite whilst we lay out on the thick
green of the dykes above the carcas grass. Nearby, Brigadier-
143
General Lucas, who had been captured by Liam Lynch in
North Cork, was a prisoner.
The Buffs and the Flying Corps had broken loose in
Fermoy after his capture. They had the honour of being the
first to seriously destroy property and wreck shops. In his
honour a song 'Can anybody tell me where the Blarney Roses
Grow?' had been changed :
Can anybody tell me where did General Lucas go?
He may be down in Mitchelstown or over in Mayo.
We had warned the officers about the poisonous fumes which
nitroglycerine exudes ; they gave what we called 'gelignite
head,' a terrible roof-splitting pain. When we came back to
the house we found a number of the men yellow green; their
stomachs heaved in dry spasms, but others kept at the
thawing.
I was in charge of the attack now. There was not enough
gelignite thawed out and local men who could have helped
me, were at a distance ready to block roads and carry out
feint attacks on other posts to divert reinforcements. I had
to send dispatch riders to call off the men moving up to
Sixmilebridge. I knew that an attack was due on Killmallock
in East Limerick that night, but Seamus and I would have to
cross the yellow Shannon by boat and we would find diffi-
culty in getting through our own outposts in the night. We
cursed Mick Brennan and his lack of thought. We would
have had to work our way up to the shop beside the barracks
where I had meant to detonate petrol tins with the gelignite.
The explosion might have been as serious for Seamus and
me as for the police, I thought, as I went to bed.
Next day Seamus and I hurried back to be in time for
Drangan close to the Kilkenny border. On the Limerick road
three lorries of Tans and R.I.C. came up. They were shouting,
singing and shooting off their rifles. There was no cover
nearby ; we would have to draw quickly if they halted us.
The lorries kept near the middle of the road ; red flags were tied
to some of the rifles. Near the sandbagged road post at Pallas a
man told us about the attack on Kilmallock in East Limerick
the night before. The barracks had been completely destroyed.
Police had retreated to a bomb-proof shelter; some of them
had been killed. A punitive expedition from Limerick had
just burned the co-operative creamery and many houses.
They had shot up and bombed the town.
l434
Late in the evening we found Sean in a house close to the
small town of Drangan. He had incendiary mixtures and a
supply of yellow clay, 'yallow ouy,' it was called. The clay
Late in the evening we found Sean in a house close to the
small town of Drangan. He had incendiary mixtures and a
supply of yellow clay, 'yallow ouy,' it was called. The clay
when thrown against a vertical wall would adhere. By
moulding it around a half stick of gelignite with detonator
and fuse attached, it became a grenade which would stick to
a steel place. We had used mud bombs on the roofs of
deserted farms. They blew off a great patch of slates.
Sean had seen the barracks; next door was a one-storey
house commanded by the loopholes. We could smash through
that roof, put up a ladder, climb it, break the police roof
and use a pump attached to a barrel of inflammable material.
Sean had no plan of the village ; by the time we were
ready to move up there were no local men to guide us. I
set off with four men from another battalion to see if it was
possible to use the houses opposite the barracks. We carried
picks and jumpers. We blundered in the dark across fields
and ditches until we reached a high wall. It was opposite the
barracks. The men took off their boots. They could find the
best places on the wall to loophole later; I told them not to
talk. As I left the house I heard voices roaring 'Surrender,'
followed by a rattle of revolver shots. I was run into by one
of our men who was rushing away in panic. I opened fire at
the flashes and followed up until I ran into barbed wire which
dug into my face.
A police patrol had heard our men talking and had sur-
prised them from behind. One man was wounded ; I bandaged
him under a flashlight, and gave him a tabloid of morphia to
ease the pain. There would be no element of surprise in the
attack now. We moved cautiously up the street. We had
reached the small house beside the barracks when the police
threw grenades and used their rifles. We smashed the roof of
the small house, climbed through the hole and concentrated
automatic fire on the loopholes above us whilst we hauled
up the ladder and a barrel of oil. We threw mud bombs onto
the police roof and used tubing which was tied to a length of
wood to make it firm. Soon the roof caught fire.
We could hear ammunition exploding inside as the flames
got to it and we cursed hard. Seamus wanted to ask the
police to surrender. I was against that. They should not be
asked until we had an alternative in case they would not. As
we collected jumpers and picks to make a hole through the
wall on the first storey, I heard 'Hello, hello, there.'
145
'What do you want?'
'We want to talk with you.'
'All right. Put out a flag and I'll stop our fire.'
A shirt tied to a rifle was stuck out a front window.
Seamus called me back as I started to walk over to the
barracks. 'It may be a trap. I wouldn't trust them. They might
shoot you.'
'If they do, rush the place when you make an opening and
shoot what's left of them.'
I talked through the slit in a steel plate. The police were
afraid we would shoot them, they said. 'We won't shoot you;
but come out quick before any more of the ammunition ex-
plodes.' They asked for ten minutes to talk it over amongst
themselves. At the end of five minutes they walked out; one
was in khaki. Their names were taken. It would go hard with
them if they were captured a second time, they were told.
They were ordered to march in single file down the road out
of the village and warned, like Lot's family, on no account
to look back.
The barracks was raked for equipment, ammunition, and
papers. We handled the shining carbines and long
Lee-Enfields and compared them with some of our worn rifles;
several large boxes of ammunition had been set off by the
flames. A History of Ireland in a green cover specially written
for the Royal Irish was found ; one boy going through letters
for information came upon a girl's letter to the sergeant. She
had signed herself 'Your little lump of love.' The men sat
down on the sandbags swaying with joy. The fat peeler and
his little lump of love. A doctor bandaged two other boys
and myself who had been burnt; the rest of the wounded
had already been cared for.
We cycled away. The military should be due now. People
who had listened to the firing were waiting outside their
houses on the roadside. They gave us milk; they wanted us
to stop for a sup of tea. We waited at several crossroads
for enemy reinforcements; then we went on to get through
the net.
At Sologbeg the war began,
And next was heard the song
Of the rescue of Sean Hogan
At the station of Knocklong.
146
Soon after Hunt, the bully, fell,
Races day in Thurles town.
It broke the hearts of peelers
For miles the country round.
from Thurles town to Galtees brow
All peelers turned pale
When the boys attacked the barracks
At the call of Graine Ua Uaile.
from hill to hill that winter's night
Did speed the rifles ball;
We won at Rea and Hollyford
But failed at Drumbane Hall.
The Rag we need not mention,
There we lost a comrade true;
They may trample on his body,
But his spirit ne'er subdue.
By peelers' hands MacCarthy fell;
In sainted ground he sleeps,
'Neath the ancient walls of Holy Cross
Where Suir's bright water creeps.
All true men miss them sorely
And their death they do deplore;
Three hirelings for them suffered
In the groves of Lackamore.
We'll drink a health to every man
Who treads in death's pathway;
Drink up, my boys, get ready,
Tis the rising of the day.
Twelve
DAIL EIREANN functioned slowly. It appointed consuls, floated
a foreign loan which was increased to #l,000,000 and closed
the home loan of #250,000 with a surplus of #40,000, Twenty
papers were suppressed for publishing the loan prospectus.
People were arrested for having a copy of it. A commission
of inquiry sat to probe the resources and industries of Ireland
with Darrell Figgis as secretary ; committees inquired into
fisheries, dairying and the meat industry. The Commission
played hide and seek with the police. British troops held
147
approaches to the building where the meeting was advertised
to be held whilst it sat quietly in another part of the city.
The results of its investigation were not allowed to be pub-
lished in the Press by the British Censor, and its industrial
exhibitions were suppressed. Daily news bulletins were sent
to the foreign press from the Publicity department; attempts
were made to open direct trading with the Irish ports. A land
Bank was organized. The members of the Dail took an oath
of allegiance to the Irish Republic; the Dail was proclaimed.
"Whereas, as by special proclamation dated July 3, 1918, in
pursuance and by virtue of the Criminal Law Procedure of Ire-
land Act of 1887, be declared from the date thereof certain
associations in Ireland known by the names of Sinn Fein
organization, Sinn Fein clubs, Irish Volunteers, Cumann na
mBan and Gaelic League to be dangerous. And whereas the
association known by the name of Dail Eireann appears to us
to be a dangerous association and to have been after the date
of said special proclamation employed for all purposes of the
association known by the names of Sinn Fein organization,
Sinn Fein Clubs, Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan, now
we, the Lord Lieutenant-General and General Governor of
Ireland, by and with the advice of the Privy Council in Ireland,
by virtue of the Criminal Law and Procedure of Ireland Act of
1887, and of every power and authority in this behalf, do
hereby, by this our order, prohibit and suppress within the
several districts specified and named in the schedule the associa-
tion known by the name of Dail Eireann."
In December, Lord French, the Lord Lieutenant, with
his armed escort, was attacked, but he managed to get
through unwounded. Tracey, Robinson, Hogan and Dan
Breen, all from South Tipperary, had been amongst the
attacking party.
In January of 1920 there were municipal and urban elec-
tions ; eleven out of twelve cities and boroughs and ninety-two
out of one hundred and sixteen towns returned majorities for
the Republic. From now on the British had a new objective
in public bodies. Thomas MacCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork,
was murdered by R.I.C.; other mayors received death
notices. Later the Mayor of Limerick was murdered. Lloyd
George sheltered those responsible for 'unofficial' reprisals.
Two Republicans were to be shot for every soldier, spy or
policeman killed. It was hoped that this policy would break
down resistance. Police and military gangs killed Irishmen to
148
produce an effect on the people ; they selected victims who
were in many cases inoffensive. Irish Volunteers, now known
as the Irish Republican Army, shot down police who pointed
out houses for gangs and raiding parties, high police and
military officials, and people who were trying to seize Dail
moneys deposited in banks. The I.R.A. stood over their shoot-
ings : the British did not.
Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, wanted to
double the police force and throw on it the burden of trying
to restore order. The use of police would make the outside
world believe they were suppressing crime. Wilson was not
in favour of unofficial reprisals or shootings. He wanted
'shooting by rooster,' and demolitions carried out officially
by the military.
In April the British prepared for another Easter rising; on
the eve of Easter Sunday the I.R.A. destroyed three hundred
and fifty evacuated barracks, burnt court houses, and
Customs' offices, raided Customs and Revenue and Income
Tax offices for papers. Practically no income tax was
collected from this on. County Councils refused to help
surveyors to assess the tax and later in the cities corporations
would not give the required information.
R.I.C. and military burnt five co-operative creameries, four
of them in Mid-Tipperary. There was a hunger strike of
prisoners in Mountjoy ; Greenwood, the Chief Secretary, said
they could starve ; there would be no release. Irish Labour
ordered a one-day general strike ; next day, the eighth day
of hunger strike, workers' committees organized food supplies
for the general public, but the prisoners were freed.
In May dock labourers and transport union men refused
to handle munitions ; English labour would not ship muni-
tions to Poland for use against Russia ; it shipped them to
Ireland. Drivers of railway trains refused to carry armed
police, soldiers or munitions. They were dismissed ; their suc-
cessors were dismissed. By July two thousand had been given
notice ; their resistance continued for eight months.
Justices of the Peace resigned; there was no one to replace
them at Petty Sessions Courts ; magistrates resigned, though
not in numbers. Republican Parish Courts had three justices
elected by representatives of local bodies, I.R.A. and Sinn
Fein clubs; Parish Courts corresponded to the Petty Sessions
Courts ; District Courts corresponded to British county courts.
There were five District Judges ; elected by the men who
149
presided at Parish courts. Within four days the Parish court
could appeal to the District ; their decrees were en-
forced by the I.R.A., and later by Republican Police attached
to companies. The Republican Minister of Justice had stan-
dardized organization and procedure. In a period of thirteen
days forty-one courts were held, and eighty-four arrests made
by the I.R.A.
The arresting of criminals meant additional work for the
I.R.A. which had to select men in each area for public duties,
but the people actively helped them to track down wrong-doers.
The people were our intelligence system in this respect,
and our public opinion. Republican Police raided for and
smashed poteen stills, made public-houses observe licensing
laws, kept order at racecourses and carried out patrol duty.
These prisoners were a drain on us; they had to be kept
on islands or in boggy and remote parts ; they were, in the
newspaper phrase, 'removed to an unknown destination.' The
local company had to feed them, use their arms to guard
them and send out scouts to protect the guards from raiding
parties who would release the prisoners and arrest the guards;
but often enough the prisoners would again surrender.
Guards never thought of themselves as gaolers; there was
an old sympathy with the hunted. They played cards with
them, smoked, chatted and swapped stories. The officers res-
ponsible had to watch their own men as well as their prisoners
and protect both from surprise. None of us liked to have to
keep or guard prisoners. Once I found the guard asleep in a
deserted house whilst their prisoners were out on sentry duty
with shotguns.
British county courts were practically deserted ; cases listed
for appeal to the Judges who made visits at the assizes were
withdrawn. They had already been dealt with by Repubican
courts. Men listed for jury duty would not attend the assizes
or inquests held in military harracks. Witnesses and magis-
trates were kidnapped and held until the court was over.
Courthouses were protected by sandbags, barbed wire and
garrisons. The decrees of the British courts too often needed
a small expeditionary force. In the country scouts guarded
Republican courts ; imperialists, reporters and solicitors who
attended were committing a criminal offence ; the armed
scouts were protecting imperialists from the soldiers.
Parish and District courts settled cases quickly on their
merits ; there was no forensic eloquence; common sense and
150
good will replaced involuted legal formulas. Justice was
elemental, strict, but impartial and human ; costs were low.
Sentences varied from fines and a shake hands to parading
culprits outside chapel gates on Sunday with their offences
and sentences tied around their necks on cardboard, or
banishment from Ireland. Sentences were read at chapel gates
or posted up.
Elections were held for county and district councils and
boards of guardians ; twenty-nine out of thirty-three county
councils and one hundred and seventy-two rural district
councils were for the Irish Republic; ten followed the Irish
Parliamentary Party, five were evenly divided and nineteen
were Unionist. Dail Eireann could now use the greater part
of the Local Government system, which, however, collected
and forwarded taxes to the British Income Tax Department;
a proportion of the money was returned in grants to county
councils. It was more dangerous now to be a member of a
public body that had given allegiance than to be one of the
I.R.A.; the former were well known, they had to work in
public and were an easy mark for raiding parties; soon they
had to go on the run. Seven fresh British infantry battalions
came over.
In July the Auxiliaries were organised as a corps d'elite of
ex-officers in fifteen companies of one hundred men. Three
fresh infantry battalions and a Divisional Staff landed.
Marines were shipped to the South to reinforce the armed
garrisons of Coast Guard stations. Their stations had been
attacked and burnt, and lighthouses raided for detonators and
explosives.
Emigration was prohibited by the Dail; two hundred and
twenty-three public bodies had now pledged allegiance to it.
There was land trouble in the South and West. The Dail,
afraid of the spread of land-hunger, used the I.R.A. to
protect landowners ; the I.R.A. who were in sympathy with
those who wanted to break up estates carried out the orders
of the Minister of Defence.
A Partition Act was being discussed by the English
 Cabinet as a settlement, but Ulster was not satisfied at the
terms. In the North riots were generally staged during a
time of surplus labour or when the English political situation
in its approach to an Irish settlement demanded it. Fighting
began in Derry between armed Orangemen and poorly armed
Nationalists; I.R.A. filtered in. The Orangemen were driven
151
back with loss, British military. who had stood by, now took
notice and troops were used. Twenty-eight people were killed
and fifty-five wounded. In July Belfast took up the rifle.
British troops evidently found it difficult to use troops in a
loyalist stronghold.
Lord Grey had discovered a feeling for Ireland in America;
it prevented closer English-speaking relationship there. In
August Lord Curzon was insistent about pleasing America
by an Irish settlement. But that month saw a Restoration of
Order in Ireland Act, weighty in words and possibilities, put
into force. The military absorbed more of the function of
civil authority.
The increasing attacks on barracks had resulted in their
capture or partial destruction ; the burning of evacuated
posts had driven garrisons into the towns. The police, 'the
eyes' of the military, could not now supply information about
certain areas ; many country districts and the mountains were
controlled by the I.R.A. The R.I.C. had ceased to be a police
force; they pointed out houses, localities and short cuts to
the Tans and soldiers; they identified wanted men from
arrested suspects and they guided punitive expeditions. Some
of the older R.I.C. were near their retiring pensionable age.
If they retired before the pension was due, they would lose
it. In divided mind they remained on. Police had to give a
month's notice before they resigned ; a few who had left the
force had been killed or beaten up by Tans.
Thirteen
JULY--AUGUST 1920
I ATTENDED a meeting in Dublin where the G.H.Q. Staff met
senior officers from all commands. I saw Liam Lynch and
Terence MacSweeney of Cork, and many others who had
been names to me. The officers pressed for a campaign in
England to counteract the destruction of creameries and
houses by the military and police; they offered to send over
picked men. Our final instructions were to slow down the
guerilla campaign and allow civil administration to develop.
* * *
152
I brought eight boys from South Tipperary up the slopes
of Slievenamuck, which looked down on the military barracks
and the town. A military wagon left a post in the Glen of
Aherlow every Saturday for supplies ; an escort of from
twelve to fifteen soldiers went with it. Up in the heather and
long grass we waited, scouts watched the road up from The
Glen and the country beneath us on the other side. Rifle
shots would be heard below by the guard on the rifle range
and at the strongly held barracks; we would have to capture
the escort at the first volley, then get away quickly across
The Glen to the Galtees which overlooked us.
I watched the barracks through my glasses, then swung
them to the rising ground towards Lattin, and Emly in the
East Limerick area. North were the hills I knew, jutting out
below Hollyford, and beyond, a dim mass, Maugherslieve ;
to the north-west a misty haze of blue height, Slievefelim.
Saturday was market day in Tipperary ; as the sun went
overhead we heard the noise of traps and carts being pulled
up the hill road by horses and asses. Animals tugged, harness
creaked and jerked, wood whined, and whips cracked. We
lay spread out behind a steep bank at a sharp turn. We
could hear the drivers : 'Get on, get on up . . . get on up
out a that,' followed by a lash, or 'Bad cess to you,' 'Pull,
you divil you--pull.' Some of the boys knew the drivers :
'Here's old Patsy Walsh from Lisvernane, wait till you hear
him let go, he's a sour old crab . . . and here's herself the
widow Quinn.' We tried to stifle our gurgles of laughter as
we kept our mouths deep in the heather. They told me of the
drivers' histories in flamboyant extravagance before they came
to our position. As we reached the low land, a lark lifted his
clear song to the indigo hills in the dusk.
I left on foot for East Limerick; passing lorries of troops
halted to search passers-by and the roads were not safe. I
was glad to walk; it was better than the necessary evil of a
bicycle. I could follow my liking now when the influence of
a hill or mountain drew me to climb ; it was good to have my
boots on the grass and to feel the hill power drawing my feet
over the land.
I had overhauled my kit and books. I carried two guns;
one was a Mauser automatic. Steel waistcoats often worn
by police and officers could turn most bullets, but the Peter
bullet, with its high initial velocity, would go through. I had
a prismatic compass, prismatic binoculars around my neck,
153
a map case, ammunition pouches and haversacks, a series of
wrist straps for a fill of cartridges, a whistle, and a luminous
watch. I had a book sewn together, and bound in soft leather,
of selections from English training manuals with my written
notes and sketches; I carried it in a waterproof case. My coat
was burnt, torn and scratched. It had been darned with
coloured wools, patched with odd cloth, and the pockets, its
most important part, were lined with moleskin. They could
support the weight of notebooks, books, maps, pencils, and
medical supplies. I was my own base, and I looked it. I had
books and accoutrements in triplicate : one set in Dublin,
one in the area in which I happened to be, and a selection
on myself.
Jerry Kieley, who had been above on Slievenamuck, came
with me. He carried my Winchester rifle, an ammunition
sling, haversacks, and his own Webley revolver. We walked
through East Limerick, from the wooded glens beyond Doon,
through the low, scattered sharp hills of the central ridge, to
the narrow southern passes beyond Ardfinnan in the Bally-
houra Mountains.
This was a rich land with a good standard of comfort;
there were many creameries. Some of the houses sent a boy
to Maynooth to the priesthood and a girl to the University
to get a teacher's degree. The area was cut up by roads which
gave easy communication to the activities of closely linked
posts and barracks. There was the difficulty of three different
times for councils and classes. Summer time was kept by
cities, some towns, and the railway ; new time was an increase
of twenty-five minutes on old Irish time to synchronize with
English time ; as yet punctual time had not come.
I was president of the first land court held in the area ;
two Brigade officers sat with me. The courtroom was a low,
slated cottage. It had trailing vine on the front wall and a
small well-kept garden bounded by a bright blue fence. A
strong after-rain smell came from mauve lavender and the
yew across the road, surrounded by heavy-topped grey
willows; behind in the apple trees goldfinches bubbled over
with songs, and a grey wagtail beat time with his tail. The
people of the house wished us a good hearing. They set off
to visit the neighbours so as to be out of the way, as they
said. We sat in the kitchen on three brown wooden chairs
with our backs to the small oblong panes of a window. A
154
grandfather clock ticked heavily; the table in front of us was
covered with green oilcloth.
Seated opposite to us were the plaintiff and the defendant, but
as they made claims and counterclaims about trespass and
right of way, it was hard to make out which was which.
They did not object to any of us three; they selected counsel
from a group of officers, then signed a form that they would
honour the court's decision.
The defendant was burly; he had a red beefy face, ragged
moustache, and long hairs curving out from his nostrils. He
spoke with an even roughness when he addressed the court,
but with an emphatic hoarse distaste when he turned towards
his opponent : 'this bloody fellow,' he called him. I had to
ask him to speak with more respect. The plaintiff was clean-
shaven and dark-skinned with black hair ; his cheek-bones
ridged out, below them the cheek-line caved in. He had a
lean face, wind-red, and scrawny at the neck. The beefy man
looked a bully. Both sat with their knees wide-angled, their
hats revolved between the gaps as if the twirling helped speech.
On cross-examination of witnesses flaws were found in the
burly man's evidence. We went into another room to consult.
Both had to pay compensation and the slight costs of court.
'Are you satisfied?' I asked them in turn. They both were.
'Will you shake hands, now?' They shook hands with each
other and with us. We made tea and drank together.
I was glad when I saw them walk away together. 'No
more courts for me,' I said to the Vice-Commandant. 'I feel
like the woman who was called in to decide a quarrel :
"Faix, you're right," she said, "and the other man is right,
musha, you're both right in your own way." '
Jerry and I came down the slopes of the Galtees to a
house in Anglesborough ; we were tired and very hungry.
'You must have walked on the fe/ar gorta,' the woman of
the house said, as she scalded the teapot. I worked in a
small sunlit room that looked out on the mountain slopes.
One of the girls came into the room. I was writing in my
notebook; my revolver was on the table in front of me.
She smiled. 'Is it loaded?' 'Yes, it is,' I said, and wrote on.
She picked up the gun. I tried to hide my temper as I con-
tinued to write. Inwardly I thought, The fool! What the
hell does she want meddling with a loaded gun? I hated
anyone to touch my weapons. She pointed the gun at me
and pressed the trigger, the hammer rose and fell. She's
155
trying to frighten me or annoy me, I thought. She pressed
again, the trigger pressure swung the gun a little to one side
as the muzzle went up. There was a report, a shriek, and
a smash of broken glass from a lamp behind my head. She
trembled and became white : 'O my God,' she said, 'when
it didn't go off the first time I thought it wasn't loaded.'
Jerry rushed in with his Webley in his hand ; her mother
followed, her hands white with flour. I found a slight dinge
on the cap of the cartridge which she had first touched with
the hammer.
********************************************************************
Enemy movement was prevented or restricted by con-
tinually pot-holing the road, digging holes in it at intervals,
or by trenching and then covering the openings with soft
earth so that an unsuspecting lorry would dash in. Trenches
might be left open, then they had to be filled in by the
British before an advance could be made. Walls were torn
down and spread over a large area or piled up in cuttings
where it would be more difficult to remove the stones. Heavy
trees were felled across the road, barbed wire often wound
around them and kept in position with staples to prevent
or retard the use of cross-cuts. Our snipers delayed convoys
or raiding parties; they had to get down to attempt to out-
flank the attackers. The enemy moved more cautiously ;
raiding parties increased in strength, but night raids, save
in towns and villages, were less frequent.
Near Bruff we found that a gate-keeper and his wife had
one night cut down two trees in the demesne, near the lodge,
intending to use the wood for fuel. They thought the neigh-
bours would believe that our men had cut down the timber.
The obstructions were not at first taken seriously by the
country people. They removed the trees and filled in the
trenches, but heavy fines were imposed by our battalion
officers. After the fines had been paid in cattle or money,
the people left obstacles alone. Alternate routes for carts and
traps were made by cutting gaps in the hedges on either side
of the obstruction.
Police barracks now had machine-guns and rifle grenades,
the approaches were protected with barbed wire and often
mined. A barracks at Bruff was aroused one night, rifle and
grenade fire was opened and a mine exploded. In the morning
the dead body of a mule, which was picked off the barbed-
wire entanglements, constituted the attack. A few shots at
156
night drew continuous fire, and rockets for reinforcements
flared up ; garrisons never felt themselves secure. At Hospital
I was told that a lorry of troops held up their hands and
shouted, 'We surrender,' because the lorry in front had back-
fired, and the rear ones thought it was the beginning of an
attack.
Police and military shot prisoners ; 'shot dead whilst trying
to escape,' was their explanation. At inquests verdicts of
wilful murder were returned against them. Raids became
more destructive, and rings, watches and valuables dis-
appeared. Officers wore masks on their faces and Tans used
blackened cork when they came at night to shoot men who
were on their Black List ; bloodhounds sniffed whilst the
family cowered. The destruction of creameries continued.
Police and Tans were shot down on the streets by the I.R.A.;
houses which police or military were about to turn into posts
were burnt.
********************************************************************
Jerry Kieley, my orderly, was leaving for Tipperary. 'I
thought,' he said, 'I came to fight, not to walk my legs off
during the day, look at officers being trained in the evening,
and take turns with you at sentry work during the night.'
We were crossing country near Knockainy. The Battalion
Commandant, O'Keefe, was with us. He had sent two scouts
with whistles some distance in advance. We walked through
the small village, mounted the slight rise near the chapel,
crossed a bank, and walked abreast, separated from each
other by three or four yards, across a large sloping field,
the old racecourse. The scouts had crossed the road at the
foot of the field and had disappeared from sight. We were
within a hundred yards of the road when we saw a tender
of police; it had made no noise. The tender halted near the
low stone wall bordering the road. The police, about twelve
of them, were seated back to back facing either side of the
road. They all turned in our direction and trained their rifles
on us. We flung ourselves down on the ground. I had a Win-
chester rifle. O'Keefe and Jerry had revolvers. I handed Jerry
my Peter; it had a wooden holster that could be fitted as an
adjustable stock and the long-range sights would make it a
light rifle. There was no cover. The long field sloped gradually
away from the road.
'Run back,' I said to the two, 'I'll cover you and open fire
when you begin to run.'
157
'I'm going to walk back,' said O'Keefe, 'but don't fire.'
The police sat watching us. I moved my body and settled
down closer to the earth, my heels angled flat, and I had a
comfortable firing position. There was more cover in the bare
field than I had thought, but the top of my body was com-
pletely exposed. The lanyard of yellow sash cord, which held
my Winchester slung to my side when on the move, was of
such length as to steady my aim when I shoved the butt in to
my shoulder. I took a sight on a sergeant who sat in the
front row. He'll give a fire order, I was thinking, and as he
shouts I'll fire. I'll get him before I'm riddled. My finger
was on the trigger, and the temptation to fire was strong.
If the police used their rifles suddenly they would get me,
and their bullets would jerk my body up before I could fire.
That again made me want to fire first, and I began to squeeze
on the trigger, but I stopped the pressure in time.
Another tender of police came up quickly and silently,
It halted close to the first. I could hear voices, then the new
arrivals brought up their rifles. I looked behind me. Jerry
and O'Keefe were about two hundred yards away; they were
running now, but it would take them a little more time to
make the bank. The silence was louder than any volley. The
black green coats held their rifles with muzzles up and their
caps tilted as they sighted. 'Blast your souls! can't you fire,
can't you fire!' I said aloud, but the rifles pointed accusing
fingers. In the distance I heard like a mechanical corn crake
the smothered rhythm of a mowing machine; over the heads
of the police, as I lifted my eyes from the sights, were small
hills in front of a soft blue mass, the Galtees,
The other two were climbing the bank. I ran back up the
slope, my breath came in great gasps, though the strain was
not from the running. I threw myself down often to get my
breath and to steady my nerves, but my legs shook when-
ever I dropped down and spread myself out to sight on the
sergeant. Nobody moved in the tenders, but the rifles pointed.
One of my puttees began to work loose and trailed a long
khaki serpent behind me. The bank was near me now ; I
walked towards it and climbed over. I lay breathless behind
it, my heart sledged hard and my mouth was dry. Jerry and
O'Keefe were watching the police.
'Spread out a little and we'll move up the hill,' I said.
'What the hell do they think they're doing?' I called to Jerry,
'There's no saying and they're not an ass's roar away,' Our
158
rush back, the immobility of the police and the terrible silence
was too unbelievable to be real. We had no earthly chance
of life, and yet, there were the two tenders below on the road,
and here were we behind a bank. 'Maybe there's a bunch of
them beyond that hedge,' I said to O'Keefe, 'keep your eyes
skinned.' There was no one behind the hedge. 'Bend low
and let's rush it,' I called. To our left there was a road run-
ning down at right angles to the police ; they could easily
outflank us if they used that road. We had to cross it, for
there was no cover on our right where the hill sloped down
to the road.
Surely they would attempt to outflank us. After ten minutes
the tenders drove off slowly, halting at intervals. We lay on
the hill and wondered. A rather shaken trio re-entered the
village, our eyes strayed more to the rear than to the front.
Later we heard that the police had come from Bruff Barracks ;
they reported they had met a decoy party at Knockainy
which had attempted to lure them out of their lorries into
an ambush, but they had not fallen into the trap.
I sent a dispatch to the Captain of Ballyneety Company;
he was to forward my bag to Oola and hold a parade that
night. I was on the road to Ballyneety the following day
when I met an old woman coming towards me. She wore a
black shawl. I said 'Good-day,' as I passed, but she did not
reply. I thought her surly ; everybody saluted on the country
roads.
After I had gone past I heard her shout, 'Hi!' I walked
back to her. 'I thought you were a Tan,' she said, 'with all
those trappings on you, but maybe you're one of the boys.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I am.'
'You'd best cut out across the fields, soldiers in tin hats and
Tans are raiding English's down the road, a few perches away,
so be careful. God keep and save you.'
I thanked her and left the road. I had intended to call at
English's on my way past.
I reached Ballyneety, less than a mile away, and sat down
under cover to await developments. I looked down onto the
plains towards Limerick City and over towards the hills on
the left. Straight ahead beyond the plains were mountains
rising higher as they receded into Mid-Tipperary, the Clare
hills in the dim distance. Here Patrick Sarsfield had once,
over two hundred and seventy years ago, surprised and fired
the siege train of the Williamites on their way to powder the
159
walls of Limerick. He had left the city at night, passed
through those distant mountains, guided by rapparees to
Donohill, then up to this hill by the old road. I waited until
the lorries passed down the hill. I could see them through
the branches of the hedge.
I inspected two companies that night. On parade I was told
that English had been arrested. The Battalion Commandant
came with me to the house I was to sleep in, a well-built
house surrounded by trees and a high stone wall. I took
some papers out of my bag, which had arrived, and then
left it outside for safety. Two sentries were on guard--the
sons of the house, armed with shotguns. I had a new holster,
of which I was very proud, made to my design by the local
cobbler, with straps to go around my leg. The holster remained
firm when I practised a draw. I stripped the Peter the Painter,
cleaned and oiled it, then cleaned my Smith and Wesson.
I hung the two guns attached to my Sam Browne belt on a
clothes hook. This was unusual ; I always carried my guns
with me in the daytime; in bed one was tied to my wrist
with a lanyard. I wrote a training memorandum, and replied
at the same time to the Commandant's many questions on
tactics. He sprawled even when he stood up. He had large
powerful hands which moved not in a nervous but in a
powerful way. He twisted his mouth with eagerness and
shifted his weight when he spoke. One thought of the hands
rather than of his face. He was very strong, I had been told.
He stopped suddenly: 'What's that?' he said.
'The wind, I suppose.'
He listened again. 'No, it's not,'
'You had better go out and see,' I said, continuing to write,
He rushed back shouting : 'They're coming . . . they're
coming,' as he came near the window. I could not hear any
noise. 'Go back again, and bring a clear report, the sentries
have not opened fire.' He went towards the gate, moving in
the shadows. We had been accustomed to reports of excited
scouts and men, who often rushed in to shout, 'They're
coming.' Often that was the end of the incident. I wrote on.
I'd hear a shot anyhow and then there'll be shooting, I said
to myself. A form rushed past my window and shouted
breathlessly, 'Military on the avenue . . . coming,' and dis-
appeared. It was the Commandant.
I packed my books and papers into my haversack, put out
the lamp, reached for and grabbed my Sam Browne belt in
the darkness. I slung my haversack over my shoulder. I
opened the door. I was in the kitchen. I found myself at
the foot of the stairway. That's the wrong way, I thought,
as I moved around feeling with my hands. I blundered
against a door, it had a latch, the back door. I opened the
door and rushed out. Fire was opened at me from all around
the yard, revolver fire, I judged from the flashes and noise.
I ran for the first two flashes ; in my excitement I whirled
my belt and flung it. I had lost my guns. Voices cursed and
shouted, 'Halt!' Where was the gate? The firing continued.
I saw a light spot against the sky, the gate. I clambered over
it and felt a stinging pain in my right thigh. I was hit. I
jumped down and ran, no great pain, the bone had not been
touched. I was in a muddy field, the clay hung to my boots
and I fell heavily. The firing was indiscriminate, rifles and
revolvers, then it became controlled. I heard volleys and
whirring noises came down the field. I was as often on the
ground as on my feet.
As I came near the corner of the field, I saw a form rise
out of the ditch. I flung myself at it and a voice said as I
gripped his throat : 'I surrender!' It was the Battalion
Adjutant who thought I was one of the British. I laughed
with relief. We crossed the hedge and ran for some distance.
I threw myself down; I felt sick, and if I ran I would only
become panicky. The Adjutant lay down beside me. We
spoke in whispers.
'I've lost my guns,' I said, 'isn't it terrible?'
'I have a gun,' he said, handing me a revolver, 'but the spring
is broken ; it won't work.'
'Oh, damn' ; then I thanked him, 'I think I'll try to get
back to the yard, perhaps they have not found my guns.'
'You're mad,' he said, 'they have the house surrounded.'
I was still thinking of the guns, the disgrace of losing them
without firing a shot. A pain in my leg reminded me that
I was wounded. In the darkness I cut a hole in my trousers.
It had stuck to the skin and my trousers and hands were
wet. I took lint and a bandage from my pocket and bound
the wound up. The Adjutant helped me to tie a knot. 'We
must get away as soon as possible across the main Limerick
road : I know the country well,' he said.
At Pallas there was a garrison of soldiers and police, and
a barracks at Oola five miles away. We could cross the road
161
between the two posts. There were bloodhounds at Pallas ;
they had used them before, they would certainly use them
now. We reached and crossed the main road. A few fields
farther on there were horses. 'We'd better mount one to
break the trail for the bloodhounds,' I said. As we rounded
the horses into a corner to catch them I thought of how to
throw bloodhounds off the scent; running water, pepper.
I tried to remember how Pedro, the bloodhound in the
Sexton Blake detective stories, published in The Union Jack,
which we had read at school, had been defeated by the master
criminal, Plummer. I could not remember. We held two
horses by the noses. 'This is a good one,' said the Adjutant,
'he'll jump, I'm sure.' He mounted, I got up behind and
put my hand on his shoulders. We crashed the horse through
a hedge, jumped a small drain, over a gate into another field,
then another hedge. We got down off the horse, walked a
little, then lay down behind a hedge and waited for dawn.
I was cold and stiff. The dew was deep on the long grass of
the meadows.
We saw the few stars go out and the light drop slowly on
to the country, a cold light that took the colour out of the
land. As we crossed close to the ruin of an old castle, the
Adjutant, who had been telling stories of the neighbourhood,
said: 'Do you see that old castle? well . . .' and he told me
the story. In the land war when evictions were carried out
with crowbars, battering-rams, and a parade strength of
soldiers, an old man lived in the broken-down castle ; he
refused to pay his rent and threatened to hold his shelter at
any cost with his friends. On the morning of the eviction the
Coldstream Guards were told off to take the castle. Guards
regiments were seldom sent out of England. The neat guards-
men in waves charged up with fixed bayonets, but the castle
was empty. 'There was a song about it,' said the Adjutant;
he sang some verses. As we laughed, I wondered if that charge
of the Coldstreams was in the regimental memory.
In Tipperary I had my wound dressed, my friends there
laughed when they heard I had lost my guns ; in mock panto-
mime they rehearsed the dash for my belt. English, I was
told, had my dispatch, instructing him to forward my bag to
Ballyfirran House, near Oola, in his pocket when he had been
arrested in his own house; he had kept it in his pocket for
a day instead of destroying it at once. The Tans and military
from Pallas knew that I would probably sleep at the house
162
that night. After I had escaped, the raiders searched the
house thoroughly for my bag. They threatened to shoot the
owner of the house and one of the sons unless they told
where the bag was hidden, but they refused to give any
information. After man-handling the two of them the raiders
went away.
********************************************************************
In South Tipperary, men had been injured when using
revolvers, some had lost fingers and portions of the hand.
In other areas similar accidents had occurred. On investiga-
tion we found that the British had prepared revolver and
rifle cartridges loaded with a powerful charge which blew
the weapon to pieces when the cap was exploded.
Hand grenades picked up or bought from British soldiers
had been converted into instantaneous instead of time
grenades. When the pin was withdrawn the grenade exploded
in his hand. The markings on the special ammunition was
noted. Our G.H.Q. sent out warning to all brigades. We
examined all ammunition carefully now. Some revolver
ammunition which we captured from police had the cup-
shaped base reversed. The suction of the air in the hollow
base would inflict a lacerating wound. The issue of this type
of revolver ammunition was not general, but it had been
specially manufactured, yet grenade splinters were worse and
carried in dirt; our refilled buckshot was as bad, and what
of a jagged lump of a shell, the gunner's pride, which
ambushed you from a distance? A trench mine, trench
mortar bomb, percussion grenade, or a tank on one's stomach
were equally unpleasant. Why there should be rules about
killing as if it was a polite parlour game was hard to say;
the rules possibly made the game more noble and chivalrous.
The British objected to our shotguns and repeating rifles, but
accepted the gashes of our grenades.
********************************************************************
I was making my way across country in the Limerick
Junction direction. I wanted to see Sean Tracey to discuss
attacks with him. As I came to a hedge I saw a glossy
cap beyond a distant bank : a police cap. I used my prismatic
glasses which were slung around my neck. Police and soldiers
were in the fields in front of me and to my left. They were
moving slowly as if searching. I worked across to my right
under cover and lay down behind a small rise of ground in
the corner of a field. I heard someone give an order in the
163
distance. I used my glasses, slowly sweeping the ground I
intended to cross.
Suddenly I saw an officer cross a bank about a hundred
yards away. He had a tin hat and his field-glasses were in
his right hand. He walked slowly in the short after-grass
swinging his glasses, then turned and came towards my
corner. He had not seen me, I knew. I lay closer to the
grass. I gripped my Smith and Wesson and steadied my
right wrist by gripping it with my left. He came closer. His
tin hat was angled, the flap of his holster was closed. He
had a captain's stars on his shoulders. He kicked the grass
as he walked, probably thinking of something that had no
relation to this field. He was over six feet in height.
I raised myself a little when he was about ten yards away
and pointed my gun at the war ribbons on his left breast.
He halted suddenly as he saw me, the hand that was swing-
ing the glasses came to his right side. He looked startled,
but he made no attempt to open his holster or to put up
his hands. We looked at each other, there was a be-damned-
to-you-and-shoot expression on his face.
I lowered my gun till it pointed to the ground and waved
the back of my left hand in the opposite direction to the
one by which he had approached me. He stood there. Then,
as if he knew I would not fire, he turned quickly and walked
in the direction I had indicated. Before he was halfway
towards the bank I was in the next field. He did not look
back.
Later in the day I heard that a lorry had been ambushed
that morning on the road to the Junction, a second lorry
had come up and police had rushed across the fields from
Oola Barracks. Sean Tracey retreated with his men. Two
soldiers had been killed and some wounded. Brigadier-General
Lucas had been in the first lorry. He had escaped from our
men at Loch Gur in East Limerick and had crossed country
to Pallas, where he had been given an escort to bring him
to Tipperary Barracks.
**********************************************************************
When a carefully planned operation failed through enemy
preparedness or our own indecision, I was at heart relieved.
Often I was afraid of failure, but when fighting began I did
not worry about the result. I tried to test myself as if I was
not sure. I knew fear, and nameless terror would dog me,
164
hovering and threatening ; cold spinal fear that went down
to trembling hands.
It was easy to be a coward ; nobody would ever know
except in action. There were classes to be held ; staff and
council meetings to attend, parades to inspect; enemy might
hold the approaches or one could persuade oneself that the
area was hopeless and that duty could sleep. Then a new
surcease of strength would come from the mountains and
hills, not obstacles but friends. It reached out from the land,
our safest and best ally ; courage came through the people
who suffered and who were with us in our weakness, loneli-
ness, and strength. Was it not from them we had our
moments of strength?
Silent struggles were fought in darkness and in plain day
in the battle-field of the mind. There was the communion
of the recent dead and the long living memory of Ireland's
dead to warn and advise. What would they do in such a
case ; would they have faltered? Then I would feel a change ;
head up, chin forward, and a rage at my own cowardice,
I went forward. Sometimes an old woman as I left a house
would say : 'Good-bye, God save you and guard you a mhic,
and may you have the strength to fight well,' and press a
strong firm kiss on my mouth. For the moment I was her
son whom she loved and was proud of. I could see the peace-
ful, quiet strength of her worn, serene face when I was on
the road. It was as if Ireland herself, An Shan Van Vocht,
the Poor Old Woman, had saluted one who was fighting for
her.
There was a strange passionate love of the land amongst
the people. Material possessions were low or gone, the arts
were a broken tradition, the ideal of beauty had gone into
the soil and the physical body. Their eyes had long dwelt
on the form, colour, and structure of the landscape. It had
become personal ; its praise had been sung by joyous or
despairing poets, and had been felt by the people. An old
soil well loved had given much to them, and they had put
much into it. They clung to this last treasure and solace
with imagination and with physical senses.
**********************************************************************
Near Kilteely I heard that Rearcross in North Tipperary
was to be attacked. It was late at night when I arrived, but
arrangements were not complete, and the attack had to be
postponed. Trenches had been dug and roads barricaded ;
165
next day was Sunday. The people helped to remove the stone
outworks ; they filled in trenches so that the peelers would
not suspect an attack. The North Tipperary Brigadier had
countermanded the attack for no reason that I could see ;
a barracks had never been attempted in his command. I
undertook reponsibility for the action. Men had come from
South Tipperary and a few from Mid. We had no explosives.
The country near 'Rea' was without trees ; it was a lichened
skull that dogs had once picked clean. The mountains were
clouded all day and rain poured down ; it was a dreary
country. In the dark we blundered down from our meeting-
place, a grey stone dolmen on a hilltop; the night was stormy
and dark. We held to knotted ropes for guidance, but the
noiseless advance became a series of rattles from buckets
and sprawling stumbles from men weighted with ladders and
petrol tins. A few of us went on ahead to get into the house
next the barracks.
Out on the Newport road Sean Tracey, Dan Breen, and a
few South Tipperary men held a position, waiting for the
soldiers from Newport. On the heights our scouts had sods
of turf steeped in paraffin; the number and arrangement of
flames would tell us of enemy strength, formation, and direc-
tion. They had signalling flags to use when dawn came.
We attacked from the roof. The pump gave up. Wind blew
the flames onto those of us on top, but we stifled them with
a supply of wet sacks. Lieutenant Jim Gorman was wounded
by police rifle fire through the roof. A sortie of police were
driven back, a cadet officer was killed. Sean Tracey and I
flung bottles filled with petrol against the remains of the
roof ; the necks and bodies had been filed so as to break
easily. I had placed some men behind a broken stone wall
to cover the door and loopholes whilst we hurtled in the
open; but, unknown to me, the men had gone away.
I was lifted up and came down with a crash; I had been
hit by grenade splinters. I was dazed and shaken; my shoul-
der was numb with pain. I lay down with Jim Gorman.
Later, a scout rushed by : 'The soldiers . . . they're coming,
. . . they're coming.' 'He won't stop till he reaches Nenagh,'
said Gorman. I waited for Sean Tracey's report. He was very
angry when he came up. The soldiers were not coming and
our men without orders had gone up the hill. The police
who had been driven to a bomb-proof shelter could easily
have surrounded what was left of us.
166
A number of police had been killed; there had been thirty-
five of them before the attack, a North Tipperary man told
me. I had been told there were fifteen of them. 'We didn't
want to give the men their number,' he said, 'for fear they
wouldn't attack.'
In Tipperary, P. J. Maloney, a member of the Dail for
South Tipperary, told me that Taylor, a Dublin surgeon, was
operating at the barracks. He knew Taylor ; he asked him
to look at my wound. Mud had splashed in with the splinters,
I could not move my right shoulder. Taylor did not ask
any questions, but he could see my muddied uniform trousers.
He gave me an injection of anti-tetanus serum, and offered
to take me with him to Dublin in his car, but I refused ; doctors
were expected to report all gunshot cases to the police. If I
was stopped and questioned too closely, I might endanger
him.
Surgeon Taylor had arranged to operate on me in a private
nursing home in Pembroke Street. 'You will have to be
X-rayed first,' he said.
I called at the nursing home and asked to see the matron.
A stout, efficient lady in stiff white appeared. 'We have heard
of you from Mr. Taylor,' she said. 'What is your name?'
'O Malley.'
'Your rank?'
Unconsciously I said 'Captain.'
'Is it an old wound?'
'No, not very old.'
She brought me upstairs. to my room which looked out on
the street. Next day she visited me as I lay in bed. Evidently
she mistook me for a British officer. She talked, the conversa-
tion veered towards my wound. My replies were guarded.
She smiled. 'I suppose you do not wish to talk about it.
Such terrible things are happening now. I suppose you are
on special work.' I smiled with an air of mystery, then she
went away. She thought I was attached to their Intelligence
Force. Nurses sat on the end of my bed; they talked of the
unsettled conditions and of the 'Shinners'; they asked me if
I knew officer friends of theirs. I was a nice boy, one said
when I got better I was not to forget my friends in Pembroke
Street.
Two days later I walked down to the small operating
theatre. 'I must not talk,' I said to myself ; 'I must not talk.'
167
I undressed and lay on the table. I was covered with a warm
white cloth.
Surgeon Taylor in a white coat, rubber gloves, and a mask
stood by the table. He smiled at me. 'How is our patient?'
he asked.
'All right, thank you, sir,' I replied.
The room smelt of iodoform. The anaesthetist placed a
clip on my nose, a mask over my face. 'Breathe deeply,' he
said. I took long breaths ; there was a sweetish smell of
chloroform. Soon the breaths came without effort, they
seemed to become deeper and deeper. I could hear a noise
as if I were moaning. The assistant said, 'He's going.' He
raised my eyelid. The words were drawn out, droning away
into the distance. I tried to say, 'No, I am not.' I tried to
struggle to make them realize that I still heard. 'Go-ooing
o-off.' The words were drawn out. Would he ever finish
them? My head expanded, it reached out and out. The
words seemed to enter it, to buzz and sound. He was still
drawling out 'oooff.' flashes before my eyes--oooff nooow.
Would he ever finish? Deep, deep breaths with a moaning
sound. A flash and a point of red light. My head had burst.
I awoke when nurses were carrying me upstairs in a sheet.
I could hear myself singing in a low voice and I tried to
stop my words, but they got away from me. I sang louder,
the words ran into each other. 'Stop, you fool,' I said, but
the words continued :
"Soldiers are we whose lives are pledged to Ireland
Some have come from a land beyond the wave,
Sworn to be free. . . ."
In the evening I asked my pretty fair-haired nurse if I had
cursed or used bad language in the operating theatre. 'No,'
she said, 'you were quite nice ; you did not speak or even
struggle.'
'Some people do,' I said, thankful that I had not men-
tioned names or talked about the fighting.
'Yes.' she said, smiling, 'we hear strange things at times ;
you'd be surprised.'
I remained in bed for two weeks ; nurses read the daily
papers to me--shootings, arrests, attacks. They told me what
they thought of the 'cowardly Shinners,' 'shooting in the back
from behind hedges.' 'Anything is good enough for them, the
168
well-paid murderers.' Some of my friends came to visit me;
we laughed when the door was closed: 'It's dreadful,' they'd
say in a loud voice, 'dreadful. I wonder when the Govern-
ment is going to put an end to the murder gang.'
My visitors were an added danger as I had told only one
of them myself about the operation, others had evidently
been told by someone on our own G.H.Q. Staff. A slip in
words would have made my position clear to this now friendly
nursing home, which would most certainly inform the enemy.
Fourteen
AUGUST--OCTOBER 1920
JERRY KIELEY and I were on our way to the hills beyond the
Blackwater. I was trying to get to a council of the North
Cork Brigade in time. We had walked for a long time across
low hills where branches of purple dogwood and crimson
fuchsia hedges stood out against pale corn stubble and yellow
hazel leaves. We crunched mauve heather and smelt the
fragrance of yellow furze and bog myrtle ; higher up were
feathery green rowans behind their coral red berries. It was
a clear still day.
Jerry had fine features ; his face was brown under thick
black hair which he carefully combed. He held his head to
one side; there was something bird-like in the look of his
light brown eyes. He spoke rapidly. He had a way with him
that the girls as well as the boys liked; he was good company
around a fireside, and could make up for my preoccupation
with maps and pen. I could often hear his songs in the night-
time :
"For I don't know it may be so,
But a bachelor is easy and he's free.
For I've lots to look after
And I'm living all alone
And there's no one looking after me."
We halted near a bank. I had heard a starling mimic a
disgruntled sparrow and then the clear whistle call of a
169
blackbird. As we watched him feed on purple elderberries
there was an orange blue-green flash and a petulant screech
as a kingfisher slopped into yellow flags amongst the reeds
at the bottom of the slope. Jerry gripped my arm: 'Look! ...
soldiers!' I saw two bits of khaki figures throw themselves
down on the upper slope ; bullets whizzed as we crossed
through the thorn bushes on the bank. We spread out; rifle
shots came from different directions. I saw tin-hatted soldiers
rush towards a hedge. I used my Parabellum ; I heard the
loud, dull sound of Jerry's Winchester. He had moved farther
up the slope.
Through my glasses I saw glimpses of khaki above him on
higher ground; behind us was a rise of ground. I ran towards
him : 'They're outflanking us on the right, Jerry. Get back
to the rise and cover me,' I shouted. He ran back quickly
with bent back. I lay on the bank and fired rapidly towards
where I had seen the outflanking soldiers. I reached the rise
where Jerry was. Heel to heel we angled our bodies and
swivelled on the low after-grass of the slope. There was a
strong sweet smell from the clover.
We heard orders shouted from behind the bank which we
had left. A rush of men came over with bayonets shining on
their rifles. From above us came the quick, mingled beat of
rapid fire. There was something deadly about the rush, though
none of them fired. I emptied two magazines. Jerry pulled
back and forward at the piston magazine of the Winchester
as the tin hats clumped together, yelling. Five of them
dropped, the others wavered, then ran for the hedge. 'That's
fine, Captain,' said Jerry, as another fell, shouting 'Help!'
Jerry gave me my rank on important occasions. We were
kneeling; I felt a great warmth in my body and a rich joy
as I filled my magazines. I rammed one in with a click.
Jerry's face was a glowing brown. There was a soft light
under the skin as if it would flower, his black shiny hair
was tossed. The Winchester made the hell of a noise and the
Parabellum sounded like a baby machine-gun. Soldiers with-
out rifles came through the blackthorns ; they carried back
five men, but the figure nearest us was spread out on his face.
We heard the wounded cry in pain.
'My ammunition is low, Jerry. Be careful.' Soldiers came
down the upper slope, but they ran back again. 'Let's charge
up whilst we have any stuff left,' I said. We rushed up,
shouting; bullets pelted by us, then the firing stopped.
170
We halted for a breath beyond a low bank; a few yards
away was a soldier. He was lying on his side and his hands
were full of grass. 'He's dead,' said Jerry. One bullet had
torn open his rifle magazine and had blown three fingers off
his right hand. He took up the rifle. 'Leave it,' I said, 'it's
only a single-shot now; we'll find another.' We dashed down
the far slope under fire.
We lay down behind a row of smooth beech boles. 'You're
wounded,' Jerry said. 'Does it hurt?' Blood was dripping
down my coat. I had been nicked under the eye by a bullet.
Arms linked and content we walked across corn stubble.
Jerry looked back : 'I wish now I had taken that rifle,' he
said regretfully. There were two bullet holes in his haversack.
Liam Lynch had a high domed forehead. When he smiled
I could see a row of large teeth; his face tightened quickly
on his smile. He was quiet, but forceful and commanding.
He tapped the table impatiently with his pencil at side issues
and quickly worked through a long agenda. His eyes had
large pupils which grew blacker and larger when he stam-
mered in anger. He had a clear, well organized mind. He
made frequent notes in a loose-leaf notebook as we talked.
That night Liam told me about the capture of General
Lucas. He had been with two officers on a fishing trip when
Liam and his officers came upon them. Liam did not like to
tie their arms. Lucas, and Danford, a staff officer, were in the
back of one car guarded by Paddy Clancy, who stood up to
face them. The officers spoke to each other quickly in Arabic,
when Danford made a dive for Clancy's gun and Lucas
jumped on Liam who was in the front of the car. Clancy was
suffering from the effects of a hunger strike in gaol, but he
fought off Danford. Lucas twisted round Liam's Parabellum
till its muzzle was against his chest, but the safety-catch was
on. Liam slipped it off, twisted the gun and made Lucas put
up his hands, then Liam fired at Danford who was over-
powering Clancy. The other officer, Tyrrell, was left behind
with the wounded Danford and a car.
'It was a near thing,' Liam said. 'Lucas nearly crushed my
hand as we twisted the gun every which way.' The prisoner
had seen a good deal of the country as he moved through
North Cork to West Limerick, Clare, and back to East
Limerick. 'He must have learned a lot more about us than
he should,' I said.
The column or Active Service Unit--'A.S.U.'--was developing
171
in the South. East Limerick had organized the first
column, but it had kept away from me. I had a bad reputa-
tion for working men too hard. The North Cork column of
twenty-four men was drawn from battalion staffs; Liam had
some brigade officers with him as well. I trained the column
in field work for over three weeks, as we moved round; at
night the men attended lectures that I gave to officers of the
local battalion.
There was great rivalry between the squads. Nightly they
held councils to discuss the day's training and the ground
problems for the next day. In the morning squad comman-
ders came to a column council where they made suggestions
and interpreted the complaints and difficulties of their men;
an action council to discuss operations was attended by the
local battalion staff. In two weeks' time I felt that we could
carry out attacks. Liam was worried; if we were surrounded
and beaten or surprised at night, the officers would be a great
loss. Often an area depended on the personality of its com-
mandant.
Paddy McCarthy, our Quartermaster, was stocky ; he had
a rosy, eager face. His cap was at an angle on his thick hair.
He was very good-humoured; that was unusual for a Q.M.
who had too many worries through excessive demands on his
small resources. He sang at unexpected times. He had a huge
sack from which he could draw pencils, sticks of gelignite,
a bull's eye card, a text book or cigarettes. He drew out the
articles with a surprised flourish. A shortage of tobacco was
hard on all of us except Liam. None of the men drank ;
drinking was discouraged by senior officers. They usually set
the example. We had to keep our wits clear and to avoid
random talk.
********************************************************************
Liam Lynch and I went off on foot to inspect the road
from Mallow to Cork. Convoys passed along there frequently
through a pass in the hills ; armoured cars escorted lorries
and two or three lorries often went together. We found two
good positions. We looked at them from either side and
from either end, and decided where we would place scouts,
signallers and men. Whilst I was giving a lecture in a barn
to officers that night, Liam was called outside.
After the lecture he said : 'The Mallow Commandant
brought out a young lad named Bolster, but I thought I'd
172
wait until you were finished. He's working in the military
barracks, and says he thinks it can be taken.'
The boy was seated in the kitchen of the house where we
two slept. Liam brought him into another room and closed
the door; we sat down at a table. The boy was tall, serious
looking, a little nervous at first, but by degrees the nervous-
ness wore off. He had a strong Cork accent and was eager
to speak. He spoke evenly; we both eyed him closely as he
talked.
'Are you a Volunteer?' Liam asked.
'No, sir ; but I want to help in any way I can.'
'What do you know about the barracks?'
'I am a painter and I work there with another chap who
will do anything you want him to. The arms are nearly all
in the guardroom at certain times.'
'How many men in the guardroom?'
'Four or five.'
'How many sentries are there?'
'One inside the main gate during the daytime.'
'How many officers?'
'One and a sergeant-major. The regiment is the Lancers--
the Seventeenth ; they call themselves "The Death or
Glories," and there are about forty or fifty men.'
'Can you draw a rough plan?'
On a piece of paper he outlined the buildings, sheds, the
guardroom and the sentry. 'In the morning-time horses are
taken out for exercise, and about eight or nine men and the
officer go with them.'
Liam asked him to come out next evening; in the mean-
time he was to examine the guardroom without attracting
attention.
'Well, what do you think of it?' said Liam.
'It looks simple enough,' I replied. 'We could take the
barracks in the morning-time.'
'Do you think Bolster can be trusted; perhaps it's a trap?'
'He gave his information steadily. Two machine guns and
thirty rifles are worth a risk. We often have men killed trying
to capture a rifle.'
Next day we went into Mallow, walked around the military
barracks and the side streets and had a look at the police bar-
acks. The difficulty would be to bring in the column in the
morning. They would be noticed, and the people of Mallow--
173
long a garrison town--were not very friendly. The Town Hall
stood high above the houses near it.
'We could bring the men in at night and stay in the Town
Hall till morning,' I said.
'Yes, we could,' said Liam.
We looked at the back walls leading up to the Town Hall,
then we walked back to Burnfort. We decided to act at once;
the garrisons might be strengthened at any moment or addi-
tional sentries might be posted. The plan was formed and
re-formed. Our Quartermaster, McCarthy, would next morn-
ing go to the barracks as an overseer to superintend the work
of the two painters. Each would carry a revolver. When the
troopers left to exercise the horses, I would knock at the
barrack gate and say I had a letter for the officer. When I had
disarmed the sentry, the other three, who were to be working
near the guardroom, would hold up the guard and wait for
the rest of the column. Motor cars and drivers were to be
ready outside the town waiting to move in when signalled
to by our scouts.
In the evening Bolster came out.
Liam asked : 'Can another man go in with you to the
barracks?'
'Yes, he can come in with me in the morning; the lancers
won't notice anything.'
'Can you use a gun?'
'No, nor can my pal; we've never handled guns before.'
He was shown how to load and unload, how to grip, then
our plan was explained to him. We watched McCarthy and
Bolster disappear into the darkness with three revolvers; we
hoped they would not be held up before they reached the
town.
The column was drawn up. They smiled joyfully when
they were told that we were going to seize the barracks. At
two in the morning, behind our scouts, we moved into the
town. The advance guard was told to make prisoners of any
they met and blindfold them. There were no lights in the
houses, no people on the streets. The men moved quietly
and that was a comfort, each was part of the adventure.
Our approach up to higher ground brought us through back
yards, barbed wire and across high walls. We used ladders
on the high walls. When I looked down on the houses I saw
a toy town blurred and misty with half light and warm
through changing shadow colour. The nerve straining to joy
174
sense of danger increased until we were safe in the large
Town Hall.
We had not disturbed the inhabitants or their dogs. Scat-
tered throughout the rooms we lay on the floors and waited.
For the first hour we were ready in position for a surprise
attack. We might have been seen by someone who would
report to the peelers or to the military. We're like the Greeks
in the wooden horse, here in the belly of the town, I thought,
and laughed. Dave Shinnick, the column adjutant, was with
me in one of the front rooms as we peered out into the night
through a window; he asked me why I laughed and I whis-
pered to him the end of the siege of Troy. Later I heard
him whisper it to the men in an inner room, and when I
passed through, a boy slapped the wall, and said. 'Now, girl,
whoa, girl, steady there,' and made a wind purr with his
mouth as if he were rubbing down a horse.
At dawn our scouts reported. Nothing unusual in the
military or police barracks; our entry had not been noticed.
Liam and I moved cautiously through the room of the Town
Hall, a massive old building, and noted how it could be
defended in case we were attacked.
Then we waited, impatiently. At nine o'clock the horses
were usually exercised. At ten o'clock a scout came to say
that the horses and riders had left the barracks. Riflemen
were placed in position to cover the police barracks and the
approaches to it, and to hold up passing lorries ; but we
had few men for the work. Liam and I had already detailed
off men and had questioned them until we felt that they
knew what they had to do. The work had to be done quickly
and there could be no bungling, but we had to make allow-
ances for excitement.
I pulled my trousers out over my long boots, placed a
Parabellum automatic in the breast pocket of my coat and
borrowed an overcoat, which I put on. Liam shook hands
with me as I left by the back door. 'I hope nothing goes
wrong with the timing,' he said, 'or you will find yourself
holding up the barracks alone.'
I walked up to the gate of the barracks. Paddy O'Brien
from the column was some distance behind. I knocked.
A face with a tin hat on its head peered out through the
iron grating. 'What do you want?' said a voice.
'I've a letter for the officer commanding.' He unbolted the
door. I passed through. He closed it. He stood in a half
175
on-guard position, the bayonet of his rifle pointed at me. About
fifteen yards away was a group of lancers, others stood
around the barracks yard. I held the letter in my left hand;
as he stretched out for it, I bent down and put on the safety
catch of his rifle so that he could not fire. I snatched the
rifle from his hands, slipped off the safety-catch and shouted
'Put up your hands!' He put them up quickly. I backed and
opened the door ; our men rushed in. The guardroom had
been held up as soon as I had disarmed the sentry.
Motor cars drove in. Rapidly, rifles, revolvers, lances,
swords, ammunition and equipment were carried out to them.
I heard a shot and saw a lancer fall as I rushed with two
men for the officers' quarters, but I had no time to investigate.
Upstairs we went, to find the officers' room locked. With a
smash three of us broke in the door. Inside was a soldier--
the officer's orderly. We searched for papers, but did not
find many. Later we discovered a large tin box full which
was too heavy for us to carry. I sent down for two more men.
On the officer's desk was an unfinished letter : . . .'Mallow
is a very quiet town ; nothing ever happens here . . .'
I saw motor cars move off, long lances stuck out and
pennons waved. A wounded sergeant-major lay on the
ground ; some of his men were trying to stop the blood
whilst I bandaged his stomach wound. I heard Liam order
all men to leave the barracks.
'But it hasn't been properly searched yet,' I said, 'and it
hasn't been burned.'
'We have no time,' he said hurriedly.
I tried to stop the flow of blood whilst the comrades
of the dying man stood around. I heard a shout from the gate.
Jerry Kieley, a rifle slung on his back, ran towards me.
'I came back,' he said, 'when I heard you were alone ;
why didn't some of them stay?'
'Let's move those bales into the building,' I said. There
were compressed hay bundles in the yard. We tugged them
towards the main building, loosened them inside and set fire
to the hay, then we dashed through the gate and down the
town. We caught up with some of the rear guard, seated on
an ass and cart; their rifles covered the road behind them.
One was playing a melodeon. The thin swirl of smoke from
the barracks did not increase.
Above Burnfort we halted. Thirty rifles, two Hotchkiss
guns, small-arms, and over four thousand rounds of ammuni-
176
tion had been captured, and had been brought by the motor
cars to a safe place in the opposite direction. Sentries were
thrown out while some of the men slept. Twelve miles away
was Fermoy with a strong enemy garrison of about fifteen
hundred men. Buttevant with its hutments and camps was
eight miles away, and was a Battalion Headquarters. We
could expect a concentration of troops in and around Mallow.
The Mallow Commandant sent off dispatch-riders to mobilize
some of the armed men in the battalion. After some time
they came, poorly armed, mostly with shotguns, and re-
inforced our outposts.
'We must get away as soon as it gets dark,' said Liam,
'there will surely be a round-up, a big one, and they'll know
that we've come in this direction.'
Some of the local officers wanted to remain with me
to help the local men defend the town against reprisal parties.
'We must get away,' Liam said, 'the local men can easily
avoid the round-up. We must get twenty-five or thirty miles
away before morning.'
The Mallow Commandant received instructions. He said
he would do his best to defend the town. 'The Colonel from
Buttevant has Promised the parish priest and the minister
that there won't be reprisals,' he added.
'We cannot rely on such a Promise,' I said.
Bolster and his friend Willis were now members of the
column. We started off in ponies and traps, strung out at
intervals. We lifted the cars across trenches and through gaps
where the roads were blocked with heavy, fallen trees. We
hauled and pushed them across streams where the bridges
had been smashed, we removed heaps of stones or networks
of boulders strewn over a long stretch of road. We bumped
over filled in trenches and lurched into deep potholes. This
battalionhad done its work well. Enemy would find it diffi-
cult to penetrate. The rear guard had to put back the
obstacles.
We halted from time to time on rising ground to look
towards the town ; at first we could see a faint haze, the
lights of Mallow, then it dimmed as we moved on. Nothing
had happened. Later we saw a dim glare; but as we watched
it seemed to disappear. Could it be the town? The men
would surely defend it. Some hours later we came to a high
hill and as the ponies struggled on the bad road the men
jumped out and ran up quickly. Away in the distance were
177
flickers of light, separated by intervals of darkness. The
flames leapt up as the wind increased. It was Mallow. 'I hope
to God it rains,' said the Adjutant. Another pointed to a
big glare in the centre. 'What's that?' he said. 'It must be
the creamery; that means about three hundred out of work.'
Bolster looked at the leaping stabs of flame. 'I think it's
the Town Hall.' There was silence for a time as we watched,
helpless. The sheltering belly of our horse had paid for
harbouring us.
'Damn it, it's terrible,' said Liam, 'to think of the women
and children in there and the Tans and soldiers sprawling
around drunk, setting fire to the houses.' The enemy had
revenged the capture of the barracks on the townspeople.
Our elation at success ebbed away ; we felt cowardly and
miserable; in silence we journeyed on among the hills.
Next morning we learned that an aeroplane from the
Fermoy direction had circled around Mallow Barracks, some
time after the colonel had given his promise, and had dropped
a message. It had flown towards Buttevant and had then
returned to Fermoy. Some of the people felt secure, others
nailed up galvanized zinc in front of their glass windows so
as not to expose the glass to temptation. In the night the
soldiers from Buttevant and Fermoy had come in lorries,
equipped with sprays and incendiary grenades. The local
lancers joined them; they had burnt the creamery, the second
largest in the South of the country, the Town Hall and ten
houses. A volunteer fire brigade had confined the flames,
although they had been fired upon repeatedly. The police
from the barracks and the few Tans there had given shelter
to some women and children who had fled from their homes;
an expectant mother and a woman, who had spent the night
in a graveyard, died of exposure.
We painted our tin hats green. Some replaced their home-
made haversacks with captured khaki ones ; webbing took
the place of rain-warped leather. The men wore police badges
and those of the various regiments they had fought against,
in the lapels of their coats; the skull and crossbones of the
lancers was the most original. Once in the hills we passed
through a village after twilight. There was a hurried scamper-
ing of men and women. Doors opened cautiously and a
sound of wailing reached us ; women cried whilst shadows
in the rear of the houses meant that some of the men were
escaping in the darkness. We laughed at first. A man said,
178
'They saw our tin hats ; they think we're Tommies on a
raiding party.' Then we realized what such a raid meant for
them. Remote from a town, seldom visited, a raid here meant
terror. Houses ransacked, women and children shouted at,
men searched and interrogated, the amount of violence to be
used depending on the individual officer in charge. The depar-
ture leaving the women nervous or vociferous in indignation,
the men silent, the troops taking a few suspects with them
away into the darkness. We began an old marching song in
Irish, 'Oro/! Se/ do bheatha'bhaile.' and the column joined in
the chorus. The doors remained closed.
The column had become gayer now, work was taken more
eagerly. Coughlan, who spoke slowly and deliberately, helped
to keep all in good humour, and his droll sayings were
repeated. He had been billeted in a house which had a
reputation for being stingy. One morning the woman of the
house asked him how he would like his egg boiled. 'With a
couple of others, ma'am,' he replied. 'The column,' he said, 'is
a great cure for rheumatism; divil an old man of seventy who
is so crippled with rheumatics that can scarcely walk, but
makes for the door in fine fettle when we enter with the
rifles on our backs.' 'Coughlan's cure for rheumatism,' it was
called.
Jerry Kieley left for Tipperary. He would not be given
a rifle by the Corkmen. He felt he deserved one after Mallow,
but rifles were rifles; they belonged to the brigade in which
they were captured, and Jerry, angry with me because I
would not insist on his claim, went off in disgust. It was
hard to keep men outside their own counties; in the column
some men made excuses to get home on leave. Mountainy
men were the worst; their girls or the mountains made them
unsettled when far away.
Close to the County Kerry border we waited for convoys
but none came our way. We crossed into West Limerick to
co-operate in an attack on a barracks; we were to await the
Auxiliary Cadets who would probably send reinforcements
from Newcastle West. We were anxious to meet the Cadets.
They were a new force organized in special companies ; they
ranked from generals to second lieutenants who had seen
service during and since the World War. They wore officers'
tunics, carried revolvers and automatics on their thighs. They
were equipped with rifles, repeating shotguns and machine
guns. Their transport was of the best, the fastest tenders and
179
cars. We wondered what would be the result of a fight with
the Auxies. It was night when we arrived close to the bar-
racks. A dispatch rider met us. The Commandant had post-
poned the attack; he was afraid it would interfere with other
plans for an attack on a larger post. The officer himself did
not appear. He was not anxious for fight. We tramped back
singing improvised rhymes about the West Limerick men.
A hail of bullets one day announced to the scattered
members of the A.S.U. that I had learned to work a Hotch-
kiss gun by experimenting with it. We inspected positions
and awaited troops. Beyond Liscarroll, where there was a
cavalry post, we encamped one night; sentries were posted
and outlying scouts had instructions to ring the chapel bell in
case of enemy approach. At three in the morning the bell
went, a scout reported at our headquarters that cavalry had
advanced at a gallop down the road and had halted. We
made for our clothes. As I dressed in the darkness, I was
fumbling in my mind for the details of our defence scheme
and while I cursed the narrow legs of my riding breeches,
our course of action came clear.
Liam went across to the appointed action position whilst
I went to the section headquarters to reinforce whatever
house was first attacked. I met one group which had very
nearly fired upon me. They heard me moving up the road and
had seen my tin hat and the shape of my trench coat against
the sky. They had taken me for a British officer and were
ready to fire, but one, who had served in the war, told them
to wait as the officer was bound to be followed by some of
his men. By this time I was on top of them and they had
recognized me. I visited a house which had received the alarm
later than the others. I found two men struggling in the dark
in their room ; they had each a leg in the same trousers.
The attack was a false alarm. The horses had stampeded
from a travelling circus which was in a neighbouring village,
and the sentries, thinking they were cavalry from Liscarroll
castle, had rung the alarm.
********************************************************************
The Brigade area was wide ; it ran from Araglen to the
Kerry border. first the foothills of Tipperary ; the winding
valley of the Blackwater, rolling country, then hills, passes
near Mallow with plains beyond ; mountains near Millstreet
stretching into County Kerry, and long defiles running down
towards Macroom backed by steeper mountains. A wilder
180
country than South Tipperary, the soil less easily cultivated,
larger areas without towns, and few roads.
In North Cork we were well protected by scouts. Officers
were quicker, more excitable; they partook better of discip-
line, and personality did not outgrow organization but
enhanced it. There was more natural talent, a better type
of officer, but one more inclined to work on the crest of a
wave. As a boy on my uncle's farm I had heard the men
laugh at what they called 'the Dublin Jackeen.' They imitated
his speech and his conscious air of superiority when in the
country. Later in the Midlands, in 1918, I had met a travelling
tailor who had worked in every county. When he spoke of
Cork he spat with an air of contempt. No, he did not like
them, they were too clannish and aggressive. Now, Dublin
was remembered as giving birth to the new spirit during the
Easter Week fighting and Cork was producing fighting men.
There was a bumptiousness in the Cork temperament. They
resembled the Gascons; quick and volatile, but they seemed
too conscious of their qualities; as if they were surprised at
possessing them.
One morning we ambushed a lorry and captured the rifles
of the escort whom we outnumbered; we had been expecting
three lorries and were disappointed. We were sprayed with
machine gun fire from the Vickers guns of the garrison in
the nearby town as we retired through wooded country.
Some goats and a donkey were killed by the fire. The
Tommies had fought well; our Hotchkiss gun had jammed
as the gunners began to use it, grenades were thrown with
the pins in and they could not explode, our riflemen owing
to the close nature of the country lay down at revolver range.
Only the shotguns had worked properly and faith in them
was restored, for rifles were beginning to make some of the
men look down on the shotgun. I saw again the effect of
buckshot on a dead young soldier's face; it made a wound,
sickening to look at.
We tramped in towards Kanturk in the darkness to wait
for reprisal parties of troops which we expected would be
sent to burn up parts of the town. By midnight we were
in the streets, testing out between communication by lanes,
and looking for good positions. Quietly the men were scat-
tered in threes and fours. There was a British garrison in
the military barracks and police in their own barracks. At
about two o'clock scouts reported that soldiers had come in
181
from Buttevant. We had white stripes down the backs of
our coats and squares in our caps to recognize each other
in the darkness. Reprisal parties often wore civilian clothes.
The men were excited ; night and expectancy made us warmly
tense. We had determined to make up for our desertion of
Mallow ; our squads had orders not to retreat. I was with
a Hotchkiss gun crew in a front garden half way up a hill.
The night got colder. We waited until it was close to dawn
then, upset at our bad luck, we marched into the clearing sky
towards the border.
Commandant Sean Moylan, in whose area we were, was
the proud owner of an old cannon. Once it had, with two
brother cannon, adorned Ross castle in Killarney. Ross had
been the last castle to surrender in the Cromwellian wars. The
Kerrymen had taken all three and had moved this cannon
slowly towards the Cork border. His engineers had drilled
away the rust, polished it until it shone, although there were
little pits of a darker colour where the rust had eaten its way
into the metal. Springs from Ford cars had been used to take
the recoil of the gun in action. The gun was mounted on
small iron wheels. Next day before dawn a pony and cart
pulled the gun towards a deserted house. The gun was loaded
and tamped with powder, a cannon ball was placed into the
muzzle. Wires, running back to a battery three yards away,
were attached to the touch hole. Two boys lay down beside
me; we pointed the muzzle of the gun towards the house a
hundred yards away.
I was thinking of Pierce Ferriter whose poems I had in
my pocket. He had been hanged in Killarney with a safe-
conduct in his pocket ; perhaps he had once handled or
directed this cannon. 'I wonder when the old gun was last
fired,' said one. 'Cromwell's time or before,' I said. Liam
Lynch, Sean Moylan, and others lay down behind a bank
a long distance in rear. 'You three had better get back
farther, Liam shouted. We lengthened the wires and moved
back a few yards. I pressed the switch key ; there was a
roar and a whirr of metal over our heads ; smoke blown
by a faint breeze covered us. We could not see the gun
nor the house; where the gun had been was a broken jagged
piece of metal sticking up on end out of the earth. The others
behind us had heard pieces of metal whirl over them. The
visions of barracks crumbling before the attack of our cannon
faded away. The engineers who had spent their time in
182
making a recoil system looked in silence at the wreck. 'It
would have made a good land mine,' Sean Moylan said,
when he had ceased to curse.
A land mine was a tin or metal container of explosive
buried in the roadway and covered over ; hidden wires led
from it to an operator who sat on a slope. He had an electric
battery. When the lorry or armoured car passed a mark
which he had selected in line with the mine he pressed the
switch. We could not leave the mines in position for long;
rain would injure them.
Near Millstreet we lay near a cutting to watch a train go
by. We meant to attack a train when we should be told
there were troops on board, but we did not get word that
day. We heard like a great heart the rhythmic threshing
stab of the piston and saw the snappy white blast. A moving
train was always exciting as it shoved its way into space and
time. The shining rail arteries connected me with my other
life in Dublin, and the men perhaps with nearer memories--
the platform excitement of a country when the 'here she is'
meant the daily paper and eager glances at the people who
would again pull out of their lives. Cheered by the sight of
the train we returned to field work. That other life I had
thrown over my shoulder and it seldom intruded. I used to
have regrets about the dissecting room, the clean bare pre-
cision of muscle and the structural design of the body, the
club life of pipe smoking, stories and ballads, and the interest
of clinics.
The column moved into the hilly district, the threshold of
the mountains. The hills stretching towards West Cork were
naked as fear and the desolate stretch of them as wide as
hunger. Farther in from us was an old megalithic centre
which I had explored. Liam and I had a day off to work at
our maps and to discuss the Brigade in detail, whilst the
section and squad commanders took their men for reconnais-
sance work in the direction of the mountains. We were in a
small thatched cottage on a hillside. Small window panes cut
into oblongs, the rough edges of the putty unpainted, low
doors where one had to remember to bend ones head. In the
kitchen, which had been newly whitewashed, were low su/ga/n
chairs and stools. In the corner a curved skiv of turf, an old
spinning wheel hung on the wall above the door. From hooks
on the ceiling were slung flitches of bacon with thick outer
fat sides. A round high pot-oven was on the edge of the fire.
183
It had a lid on it covered with turf embers crusted white,
piled around the sides were more embers. The girl of the
house, a strong-bodied, rosy cheeked, handsome girl, was
baking a cake. She wore heavy boots. Robert Emmet faced
Daniel O'Connell on the walls. I had often met the combina-
tion. I wondered what they would say to each other if they
could speak.
Liam and I sat at a table facing a window; we watched the
men through our field-glasses advancing slowly in patrol
formation.
The man of the house was old, a long grey beard reached
to his chest. Age had tamed his clear blue eyes, they had
lost some of their lustre, but they still shone. He wore his
hat in the house. He had been an old Fenian, he said. 'Out
there on yon hills I've drilled with the boys in me time, fine
boys they were, God bless them. Tall and limber, they could
use a scythe the live long day, not like some of the maneens
these times.'
'But the Fenians did not do much,' I said ; 'why didn't they
fight?'
He looked at me a moment as if he was going to say some-
thing strong.
'They were willing and ready, always waiting for the word
to rise.' He looked at our automatics and rifles. 'They'd be
powerful yokes,' he said. 'I wish we had had them in our
time.' Then he walked away, praying in a whisper, 'Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph help and protect us . . . Mother of God,
Mother of God, protect us.' At dinner he first crumbled the
soft flowery potatoes. His teeth were bad, only a few re-
mained; he stopped between bites to pray: 'Sweet Heart of
Jesus, be Thou my Love.' Then he became the old Fenian
again. He talked of the fighting. 'Do ye think ye'll beat them?
How long will it last?'
'We don't know,' said Liam, 'a long time, but we'll win.'
'I'd like to see ould Ireland free before I die,' said the old
man, 'many's the time we sat here discoursing about her,
drawing down prophecies and wondering what kind of a
country it would be at all.'
All my assertive youth left me as I eyed the old man. We
had a good chance of finishing this fight now ; but the Fenians
in spite of their own lack of training, hard labour sentences
of from five to twenty-five years, wavering leaders, and
a brutal landlord system that ground courage from the people,
184
had been willing to sacrifice themselves. Perhaps we, too,
might one day attempt to tell younger men how willing the
I.R.A. had been to see this fight through. 'The Fenians were
fine men,' I said, 'and only for them we might not have had
our chance to fight like this.'
Before the old man went to bed we knelt down and said
the Rosary, the five of us, the son having returned from the
mountains where he had been all day with the column. The
additional prayers at the end were long, the stone flags were
hard on the knees. We finished with three Hail Marys for
Ireland.
There were three beds in the house. The girl slept in one,
the father and son in another, Liam and I slept together. The
door of the old man's room was open. We could hear him
saying the Litany of our Lady, his voice rising, falling,
portions of words coming to us:
"Tower of . . .
House of Gold . . .
Ark of . . . Covenant."
Then a pause.'Move up in the bed, Patsy.' No reply.
'Patsy, move up, I tell ye.' No reply.
'Patsy, take in your fat arse out of that.' Then :
"Morning Star . . .
Help of . . .
Refuge of Sinners . . .
Comforter . . . the afflicted."
Liam and I pulled the blankets into our mouths to prevent
our laughter being heard. We shook and gurgled in the bed.
******************************************************************
After some hesitation Liam Lynch agreed to divide the
column into fours. Working as a patrol they would move
through a battalion area for a week by themselves. We would
first give the battalion a week's notice so that the intelligence
system of their companies would be thoroughly organized.
By dividing the column I thought the enemy would receive
additional obstruction ; the men would develop initiative,
learn to co-operate with local units, and companies would
learn that a patrol of four, well led and energetically directed,
could inflict much damage. The intention was to disband the
A.S.U. after a further two weeks' training and send back the
officers to organize columns in every battalion. Liam was
185
more apprehensive than I was; he would have the responsi-
bility of replacing casualties.
I received a dispatch telling me to report to G.H.Q. I went
back by train and changed at Mallow Junction, where I
spent an uncomfortable quarter of an hour, for some of the
Seventeenth Lancers were on the platform. Many red-headed
people had been recently arrested in connection with the
Mallow attack.
In Cork I had read of a British raid on a Dublin house in
which a British major and a captain had been killed. Dan
Breen and Sean Tracey had fought their way through the
raiding party; three days later Sean was killed by machine-
gun bullets as his trigger finger sent his reply towards a lorry
of troops.
186
SEAN TRACEY
We often heard our fathers tell
How in the Fenian times
The noblest of Tipperary's sons
Imprisoned spent their lives.
Those tales we can hear daily
And deeds of valiant men
As the war goes on right merrily
Through valley, hill and glen.
They searched for Sean at midnight,
His comrade with him slept,
Macready's murdering bloodhounds
In silence on them crept.
Our heroes fought as brave men should
And made a gallant fight;
With bullet food they did conclude
The lives of Smith and White.
In a crowded Dublin Street he died
On a dim October day.
The story will be told with pride
While men in Erin stay.
With trusty pistol in his hand
Two sleuth hounds he laid low;
'Twas well they knew this Island through
They had no braver foe.
When the soldiers saw the battle
They shook with fear and dread;
A machine gun did rattle
And our hero bold lay dead.
Sean Tracey killed! Sean Tracey killed!
Was borne on the breeze.
No bells were rung, no caoin was sung,
He died for Ireland free.
While grass grows green in Erin
We'll think of you, dear Sean,
We'll sing your praise o'er hill and vale
When grief and gloom are gone.
And when the dawn of freedom's sun
Shines out on Erin's skies;
In Gaelic tongues we'll tell our sons
How brave Sean Tracey died.
187
Romanesque
Fifteen
OCTOBER--NOVEMBER 1920
CURFEW now lasted in Dublin from midnight till five in the
morning ; one could not be out-of-doors without a permit
during those hours. Hold-ups by armed soldiers on the streets
increased, more houses were raided at night. Curfew made me
keep respectable hours. I had always looked forward to the
long talks which lasted till morning while I sat on the floor.
Long acrimonious discussions, games of mental ping-pong in
which ideas were clarified or hammered into shape, or became
molten and fluid at our next meeting. Often enough our
oblique imps would switch us away, or one left in despair
with a sense of frustration. I was not asked since I was last
in town where I had been in the interval. Walks in the night
on rainy pavements luminous from street lamps when talk
continued at a street corner or hall door. We found it as
difficult to go to bed as to get up. Intimate beaks of banter
which picked one thoroughly, yet an aloofness that left per-
sonal life alone. Books to be read and discussed, calls on
friends at unexpected hours ; throughout the intimate warmth
of friendly Dublin life with an escape to the mountains for a
long walk if one got fed up and wanted to be alone.
It was real to sit in Saint Stephen's Green watching pat-
terned flower beds around the walloping Clydesdalish bronze
horse supporting George the Second, or the delight of ruffled
188
glint in the leafy trees. Grey-blue and steel-grey skies, patched
and streaked with slashes of dark and white clouds, moved
slowly to mix to fleeting satisfaction ; they brought a cold
wind that spiraled worn dead leaves along the path. Children
from Cuffe Street stretched on the grass, gnarled men from
the slums with bitter faces and under-sized bodies sat on
wooden seats, women gossiped, small girls in bare feet, or
with one boot and stocking, carried young brothers half their
size, mothering. Nursemaids pushed prams to and fro as they
flirted with the red-faced keeper. In the National Gallery
there were a few good pictures to be looked at, and books to
be read hard in the National Library.
Wind was dull in the city; it was more like a draught save
when a gale swept in. The night sky and the moving moon had
nothing to do with city life. I had the taste of the country
firmly in my teeth. There was a definite friendliness and ease
about Dublin, but also an air of polite helplessness. It was
more tolerant. A quiet aloofness lingered around the mellow
austerity of its eighteenth-century houses in a number of
large squares, but the mood became strident and frowsy in
the blight of the slums. Dignified wealth and open-mouthed
poverty alternated their strophe and antistrophe in the capital.
The city's breweries, distilleries, and biscuits were not much
of an economic asset ; unskilled labour predominated, and
was quickly affected by trade conditions. A walk through
by-streets to Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Coombe, by
Thomas Street to the duplicated forms in Guinness's Brewery,
brought one more in touch with the haphazard life and trade
of Dublin.
The new Cadet force could be seen, moving swiftly in open
Crossley tenders, seated on each side with rifles held across
their knees. Wearing officers' khaki tunics, Glengarry bonnets
angled, they had a dashing neat appearance. They were
conscious of their power and soldierly snap. They felt im-
pressive. People stopped to look at them.
'Why aren't they attacked?' I asked Diarmuid O Hegarty;
'it would be easy to lob an egg.'
'That will come, don't fear,' he said,
Four months ago cadets had been sent out as defence
officers to instruct the R.I.C. in the defence of barracks and
to strengthen morale. Then they had been formed into an
Auxiliary Police Division, commanded by a divisional staff.
189
Individual companies were moved from place to place
throughout Ireland and were controlled directly by the Police
Adviser through their divisional staff.
In the evening time I did Grafton Street between four and
six. Cadets and officers were in mufti or uniform; it was easy
to pick them out when they wore civies. We passed each
other or sat drinking tea at nearby tables in Mitchell's cafe
or the Grafton Street Picture House. That was stupid, I
would admit to myself, as I drank my solitary tea, for a cup
of tea was not worth fighting for; but Dublin was my city
and I would not admit the right of foreign troops to deprive
me of a habit.
Some of their hip pockets jutted out in rigid lines ; all
would be armed. I carried a Smith and Wesson forty-five and
a Parabellum underneath my coat ; the revolver seemed to
follow the contour of my iliac bone, the automatic was
strapped over my heart. I could reach it in a quick draw as
if I were fixing my tie. Daily I practised quick draws so that
there would be no fumbling when I was in trouble. Weapons
were now an undisturbing part of us ; they could not be
noticed even by one of ourselves. Before I left home my
brother's Service Webley had been sent back from Greece.
Then it had looked like a small piece of artillery. It was
heavy, awkward, my hand shook when I tried to hold it
steady ; now it seemed to be as relative and indispensable
as a fountain pen.
Terence McSwiney's hunger strike in an English prison
was coming to an end. The result was inevitable; we hoped
he would not be released when his body was almost used
up. Feeling at home seemed to have sent impulses abroad to
the European press. It seemed the most important event that
had occurred in Ireland. In Washington women picketed the
British Embassy, longshoremen walked off British boats.
Ireland went into mourning when he died on the seventy-fourth
day of his fast. He had become a symbol of part of a
new nation ; disciplined, hard, clear, unsentimental, uncom-
promising, a conscious using of vigour to build up strength.
Kevin Barry, a young medical student, was court-martialled
in Dublin. He had taken part in an attack on a military
lorry. A young English soldier had been killed. After dawn
on the morning of the hanging, crowds walked along the
streets to Mountjoy under a cold November sky. Outside
the gaol gate armoured cars moved through the kneeling
190
people who said the Rosary aloud. Tin-hatted Tommies with
fixed bayonets stood in rows on the sides of armoured lorries.
A quiet crowd, tense with emotion, hardly speaking to each
other. 'The poor boy, the poor boy,' a woman cried, 'God
help us all.' Tears came as she swayed on her knees, both
hands held up; those near her began to cry, some could not
stop, gulping noises continued for a long time. A girl kept
saying aloud : 'Mother of Perpetual Succour, help us ; Mother
of Perpetual Succour, help us.' Aeroplanes circled ; with a
metallic beat the noise crashed above the rise and fall of
Hail Marys. 'Bad luck to ye, wouldn't less than that do ye!'
shouted a man who straightened a fist at the sky. Kevin
Barry was a symbol of the enthusiasm of youth; resolute in
giving, he, for the people, was the nation, which, however
warped, futile and misdirected, had youth, life and a spirit of
sacrifice.
It had been intended to rescue him by blowing in part of
the gaol wall. Rory O Connor was to be in charge of the
demoliton party, but the British, alarmed at the gathering
crowds, had strongly reinforced the gaol garrison.
Our headquarters Staff had become more organized.
Throughout the city were their offices and duplicate offices,
and those of government departments of Dail Eireann, houses
where ministers and staff officers could be met ; others in
which they ate and slept. They carried on their work as if
they controlled the city. Dublin for over seven hundred years
had been held by the British. It was their sea-opening to the
plains and their principal base; for the past hundred years
it had been the centre of separatist Ireland. Hidden meshes
of either government stretched in tenuous nets below the
everyday life, but the enemy web was now nearer to the
surface. Dublin Castle, the great symbol of misgovernment
in the people's minds, was again a fortress which higher
officials seldom left openly. Towns built around a King
John's keep or a Tudor castle were again garrisons ; their
influence varying between their armed strength and the
people's resistance. The gap between the two was becoming
more impenetrable; it was deepened by a steady withdrawal
of the factors in which a joint life once met.
I saw Mulcahy, the Chief of Staff, to discuss the situation
in Munster, talk of operations and read reports. He would
spread out a number of half-inch maps as he talked, and
point a pencil at barracks of battalion headquarters. He said,
191
'I see,' at intervals when I answered questions about relative
strength of our men and the British.
In general, the Staff were too absorbed in routine to dissect
minor points in tactical evolution. Rory O Connor, Director
of Engineering, had not yet devised a simple container for
throwing petrol or inflammatory material under pressure from
a distance ; the blowing-up of some men who had been
experimenting with a Stokes trench mortar had deprived us
of a useful weapon against posts and barracks. We had no
armour-piercing bullets. Munitions Department had few hand
grenades, there were no rifle grenades, no explosives worth
talking about. There was no standard land mine for dealing
with armoured cars or steel-coated lorries on the roads. A
man was lucky if he had two fills for his automatic or
revolver ; no brigade had more than forty or fifty rounds for
each rifle ; there was not much shotgun stuff, and it was
useful only when it had been refilled with buckshot pellets.
It was hard to keep our weapons in repair, harder still to
keep arms and stuff dry and clean. Police and military raids
were becoming more thorough ; they tapped walls, tore up
floors, dug up back yards, measured heights and lengths of
rooms to try to ferret out hiding places.
 Headquarters staff officers were always spoken of by their
initials : C.S., Chief of Staff; A.C.S., Assistant Chief ; M.D.,
Minister of Defence ; D.O., Director of Organization ; D.I.,
Director of Intelligence ; D.T., Director of Training; A.G.,
Adjutant-General. They signed their names in different ways.
Mulcahy used a hieroglyph ; some of the others used their
ranks without names. Michael Collins in clear writing always
signed his name in full. A hand grenade was now an 'egg';
an ambush was a 'job,' a 'hit-up,' or a 'bush'; papers might
be spoken of as 'dope'; and explosives made by our Director
of Chemicals, Jim O Donovan, were 'war flour' or 'Irish
cheddar.'
O Connell, known as Ginger, was Assistant Director of
Training. Ginger was willing to discuss Foch's principles or
Henderson's essays, call down the weighty Clausewitz, or
suddenly illustrate a point from a textbook or from wide
browsing. He quoted precedents from the guerilla tactics of
the Boer War or Cuban flight. Von Lettow Vorbeck, he spoke
of with admiration; we had read of his campaign in German
East Africa, cut off for years from Germany and supplies,
against the British. He could deal with training in a mildly
192
scientific way, though he smacked of the textbook. It was
always easy to talk to him. Owing to lack of arms, however,
we could only dribble at fighting ; precedents gained in other
countries as a result of hard fighting might be stimulating to
talk about, or to be proved possible, but we could only
muck around. The other members of the staff knew little or
nothing about training and operations ; their strong points
were organization and administration. The training staff, as
far as the country was concerned, dealt with training through
short notes in the monthly issues of An t-Oglach, which were
smuggled to all brigades.
Ginger was of medium height and portly. He had a rather
heavy red moustache, was inclined to baldness, about which
he laughed but with apprehension. He had a slow reflective
manner of speech and when he talked he stroked his mous-
tache and plucked his upper lip. He made puns; in an evan-
gelistic manner he laughed at his own jokes, an expectant
chuckle, dry at the base. Energetic men were 'thrusters' and
'stout' fellows; there were others who 'saw the other side of
the hill.' He savoured the detailed circumstances of the plug-
ging of a detective or the bloody mess of a successful ambush.
His knowledge of strategy and general line of thought in
terms of our fight evidently made contribution to the C.S.
who now referred to men 'who saw the other side of the hill.'
Staff officers and Dail officials changed their offices to avoid
suspicion. There was a constant movement, an unceasing
watchfulness, but small sign of tension. Communications were
carried by special messengers as telephones could not be used.
The Post Office was used only for correspondence sent to
people who were not associated with the movement, or sus-
pect. They would then pass on the letters to our officers.
This made for extra clerical work and paper records ; or
made meetings of individuals more necessary to relieve the
load on, and the danger run by, dispatch carriers.
With Desmond Fitzgerald, Director of Publicity, I met
foreign journalists and labour men who were getting angles
from either side. It was a mild adventure for some, an ex-
citing thrill for others, to talk to men of the hidden govern-
ment, for whom castle officials, seen earlier in the day, were
hunting. Mick Collins was busy as Minister of Finance and
as D.I. His armed intelligence squad moved about looking
for enemy officials, secret service men and detectives. Collins
was often with Arthur Griffith, Vice-President of the Ministry.
193
Griffith had seen the development of the military aspect with
misgiving; since the German plot arrests of 1918 the I.R.A.
had gained more control in all organizations. Griffith had
hoped to build up a constitutional movement, Sinn Fein, and
through it slowly to absorb the power and control of the
British. Some of us thought that he was not a separatist, and
I did not like to see Collins become more friendly with him.
My doubts voiced the pseudo-military mind of the I.R.A. and
its fear of constitutional respectability.
One Saturday Collins said, 'Mind yourself tomorrow
Earnan." No other explanation. Probably there was to be
some kind of general round-up. The last time he had told
me to watch out had been on Armistice Day, 1919, when
men from the Dublin Brigade had been mobilized to wipe out
Lord French and his staff as they took the salute during the
march past. Volunteers, who had lined the streets, and their
concentration at the saluting base outside the Bank of Ireland,
had been demobilized as they were ready to hit-up the
well-drilled lines of chest medals.
That night I went to a ce/ilidhe run by a literary society,
actually by a company of the Fourth. An excited captain
from the University whispered to me in the dressing room:
'My God, it's awful, a H.Q. job, damned awful.' He cracked
the joints of his fingers with loud snaps. He laughed with a
nervous whinny as he pressed back his hair, then his hand
pressed tightly and grasped the other till the tendons were
white. At the college I had heard him talk of footling military
details amongst girls and non-volunteers with pauses and
chuckles as he covered his mouth with his hand. Once he
had been a legend, now I thought him windy. He had been
out in '16.
I did not know what all this talk of his meant. Later I
gathered tags from two others who talked as if I knew what
was to happen. Next day British secret-service officers, who
had steadily improved their system until it now over-
shadowed ours, were to be shot in Dublin. 'The other bat-
talions are on the job,' said a law student. 'All attacks are to
be timed, but I have my doubts. Won't you come with my
bunch? It will be tough. Maybe its a no-come-back job.
I went home to Sears' house in Terenure. He was a member
of the Dail and thought it too risky to sleep at home, as he
was well known. I had not many houses I could change about
194
to; I was unattached to a unit and made my own arrange-
ments. I lay awake for a long time. I found it hard to sleep,
thinking of what would happen; how many people besides
myself knew about it, who should not? I tried to read bits
about headstrong Bhima and the hero Arjuna in the Mahab-
harata but sleeping officers and Volunteers overhauling guns
jumped into the pages. Dublin would no longer be a picnic.
Next day a stop press : thirteen officers scattered through
the city and suburbs had been shot dead, three had been
wounded, others had escaped. Some had been killed in their
beds beside their wives. Dublin was jumpy, passers-by were
nervous ; they spoke less as they walked, and groups at street-
corners took on a new significance. Something would happen,
but what? The British would not take that lying down. The
city had been safe enough so far. City people had not ex-
perienced the desolate remoteness of the country during the
raids of threatening soldiers, drunken Tans and fiercely arro-
gant Auxies. Dublin had not felt the loneliness and awed
night of a country town or small city controlled by its
garrison.
Soldiers held up men walking in threes or fours. Crossley
tenders nosed up and down as if the Auxiliaries did not
know what to do next. Heavy lorries stopped outside flats and
private houses ; soldiers hurriedly helped to move the
belongings of other intelligence officers, and those who might
be open to attack, to the Castle or to an hotel which was
heavily guarded. In the aftemoon the crowd at a Gaelic
football match in Croke Park had been surrounded by
soldiers, police and Auxiliaries : twelve killed, eleven seriously
wounded, fifty slightly wounded by machine-guns and rifles.
I had heard the distant rattling.
Steel plated Lancias and armoured cars with swinging
turrets dashed through the streets ; they curved in towards
the footpaths, people scurried. The troops had blood in their
eyes. Streets were suddenly held up by soldiers and men in
plain clothes ; at the top of Dawson Street I saw two lorries
spill out Auxies who snapped on bayonets as they ran to cut
off a part of the street. They hit men with the butts of their
rifles. I was told at McGilligan's in Leeson Street where I
often slept that it would not be safe for me to stay the night.
Kathleen McGilligan was worried: 'Sean MacBride will find
you a place and, get there as soon as you can; what's that?'
--a sound of shooting. Sean MacBride was the son of Major
195
John MacBride who had been executed after Easter Week.
We voiced our fears as we walked.
It was seven o'clock. Soldiers and Auxiliaries were firing
over the heads of the moving people, shouting, 'Go home,
you bastards, go home.' Curfew should begin at twelve
o'clock. Sean MacBride brought me to the flat of an Abbey
Theatre dramatist. It was on the top floor of a four-storey
house.
'I have two guns and an egg,' I said. 'I'll fight if there's a
raid.'
'I'll take one.'
But he did not know how to work a Parabellum. Sitting
on the stairs I showed him the action, the use of safety
catch and how to clear a jam.
We were welcomed. I was introduced to Lennox Robinson,
whom I had often seen at the Abbey, and to Thomas
McGreevy. They did not object to us remaining there the
night. It was risky to be outside now. Robinson played Beet-
hoven on a pianola ; McGreevy took his turn to press on the
wide wooden pedals. The instrument coughed and wheezed
when the movement of the feet was irregular, or the music
came in pauses. Robinson pedalled furiously, his long body
bent itself as the notes jerked out.
'Should I tell him we'll fight?' I whispered.
'No, better not,' said Sean, 'there's not much chance of a
raid, anyhow.'
I got drawn into the music and I felt still inside, but
squeaking wood or a cluster of shots would enter as a motif.
He was trying to take his mind away from the brooding horror
of the day and the outside street.
Our attempts to talk had been short, meaningless sentences.
McGreevy clicked the switch. 'Its better to put it out ;
nearly all the other houses are without light.' Robinson closed
the pianola. We sat in front of the fire. McGreevy talked. He
had been a gunner officer in France. He had a sensitive face;
he must have suffered in the hell of the World War. I ate
hazel nuts out of a red bowl. The others said 'Good-night,'
and went into the next room. We, watching the twisting
yellow of the flames, sat on the floor. 'It will go hard with
any prisoners taken tonight,' I said.
There was a feeling of uncertainty as if something was
going to happen. We talked in whispers as if afraid of the
196
sound of our own voices; outside in the street the noise of
heavy cars and sharp commands. Later, as we looked out a
window, we saw an armoured car stop below close to the
curb under an arc lamp. Men with dark bonnets jumped
down; they were joined by others from a tender which pulled
in. There were few people on the street. Three men walking
on the footpath were held up. They were backed against a
shop window. They held their hands over their heads. I saw
an Auxiliary hit one of the men in the face with his fist. The
three were searched, something was brought over to the
lamp-post, the armed men crowded around whilst it was being
looked at. I heard a voice shout : 'Run for it!' The three
ran towards the corner of Clare Street, spreading out. A
tearing smash of rifle fire, the metal snap of bolts throwing
out cartridges. One man twisted and sprawled forward out
of sight. The rifles flared again.
We went away from the window thinking we might be
seen. We ate nuts. In the darkness the crash of the nut shells
boomed up and down the room. Heavy cars, armoured
evidently, from the vibration, rattled ; soft gliding noises of
tenders, revolver shots in the dull distance, close by the jerky
beat of a Vickers gun. From the next room came low voices
whenever a loud burst of shooting woke us up. The others
could not sleep. 'Do you think we have their beds?' I asked.
******************************************************************
Troops drove through the street at a more rapid rate.
Shops were raided at all hours of the day, and streets held
up; in the dark, houses were searched, often half a street at
a time. At night I could see soldiers moving quietly on rubber
soles as patrols, or in extended order, followed, perhaps, by
the cobbled bumps of a steel-plated Lancia, or I watched the
shafts from a movable searchlight turned on houses. A wreck
of a car might noise along, followed at a short distance by a
strong smooth engine without lights. That was a night trap
for those who might attempt to tackle the first one, or who
would be off their guard after it had passed. One night the
house opposite to me was raided. I saw figures outside my
gate as I laid out automatic magazines on a chair. A search-
light swept the fronts of the nearby houses and picked out a
swarm of soldiers, trailing rifles as they left the house without
prisoners. A week after 'Bloody Sunday' sixteen cadets were
killed in an ambush by the West Corkmen in the mountainy
pass of Kilmichael. They had killed some of the men who
197
went out to take their surrender, and the column men wiped out
the rest of them.
In two recent raids the British had found papers of Mul-
cahy, Chief of Staff, whom they had nearly captured. That
captured information seemed to be the most reliable insight
their Secret Service could get of the movement. Amongst the
papers were plans for a systematic destruction of docks, ware-
houses, and technical plant in England. Touts, spies and
secret-service men were thick in Dublin, but they worked too
much in the dark of faulty psychology.
I was given a message by word. The C.S. wished to see me
urgently that night in Ranelagh on the south side. I met him
with Ginger and Emmet Dalton. Ginger was now D.T. Dick
McKee, who had been Brigadier of Dublin and Director of
Training, had been murdered at the Castle with his
Vice-Commandant, Peadar Clancy, on the morning after 'Bloody
Sunday.'
Mulcahy had a thick fair moustache, although his hair was
dark. It looked out of place in reaction to the moustache, but
I suppressed my smile. He was more than usually serious. On
the table was a large-scale map of the South of Ireland.
'We intend to give you command of the Martial Law area,'
he said. 'You can move around selecting your staff as you go
through the brigades.' The Martial Law area comprised five
counties.
'I would suggest Liam Lynch, I said; 'he is a good officer;
he has his command well organized; he could use that as a
basis from which to work outwards.'
'You know Limerick, Tipperary, and part of Cork,'
Mulcahy said. 'You will soon become familiar with the
remainder of Cork and with County Kerry.'
We discussed likely staff officers for the new command.
Organizing and training an area was one thing, I thought;
taking command of a province with twelve brigades was a big
responsibility. Would I meet with hostility? How would the
other brigades take the appointment? County Cork had no
great love for G.H.Q. officers. Its brigades had developed of
themselves ; within the past three months the concentration
of British had intensified. In their new development they
might not be willing to be dictated to. I was younger than any
of the officers. They would probably like someone with the
weight of years and gravity. Of course, I could grow a
moustache, but many of them knew me.
198
Aloud I said, 'All right, sir. I will do my best.'
'Before you go to the South there is an operation the Staff
would like you to undertake. What do you think of the
Auxiliaries?'
'They are a fine body of men and a tough problem.'
'We must tackle them at once. The adjoining Cork
Brigades will co-operate in taking Macroom Castle where
there's an Auxiliary Company. I want you to capture
Inistiogue, the headquarters of the Auxiliaries in County
Kilkenny,'
'Kilkenny County has done little fighting.'
'You will have help from the Waterford men.'
'Waterford hasn't done much either and I don't know any
of the officers in Kilkenny.'
'You can summon a Brigade Staff meeting and meet them."
'Are there any flying columns in Kilkenny?'
'No, I don't think so,' said Mulcahy. 'Are you prepared
to undertake the job?'
I hesitated. Operating with men whom I did not know in
an area that I had never previously visited, and which had
not seen much fighting, did not appeal to me. Besides, I had
been directly ordered to capture a post which our best
command would not undertake.
'This is your last independent operation. When it is over,
you will command the Martial Law area.'
'Yes, sir,' I said.'I'll take Inistiogue.'
It was easy to say, 'I'll take Inistiogue.' That night I
thought over the problem. I had no information about the
strenghth of the Auxiliaries or of the British in the County, or
even of our men there. It was hard enough to capture a small
'police barracks. Why didn't the staff supply us with small
artillery, trench mortars, Stokes guns, machine-guns, or rifles
grenades, even with decent land mines? We had not anything
like a good supply of ammunition for our rifles. Why didn't
the Staff pay attention to pure staff work, leaving the political
field to the others? The Chief of Staff was a member of Dail
Eireann, the Director of Intelligence was a Minister of
Finance, the Director of Organization was a Secretary to the
Dail, the Director of Engineering was the Secretary of the
Local Government Board.
Next day I met Mulcahy in Parnell Square, in Banba Hall.
'Have you any plan of action to outline?'
'We might attack a barracks near their headquarters and
199
wait for their reinforcements, then Inistiogue might be tackled
while its garrison was weakened.'
'Well, you'll see the situation for yourself when you reach
Kilkenny.' We shook hands. 'Good luck now, Earnan.'
I saluted and was walking out the door when he called me
back.
'Is there any activity downtown?' he asked. 'I'm going to
Brunswick Street Technical Schools.'
'No. I've just come across the Liffey and through O'Connell
Street; no hold-ups and not much activity. I'll scout the way
for you.' '
'And what about yourself?'
'I'm armed.'
'No, you could not be replaced either,' he said, smiling
slowly as he gripped my arm. 'Don't you know that? Take
care of yourself and good luck.'
That was the first sign of personal regard I had
received from him. I was happy as I walked across town,
whistling.
*********************************************************************
Lloyd George yet had faith in unofficial reprisals : burning
of creameries, factories, shops, town halls, private houses,
went on. Towns showed jagged stumps of broken teeth where
fire had spread ; raiding parties smashed property and looted.
Perhaps the Premier thought the destruction of the economic
life would cow the people and turn them against the Dail and
the I.R.A. ; but it irritated neutrals and made our friends
more bitterly staunch. The American elections would soon
be due ; if reprisals wore out weak links in the separatist
chain, martial law, which admitted serious trouble, would
not be necessary.
Rory O Connor, D.E., went to England on a tour of in-
spection. He was responsible for operations there. Irishmen
and men of Irish descent in the cities had been organized in
units on the lines of the Irish Volunteers. They could destroy
power plants, warehouses, and supplies, and burn the houses
of Tans, Auxiliaries, and officers. The counter-demonstration
would throw light on the destruction in Ireland and possibly
slow it down. At the end of November fires burst out in
English warehouses and docks.
******************************************************************
I left my papers in a concealed cupboard. There was no
sense in risking my notes and papers in a county like
200
Kilkenny. I left my two guns in another dump. I felt I had a
tough job before me, and I knew nothing about the type of
men there. A friendly checker brought me through a side door
at the Kingsbridge Station, which was carefully watched by
enemy Intelligence. Seated in a carriage, I waited impatiently
for the train to pull out.
Passers-by scanned the windows in a casual way or glanced
sharply with well-trained eyes. I tried to read a magazine ;
but always behind the page was a sense of being cornered in
a carriage, open to a stray-memoried snapshot. At a junction
police and Tans came on board, but they did not search. The
engine driver walked off the train; he would not drive armed
police. The Tans threatened him. Two pulled guns and one
said, tapping his ribs with a Webley : 'Do you know what
this is?' An hour later a new driver who was willing to drive
armed police was found ; but they remained behind on the
platform when the train started. The new driver had been
threatened by railway workers as to what would happen to
him when he came back.
I passed by the police on the platform on Kilkenny Station,
outwardly calm, but confused enough in my mind on the
difficulties I sensed would lie before me.
THE BOLD BLACK AND TAN
The town of Balbriggan they burnt to the ground,
The bullets like hail were all whizzing around.
Lloyd George said to Greenwood, 'Now this is our plan
We'll conquer Ireland with the Bold Black and Tan.'
From Cork on to Limerick, Clare and Mayo,
Lies a trail of destruction wherever they go.
We'll shoulder our rifles, we'll fight to a man,
And we'll humble the pride of the Bold Black and Tan.
Sixteen
DECEMBER 1920
THE Inistiogue Commandant had little information to give
about the Auxiliaries who lived two miles from his house.
Through questions, I found a little about their discipline,
201
drinking habits, relationship with the people, and movements
of patrols, but he knew nothing about the defence of the
building, sentries, and outlying defences. At the end of my
probing I leared that Woodstock, their headquarters, was a
large, old well-built house on rising ground, surrounded by a
wooded demesne and enclosed by a high stone wall. The
grounds were well patrolled. On one side was the deep, swift-
running Nore; there were no fords, but it could be crossed by
a weir. Men were to be sent from each battalion to form a
flying column; each area was to plan simple operations at
once.
I set off with O'Hanrahan, the Inistiogue Commandant,
and a young boy, Holland, in a pony and trap. Holland was
to work with me; he was on the run. I had been lent a thirty-two
Browning for which I had no respect, and two percussion
eggs. They were clumsy to use on the road and hard to
handle in a confined space; they would explode on impact,
and if they struck anything whilst they were in my hand it
was good-bye. O'Hanrahan was tall, swarthy, and hairy,
loose-limbed with large heavy hands sprawled about and a
rather heavy face. He was elderly ; his moustache curved out
like a waterfall. He worked hard on the land. The Auxies he
spoke of as 'them Tans.'
Recently Auxiliaries had captured two boys as they
jumped over a hedge onto the road. One of the boys had a
rifle on his back. The Auxiliaries took his rifle, shot him
against the hedge, and brought his dead body and his live
companion back with them to their headquarters. Auxiliaries
had raided and evidently terrorized the county. One day
searching for 'rebels' they had stopped to question an old
lady of eighty.
'Seen any rebels around here, mother?' one of them
queried.
'Yes,' said she, reminiscently and wearily, 'there was
Stephens and Smith O'Brien, and John O'Leary, and'
'Where are they?' shouted one of the Auxiliaries excitedly.
'Where are they?'
'Oh,' said she, 'that was over fifty years ago.' And they
disappeared in dust, swearing.
In the darkness we reached O'Hanrahan's house on a
by-road. I studied a bundle of half-inch maps of the country,
then sat over the Inistiogue district until I had a good idea
202
of the lay of the land. O'Hanrahan's large fingers prodded
helplessly at the map as he followed me along the roads and
across hills, adding local information. Before we went to bed,
we decided that I should visit the estate next day as one
anxious to buy timber. I would then have an idea of outpost
positions, the building, and the best lines of approach.
Next morning I worked over the maps, then left them
down and took up Mr. Britling Sees It Through. I had read
two chapters by half-past ten when I heard the distant
blurring of words; people were talking to the woman of the
house. A few moments afterwards, the door was opened and
an Auxiliary with a bonnet perched on his head come into
the room. There was a rifle slung on his shoulder, the black
butt of a Webley stuck out of his holster. I felt myself rising ;
but I sat down hard on my chair. I gripped the table with
my hands. His movements were too casual for one on a
special raid. I wondered if my eyes looked startled or
frightened. He was as unexpected as death.
'What's your name?' he asked.
"Stewart.'
He was a small man, and spoke with a Cockney accent.
'And you,' turning to my companion.
'Holland.'
"What are you doing here?'
'Visiting my aunt,' I said. I looked at Mr. Britling, trying
to think ; there was no one outside the window, but my
table was in the centre of the room. My maps were on the
window, my notebook was open on the table. I closed and
pushed it to one side. The window could not be opened. I
would have to smash it. He walked about opening drawers,
peering into a cupboard. Stick him up, I thought, gag him
if he does not shout, and get through the window, if he does
not put up his hands, shoot-take his rifle and gun and rush
through for the outside door. I must take my notebook. I
had my hand on it when he said, turning towards me,
"This is a rotten job, I'm sick of it; wish it was over.'
I nodded. 'You must have a hard life of it.' Just then the
door was pushed open and an officer, followed by a number
of men, burst into the room.
'What is your name?' he barked.
'Stewart.'
'Your Christian name?'
'Bernard.'
203
'What are you doing here!'
'Visiting my aunt.'
'Did you search him?' he said, turning to the first intruder.
'No, sir.'
I sprang from the chair, made a bound towards the door,
pulling out my automatic, but it had caught in the lining of
my inside pocket. He sprang at me, revolver in hand, and
clasped his arm around me whilst the other searched my
pockets and found my gun.
'I'm sorry I did not shoot you, you dirty swine,' remarked
the officer. 'Take him out, blindfold him, and stick him up
against a wall.' The others began to search Holland. They
brought me outside the house, bandaged my eyes and put me
up against the wall, whilst a group stood around calling me
foul names.
I was in for it now, I thought. At last I had been trapped.
That damn little automatic. If I had had my own guns they
would have been on the outside of my coat attached to my Sam
Browne, and it would have meant a quick draw when the
door was opened. If I could only see, maybe I could make
a dash for it, or look at what they were going to do to me.
The woman of the house came out. 'For God's sake don't
shoot him, he's young, God help him. Do what you like to
the place, but don't shoot the lad.'
'Get in, you old bitch, quick,' roared a voice; 'you'll get
what's coming to you, too.'
The bandage was taken off my eyes as an officer ap-
proached. He was dressed in naval uniform and spoke with
authority. He snapped : 'Who are you?'
'I am a member of the Irish Republican Army.'
'What rank?'
'Volunteer.'
'What is your company?'
No reply.
'Who is your captain?'
No reply,
'So you're not going to talk, you bastard,' he said. 'Well,
we'll make you.' Then he went away.
One of the guards cocked the hammer of his Webley, and
told me to put up my hands; he kept the revolver pointed
at my heart.
'I know something better than that,' he said suddenly, as
he whipped off his bayonet and placed it on his rifle, and
204
got into the 'Ready' position a few feet from me. I knew
from his face that he would like to twist it in my guts.
At the end of about ten minutes I was blindfolded, hand-
cuffed, kicked down the lane and into a motor-car and driven
away. When they took off my bandage, I was in the hall of
a large building. Inistiogue, evidently, so I had arrived at last,
but not as I had expected.
'Take off his boots,' said the naval officer, 'and bring him
below-stairs.'
Whilst they were taking off my boots, Holland was brought
in, similarly bandaged and handcuffed. They took off his
boots and walked us downstairs to the vaults. They shoved us
into a darkened room and searched us. They took my watch,
fountain pen, my pocket-book containing eighteen pounds in
notes. 'Ha!' said one, 'He was well paid for his murders.'
Said another, 'This is as good as pay-day.' They continued
the search, they took my beads and a small Jeanne d'Arc
medal which had been sewn on the back of the lapel of my
coat.
The cellar was dark and the flags were cold ; it was a
December day. They pulled my hands behind my back and
handcuffed me, then they tied with ropes my hands at the
wrists, below the elbows and above the elbows ; my legs
above my knees and at my ankles. They tied Holland, but
not in so many places. Before they left, one of the Auxiliaries
put my beads back in my pocket.
'You will need these tonight,' he said.
They had left me standing against a post.
'Where are you?' I called.
'Here, over here,' said Holland.
I dropped to the ground and rolled over until I was beside
him. We sat closer and whispered in each other's ears. 'Now,
don't forget, I'm Stewart. You met me in O'Hanrahan's last
night and you know nothing else about me.'
'I'll do that,' he said. 'Do you think they'll shoot us?'
The ropes were tight and cut into my flesh as I moved
away from Holland. About an hour later, light flashed and
a man was kicked into the cell whilst the Auxiliaries spewed
out a stream of curses, some of which were diverted to us.
He was placed near me. He began to talk, asked me what
was my name; why I had been arrested. I said for carrying
a gun. He asked what I thought would happen and I replied
that I thought we should be shot. The conversation
205
languished. I managed by moving my forehead to work the
bandage off my eyes so that after a time I could see a form
seated near me.
I said, 'Do your ropes hurt you?'
'Yes,' he replied.
'Have they tied you on top of the handcuffs?'
'They have, and my wrists hurt like the devil.'
I rolled over, sat up and touched his arms with my fingers.
He had no handcuffs and his arms were loosely tied.
'What kind of a hole is this?' I asked.
'I am blindfolded and cannot see,'
'So am I.'
Then I talked to him, told him extravagantly simple tales
of my not being in much sympathy with the Irish Republican
Army and of my being tired of it all.
An hour later some Auxiliaries entered and told the
prisoner to sit up. As they hustled him out, one said, 'You'll
get what is coming to you.' Ten minutes later they returned
and shone an electric torch on my face; one of them pulled
down my handkerchief a little, kicked me repeatedly, and
hard, then said : 'Oh, you're a cunning bastard. Wait till
tonight.' Another said, 'And when we're finished with you,
you...' He shook both fists at me to express himself. They
left Holland alone. Later I heard them shouting outside the
door. I was from Macroom, they said, where the big ambush
of cadets had taken place. They threatened the sentries. 'Let's
get at the red-headed bastard.'
'It looks as if they don't like me,' I said to Holland, and
we laughed.
Time passed slowly in the cold darkness. We did not talk.
Each was thinking his own thoughts. Had they found the
percussion grenades? What had they done to the O'Hanrahans
and their house? I felt sure that if they found out who I was,
then it meant a lingering or a quick death, or both. But they
wanted to shoot me ; they had been told by their officers
that I had been in the Macroom ambush which had taken
place two weeks ago. The British official report stated that
the sixteen dead Auxiliaries had been 'chopped with hatchets.'
Shooting would be much better than torture : I did not know
if I could stand it; even a toothache made a wreck of me.
It must have been midnight when an Auxiliary came in,
loosed the ropes on my ankles and legs, and said, 'Come on.'
My feet were cold, the ropes had made them numb and
206
swollen. It was hard to walk. I went down a narrow passage,
the guard kicked me hard from behind every few steps. Once
I cried, 'Ow.' He gripped me by the neck with long pincer
fingers: 'You're a queer soldier.' Evidently a soldierly quality
is the silent endurance of kicks.
I was shoved into a large room. There were officers seated
behind a table; one in the centre wore a regulation military
cap. Auxiliaries in the sombre bottle-green of the Royal Irish
with blue-green bonnets stood around. It made them look
very stern. Many of them had sergeants' gold V's on their
sleeves and war ribbons on their tunics. They looked smart
neat, and impressive. This was a ceremony of some sort.
The light was not good, the dark walls were gloomy in the
shadows, reflected light shone on the hard set faces.
The officer in the regulation cap began the questions:
'What is your name?'
'Bernard Stewart.'
'Your address?'
'Kilkenny City.'
'Are you in the I.R.A.?'
'Yes.'
'What rank?'
'I'm a Volunteer.'
'What rank?'
'No rank.'
'What is the name of your company?'
' "C" Company.'
'Tell me the names of your officers.'
I did not answer.
'H'm; who gave you the automatic?'
No reply.
'So, you won't talk, eh?'
An Auxiliary standing at my side clenched his fist and
swung to jab.
'No, don't,' said the officer in naval uniform.
'Untie his arms,' said the regulation cap.
"Where did you get the cardigan?'
'I bought it.'
"Where?'
I did not reply. At O'Shaughnessy's in Cahir, I remem-
bered.
'Don't you know it's a military jacket?'
'No, I bought it.'
207
"Where?" I did not answer.
'Where did you get the officer's trench coat: at Macroom?
Stole it from a dead man, of course?'
'I bought it.'
'Where?'
'In a shop,'
An officer leant across the table and said: 'You're the man
who stole the plans. I saw you in Grafton Street.' He con-
tinued to stare very knowingly and fixedly at me. What did
he mean, what plans, and why Grafton Street? They wanted
to connect me with Dublin. I looked him in the face, his
eyes had streaks of blood on the whites; we eyed each other.
'Where's his pistol?' demanded regulation cap.
'Here it is, sir,' said a sergeant. 'It's loaded.'
'What do you carry it for?'
'For protection.'
'No, but for shooting down our men from behind a hedge.
Shooting them in the back.'
The sergeant turned the Browning in his hand. 'Put that
damned thing away. It might go off. Now, see here, I'm
going to give you one more chance to answer. Who gave you
that pistol?' I remained silent. 'If you don't answer by the
time I count three, we'll blow your God damned brains out."
'I am ready to die,' I said.
'Now,' said the regulation cap, 'if he doesn't answer when I
count three, fire.'
The sergeant pushed me back. He drew his Webley and
shoved the cold muzzle hard against my forehead. The skin
contracted slowly ; it seemed to draw my eyebrows upwards,
a cold spinal shiver ran down from the back of my neck. I
suppressed it. 'Stand back from behind him.'
A space was left between me and the wall. I brought my
stockinged heels together.
'Will you answer? One.'
'No.'
'Two.'
I shook my head.
'Three.'
I shook my head.
'Were you ever in the army, Stewart?'
'Yes.'
'What regiment were you in?'
208
'We have no regiments in the Irish Republican Army.'
'Stewart, you will be shot at dawn tomorrow. Take him
away.'
They brought me through a long passage and seated me
on a woooden form. They tied my hands and legs as before.
I felt trussed; they put a cloth across my eyes. I heard the
voices of men singing and the tinkle of glass. I must have
been near the canteen. Men stopped to threaten me ; some
said, 'We'll put you through it for Macroom.' A few walked
in their heavy boots on my stockinged feet. My toes were
crushed ; some stamped hard with the full weight of their
legs on instep and toes. They lifted their boots again and
came down on the same place ; I tensed my body to stop
myself from moaning. Two guards jabbed me a few times
with their bayonets below my ribs on the abdominal muscles.
Blood dribbled down my buttocks and legs. Other prisoners
were brought in ; they were kicked and beaten ; some of them
shouted in pain.
I could not walk when I was told to move on. The guard
lifted me, carried me along and flung me into a room. My
head struck the stone floor and I was dazed. My bandage was
removed. Beside me on the floor was Holland; he smiled. On
benches opposite were about twelve or fourteen prisoners. I
sat up and spoke to Holland; my voice was weak. Auxiliaries
came in and gave food to the others. We could have bread
and water, they said. 'Do you want anything?' one asked.
'No,' I said. Later some Auxiliaries came in and went through
all my pockets. They opened all the buttons on my shirt,
coat, and trousers. One took off my tie. 'It's a good one,' he
said, as he put it in his pocket. Another tried to take off my
shirt, but he had to stop; he would have to untie my ropes.
It was very cold lying there unbuttoned. It must have been
freezing hard.
The prisoners looked at me with a kind of dumb pity.
'May they be cursed to their seed, breed, and generation,'
said one.
Later the guards came in. 'Do you want your bread and
water?'
'No,' I said, and Holland shook his head.
'Hunger striker,' one jeered.
'You'll shoot me at dawn, I might as well go fasting.'
During the night men came to look at us.
'Were you in the army, Stewart?' asked one.
 209
'Yes, I was.'
'What regiment?'
'No regiment.'
'But how--' and he stopped.
'In the Irish Republican Army.'
'Damn you, anyway,' he said, as he went out.
I said to Holland: 'Don't ask for food and stick it out;
they'll shoot me at dawn.'
My arms were burning with the cold and numbness, my
legs and arms tingled. They seemed to weigh down on my
body, and I felt that they were many times too big. My
crushed feet and the bayonet wounds hurt me. My mind was
a jumble with pain, cold, and criss-cross thought, but at the
back of all was a strength that I knew would help me to face
my end calmly, although the racing thought in front of it
swirled and eddied me into a whirl.
'You're a brave man,' sneered an Auxiliary.
'Leave him alone, can't you?' said his companion.
'It's getting on to dawn,' said one of the guards, 'do you
want a priest?'
'No, I'll take my chance.'
Later there was a clatter of heavy boots. 'Carry him up,'
someone said. I was brought upstairs, My boots were pulled
on with trouble; my feet were swollen, Someone said in an
authoritative voice, 'Bring him outside,' The bandage which
had just been put on was taken off. 'This is your last look
at the sky,' said an Auxiliary who leant on the muzzle of
his rifle. I was stood against the doorpost. Lorries were being
warmed up; men were putting on ammunition slings outside
of heavy coats. Cold-looking clouds held back the rays of the
sun, trees slowly changed from outlines to stronger forms,
backed by a grey shivering sky and a bird's clear notes came
slowly out of the mist. Lights on tenders showed up parts of
the building and the men who walked out of the shadows.
I was placed in an open tender, the bandage was put on my
eyes, and the convoy moved off.
'There's the house you were caught in,' said one ; 'not
much left of it.' I was sorry for the trouble I had brought on
the O'Hanrahans. The convoy halted. 'This is good enough
I heard, 'quite a nice shooting spot,' and the reply, 'Quite.'
My lips were dry; they were of rough leather. I had been
trying to say some prayers, but could not. My thoughts ran
on ahead, crossed and recrossed. I was not afraid of death
210
now. Faces I knew came up, my brother Frank's, Sean
Tracey's ; then I felt at peace. It was hard to pin anything
down, to think I was going to die on the roadside. I would
tell them that they were fools, that they could not win ; dead
men would help to beat them in the end.
"I don't understand all this,' said a pleasant voice, on my
right. 'Are you cold?'
"No.'
'Yes, you are,' and he wrapped a warm rug around my
legs and slung a coat behind my shoulders.
'Thank you,' I said,
'Did they feed you?'
'They offered me bread and water, but I refused.'
'I thought our people fed their prisoners well,' he said.
'Why do you do it?'
'You would not understand.'
'Well, I wish it was all over. I'm fed up with it.'
I heard the men who had been talking some distance away
get back into their tenders; we moved off. I felt more kindly
and my heart glowed.
We halted again. I was carried upstairs. I was placed on
the ground. 'We're handing you over to the police.' The
police--that meant the Royal Irish and the Tans. My heart
sank, the Black and Tans. 'Here you are,' said a voice. 'Two
dangerous birds, but watch this murderer here,' he empha-
sized, with a kick in my back. My bandage was taken off;
beside me was Holland. A soldier, a purple-red beefy-faced
man with a spiky moustache who smiled, bent over me and
untied my ropes. My hands and wrists were blue and puffy.
The ropes had broken through the flesh. My trousers and
shirt stuck to my skin with blood. My feet felt as if they had
been through a mangle.
I was put in a cell with Holland ; there were two other men
in it. The beefy man, they said, was the bombardier in charge
of prisoners, and we were in the detention cells of Kilkenny
military barracks. 'Are you hungry?' asked the bombardier.
'Yes' we said. Soon he came back with bowls of tea and a
large plate of bread and sausages. Sausages were divine, tea
had never seemed such a delicious drink. The bombardier
warmed us with his smile.
The cell was a dirty grey which had once been white, the
211
floor black and greasy. In a corner was a pile of torn brown
army blankets. I did not know the two men. They were from
Thomastown, near Inistiogue. The Tans had arrested the
whole countryside, they said; mad with rage they were half
murdering anyone they took. Evidently we had disturbed
their little Auxiliary Eden. They played Twenty-one and
Banker with Holland most of the day, and chatted the rest
of it. They told tales of Johnstown and Thomastown ; in the
shadowy cell the stories grew as they searched darkly in the
minds of the townsmen. Fathers slept with their daughters
and girls scattered babies almost at will; their talk built
phantoms, but as I did not show any particular surprise, they
had to search out further facts to impress me.
On the walls were sketches, remarks, pointed, unpointed,
rich and obscene, with ballads and rebel songs. The cells had
held British soldiers and our men. Sergeant-majors, marines
and military police seemed to be the chief aversions to men
of good will. Their ill fame decorated a large portion of the
cell.
I walked up and down, five strides up and down ; swift
strides and sharp, twisting turns. I thought of the tigers in
the zoo, their flowing sinewy thrust forward, the lithe tense-
ness of contracted paws as they prowled around the cages,
brushing their heads on the bars. 'Take it easy,' said one of
the men who sat wrapped up in a blanket; 'take it easy.'
For days I walked the cell, then sat up against the wall
thinking of escape. I tried to think out how they could prove
who I was. I was not known to the police by sight except in
Offaly, Roscommon, and Westmeath, and that was some
years ago. I was known to them by name in some counties,
by my numerous false names in others. This was a halting
place; where should I be sent next?
We listened to the sentries in the passage outside our door.
They sang ballads about the sergeant's wife. Someone must
have had to rack his thoughts to put marines and soldiers in
unexpected physical relationship to the Gargantuan body of
the sergeant's wife. Often they were dirty without being
funny. They told us what would happen to us here and here-
after. They had a special down on me. I wagged my finger
at them and threatened to tell the parson, I corrected their
mistakes in pronunciation. I was to be 'unged. I was a ....
murderer, I would then roast in 'ell, 'strewth. In return we
sang our songs whilst they howled at us to shut up.
212
"Drunk and uproarious,
Punk and notorious,
God damn the king
Gather all the socks you meet for the English Tommies' feet
Whilst they're runing from the Germans far away.
From the G.P.O. to Boland's Mill
We made poor England weep his fill,
But old Britannia loves us still,
Whack fol the diddle, diddle di do day.
Soon we will all be civilized,
Neat and clean and well advised.
Oh! Won't mother England be surprised .
Whack for the diddle, diddle di do day."
We laid bets as to how often they used the adjective known
as the soldier's word. Sometimes it was mentioned every five
words, then again a group might use it every four.
I was called outside my cell and brought into a room
where were six men in civilian clothes, smartly dressed, keen-
looking, a few like hounds, as eager to get on the scent.
'So you're Stewart,' one said. They looked at my full face
and profile carefully. They walked around me as if I had
been a horse which they wanted to buy; they asked me to
walk across the room. It was more like a fair than ever; soon
they will ask me to trot, I thought.
"Well, Stewart, were you ever in Dublin?' asked one, with
a heavy strong chin thrust forward.
"Yes.' My trench coat bore the name of a Dublin shop.
'How long since?'
"About a year ago.'
'Were you in Dublin recently?'
"No.' They wanted to connect me with Bloody Sunday.
'Where did you stay?'
"I won't answer that.'
'You won't answer?' His chin dug forward spading the
words.
'No, I won't,'
He turned to the others. 'He won't answer,' There were
heavy nods. 'So.' Evidently that was considered important.
Their foreheads wrinkled with intensity, searching for clues,
perhaps.
'What is your home address?'
213
"I won't say."
'What county do you live in?'
I shook my head.
'Mayo?'
'No.'
'Kilkenny?'
'No.'
'Carlow?'
'No.'
'Louth.'
'No.'
County after county, I continued to shake my head. I was
losing my temper. My answers had become crisp and jerky:
then, I thought, that's foolish, tell them to go to hell or
answer quietly. I would be put through it anyhow, here now,
or later.
'Where did you get the trench coat?'
'I bought it.'
'Where?'
'In a shop.'
'What shop?'
No reply.
'Who gave you the pistol?'
'I won't tell you.'
'You won't tell me?'
'No.' Heavy nods, the situation had become serious again.
'If you tell me the name of the man who gave you the pistol,
you will be released.'
'I'm not an informer.'
'Very good, Stewart. So you won't talk, well, you'll be
made to talk : Do you hear?'
The questions meant that they knew nothing about me,
but were anxious to link me up with Dublin. I wondered
what was next to come. I talked of escape with Holland, but
he could not give much information about the barracks.
The latrine was outside the cells; a soldier without weapons
went with us as an escort; there was an armed sentry in
sight. I might get to the barracks wall and climb it, but I
would then be under fire and would not know how to get
cover till I was out of sight.
The bombardier announced an officer. He had a revolver
in his hand. He called my name, stuck the Webley at the
back of my head, told me not to attempt to escape and
214
walked me out amongst the barrack buildings. He steered
me round a corner with an arm grip. There I saw a photo-
grapher who simultaneously clicked his camera shutter. My
photograph had been taken. I felt myself forestalled and
walked back in bad humour. Besides, ever since I was a
chlld I disliked my first photograph. I had been told to look
at the birdy, and there had been no birdy, just a likeness of
my brother, sister and I gazing in expectant wonder.
Next day the officer, whom the bombardier had assured
me in the meantime was decent and kind, came into the cell.
"I'll be straight with you, the photo was a failure. Now we
want to take you.'
"I refuse ; you asked me because you failed.'
He said grimly, "Well, we'll see.' He brought me outside.
A man came up with a tripod and began to set up a camera.
When he was ready, I moved my body. 'Stop that,' ordered
the officer. I ceased the movement, but screwed up my face.
The officer got red in the face. 'I'll soon stop that.' He
ordered two soldiers who were standing by with rifles to fix
bayonets. They snapped the steel onto the boss. 'On guard.'
They got into position on either side of me, their bayonets
pointing at my chest. I continued to make faces. 'If you
don't stop, I'll give them the order to jab,' I did not stop.
He told the privates to stand aside. 'We'll hand you over to
some people who will be less polite than we were. Then you'll
change your mind.'
The bombardier was worried : 'Why couldn't you let them
take you?'
Seventeen
DECEMBER 1920
'PACK UP, Holland and Stewart, pack up!' was shouted in
the early morning. We rolled out of our blankets as the cell
door slammed back with a crash. Six Auxiliaries walked
with us to the large square of the barracks. Others, with
rifle butts on their shoulders or with rifles swung from straps,
215
ran up and down, stamping feet, blowing on their hands.
'Get up,' said one. We swung ourselves into an open Crossley
tender. 'Sit down.' It was cold; there was wet straw on the
boards. We both shivered.
An Auxie hung around the lorry jeering ; his com-
panion ground his teeth, but did not say anything. A sergeant-major,
very neat and trim, stood in deferential closeness, a
black cane tight under his arm.
'We'll take you to see some gentlemen who know how to
make you talk,' said the first, who had a small moustache,
'and then you'll hang, you bastard.'
'We can only die once,' I said, and we laughed at him.
The eyes of the sergeant-major twinkled.
The escort lined up ; there were more than thirteen tenders.
We were handcuffed wrist to wrist. In front near the driver
was a guard of two Auxiliaries in plain clothes ; they had
given evidence at my trial in Woodstock House.
A tall officer halted our tender. 'If there's any shooting on
the road, you're the first for it,' turning to me. 'Do you
understand?' I did not speak. 'You're the first--Do you hear?'
I looked at him, but I did not answer.
The convoy moved slowly. It was very cold. About noon
by the sun a man in front with a fair moustache asked if we
were cold. We shook our heads. Holland and I decided that
we would not complain of cold or hunger. Later they stopped
in a town for something to eat. 'Prisoners!' someone shouted.
Soon the tender was surrounded by women and girls.
'Where are you from? What were you taken for?'
'Don't answer,' ordered the fair moustache.
'We're from Kilkenny, going to Dublin,' I said. The cadets
drove the people away, but they came back. Soon, girls
brought up cups of tea, steaming in the cold air.
'Here you are,' said a lithe, black-haired girl, reaching out
a cup.
'Get away,' said one of our guards, he who had clashed
his teeth, 'or...' He pulled a Webley thirty-eight from his
pocket. The girl did not move. She still held out the cup of
tea. 'Back, you bitch.' The girl stepped back, then walked
forward until she was close to the Webley. She threw her
head back, colour petalled high on her cheeks.
'And you,' she said, 'what are you?'
'Oh, all right, they can drink,' said the fair moustache. Later
he asked, 'Do you want anything to eat?'
216
'No,' I replied. He walked away. When he came back he
handed me a bag. 'Biscuits,' he said. We thanked him; they
tasted very good.
Towards dusk on the Dublin road we heard a scream. the
convoy halted ; one of the heavy lorries had run over a
civilian. He died with gurgling rattles on the roadside. The
men on the tender did not stop their conversation. The fair
moustached one told us to run up and down, as we were
cramped; he did not come with us. We increased the length
of our runs till we were in front of the first armoured lorry,
'I think I can wriggle my hand loose if you're game to make
a dash,' I said to Holland.
'We haven't much of a chance,' he said; 'besides, we don't
know the country.'
I was nearly sure I could squeeze my hand out of the steel
clasp, but I did not want to try unless he was willing. They
would probably shoot him even if he did not run away with
me.
We drove through the lighted streets of Dublin. I thought
of all those people walking about as if nothing had happened,
whilst for me, who looked out at them, the whole current of
life had changed utterly. I could not realize that I had been
in those streets only two weeks ago. We passed the Castle
and Trinity College and went to Beggars' Bush Barracks.
Inside, Auxiliary officers and men crowded about our tender.
I was told to get down; all suddenly stood to attention. The
headlights of a car were turned on me. 'This is Stewart, sir.'
A figure looked at me from beyond the light, evidently some-
one of importance. We drove back to the Castle. As we
went through the entrance gate I plucked the fair Auxiliary
by the sleeve: 'Thanks for being so kind,' I said. He patted
my shoulder. 'That's all right, son.'
In the guardroom I signed my name : 'Bernard Stewart;
occupation : farmer, Inistiogue, County Kilkenny.' I used a
backhand scrawl which I had practised in the detention
barracks. There were eight or ten prisoners seated on wooden
boards or blankets along one wall, talking quietly. The room
was large. In front were two windows; one of them looked
onto a narrow passage that led by the side of the City Hall
towards Dame Street. Around a warm fire opposite the
windows a guard of four Auxiliaries in police uniform sat.
One of them, a section Commander, stood up and stretched
his legs apart in front of the hearth. 'Don't let any of you
217
people try to escape. See that?' pointing to white splotches
on the light green wall; 'that's what happened to two birds
not so long ago.' Impressively: 'Only dead men can escape
from "F" Company.' So it was in this room that Peadar
Clancy and Dick McKee had been murdered. Men clattered
through the door carrying rifles, ammunition slings, and
holsters strapped low on their knees. Some stopped to chat
with the guard.
'Where are you from? What are you in for? Why were
you pinched?' was asked of us. I knew one of the men who
questioned me. I had first met him during the attack on
Drangan Barracks in Tipperary ; then as a commandant at
the Brigade council in Kilkenny. 'Let's sit together,' he whis-
pered, as he gave me a grey blanket. He spoke slowly. There
had been a world of arrests. De Loughrey the Brigadier was
taken around with them on all their raids; he was a hostage;
they said if they were fired on they would blow his head off,
and O'Hanrahan was to be tried for harbouring rebels. They
said they'd shoot him for it. These boyhoes are a bad crowd.
'What do you think will happen; why am I here?' His face
was nervous, his hand gripped my arm.
'I don't know,' I said, 'Let's not talk too much and try not
to let them know you're worried. You know we're not sure
of the other prisoners.'
'Turn in,' shouted the section commander. 'Show the new
prisoners how to make down their beds.'
The stout Kilkenny commandant placed two thin pieces of
board together on two wooden trestles, one lower at the
foot ; on top he put three lemon-brown, hard-padded squares,
known as army biscuits, then blankets. Most of the men knelt
down to say their prayers. The guard looked at them, then
turned away, speaking in whispers, The commandant got into
bed beside me. 'You're a lucky devil,' he whispered; 'it was
General Wood who stopped them from shooting ye at
Inistiogue : most of the company wanted to shoot ye. What'll
they do to us? We're not safe with them hangmen.'
The lights were kept on. I closed my eyes, but I did not
sleep.
The guard talked of "F" Company, of raids and arrests of
women and the I.R.A. 'I don't understand them,' said one.
There was a coming and going from the door leading to
quarters through the guardroom. 'Who are they?' asked a
218
guard, as three men in mufti passed through. 'S.S.' said
another.
Later two men came to where we lay.
'Where's the Macroom fellow?' asked one.
'Don't know,' was the reply. Macroom : that meant me.
Inistiogue cadets had evidently spread the good word that I
was from Macroom. They stopped beside each bed. 'Are you
from Macroom?' they asked, shaking each sleeper till he
awoke. One shook me twice, repeating, 'Are you from
Macroom?' I moved as if awakening slowly, my heart
thudded hard. 'No,' I said.
We ate at the table when the guard had finished. We got
the same food as they did. We had a knife and fork between
four of us, a piece of bread, or our hands served instead.
Some of the men always tried to wolf another man's share.
Prisoners were mixed ; some Volunteers, others arrested on
suspicion, possibly a few pigeons to get information. Every
night fresh prisoners came in ; they had been out after curfew
or had been taken by raiding parties. I answered questions in
an oblique way, studied their faces and actions, watched the
guard and all passing through the guardroom. Auxiliaries
often rushed through from their quarters buttoning tunics
and adjusting holsters ; that meant a special raid or a round-
up. We were allowed to exercise two a time for less than
an hour in an alley turning towards the entrance to the lower
Castle yard. We could see lorries going out or waiting by, and
all the bustle and movement of a fortress seat of government.
At night I pretended to sleep, whilst I listened to the guard ;
if I heard anything worth while, I might be able to send
it out with a curfew prisoner.
Once an officer rushed in, tapped me on the back and said,
'Quick, what's your name?'
'Stewart,' I murmured sleepily.
'Your Christian name?'
'Bernard.' Then he left. The simplest question would prob-
ably conceal a trap. I answered possible questions in my mind,
trying to put myself in their place.
Another time I felt men were standing over me as I slept.
'It is.' 'No, it's not.' Through one eyelash I saw two police
look at a photograph and at a printed sheet. Suddenly, I
thought, they take me for Jack Ryan, the Master, and that
paper is the Hue and Cry. He had shot a peeler the morning
we had set off from Glenough to attack the police barracks
219
at Hollyford in County Tipperary. 'Look, he has no big
freckles.' My guess was right, for Jack's face was a snipe's
egg from freckle splashes.
Once in the evening time an Auxiliary sitting by the fire,
reading, said : 'You can't beat old Villon,' He read aloud :
Finablement, en escripvant
Ce sor seulct, estant en bonne
Dictant ces laiz et descripvant
J'ois la cloche de Serbonne
Qui tousjours a neuf heures sonne.
Another with his feet on the mantelpiece said, 'Good, let's
have this one' :
Dictes moy ou, ne'en quel pays
Est Flora, la belle Rommaine.
The section commander said sourly : 'For Christ's sake, can't
you speak English?'
I was supposed to be a farmer from Kilkenny, my speech
was thick, my hair unruly and unkempt. I did not wear a
collar, had had no change of clothes since my arrest and I
felt dirty. My skin was beginning to itch. I had caught the
common complaint. I watched the Kilkenny man, how he
used his lips and the way he walked. The skin on his shave-red
face hung loose ; there were more lines under his eyes, his
lips would twitch. He had a wife and family, he told me. He
could not sleep much. Beside me he would whisper: 'What
are they going to do to us? When do you think we'll get out
of here?' He would clutch me at night; and I talked to him
in whispers and tried to calm him. If I awoke suddenly, I
found him watching the guards. In the daytime he talked
about torture and asked questions of other men about doings
in the Intelligence Room and in this guardroom. It was easier
for me to take my situation more calmly. Mentally I had
often faced death. I expected it if ever I was captured and I
had been close enough to it at Kilkenny. I had no ties outside
of the movement which claimed all my energy. Here for the
first time, perhaps, he realized that anything could happen to
him. A drunken Auxiliary would point a gun at us and
threaten to shoot, or describe what he would do if he had his
way.
A man with kidney and stomach trouble came amongst us.
220
The guard would not allow him to see a doctor. His face was
blue-grey with pain. At night after curfew drunks were
brought in ; some became sober when they realized they were
in the Castle and with the Auxiliaries. A member of Dail
Eireann, Frank Lawless, and his son joined the prisoners.
Lawless was struck in the face by an Auxiliary because he
would not answer questions. I knew both of them ; I had
stayed in their house less than eight months ago when I had
been organizing North County Dublin, but neither of them
recognized me. I was pleased. That meant my assumed part
had some reality.
There was nothing worth reading. I tried to capture bar-
racks in the brigade areas I knew, rebuilt details of the nature
of counties I had cycled through, or tried to reconstruct the
work of painters who had meant most to me, but mainly I
thought of escape. There was a row of closets at the back,
behind the kitchen; they were separated from the houses in
Dame Street by barbed wire. It would not be hard to get
through the wire, none of the guards came with us when we
left the guardroom, but I could not find out if the houses in
front were held by troops. The men in 'F' Company were
primarily soldiers, they were in no sense warders ; that would
make them less observant. Guard duty was routine; even if
there had been no prisoners, men from the company would
take their turns in the guardroom.
A working party made a sand-bagged position for a Lewis
gun behind the window that looked onto the passage that led
by the City Hall. The gun could traverse. The guard of three
men and a section commander was changed daily now, each
fresh group bringing a Lewis gun. The company was made
of soldiers of fortune : men of private means, clerks,
journalists, and a few from universities. Many had probably
been drawn by the good pay and the swaggering efficiency of
an elastic discipline. They were all officers, therefore, gentle-
men. They elected their own officers. The men had been
specially selected, as they were a guard company for part of
the Castle. They had permission to carry out raids in areas
beyond that one which they nominally controlled. They had
seen service in France, Mesopotamia, India, Russia, Gallipoli,
and held rank from major down. Some were boys, the
majority were mature. A few had greying hairs. There was a
sense of individual assurance ; lusty animals, conscious
of their strength after hard fighting; they had been tested in
221
command, their morale was good. In an emergency they
would stand out, but they might be worn down by lack of
the organized warfare that suited them. Few might be elastic
enough for guerilla fighting. When they sat at the fire I
could see brooding bitterness in many faces. The World War
had left its mark; behind organized efficiency and a sense of
comradeship was a glum, swarthy melancholy.
In the daytime they did not talk much ; sometimes they
would watch us as if to resolve their impressions as to what
kind of strange animals we might be, but we were an un-
known quantity, save judged in the pattern of their hereditary
contempt and the current interpretation of the papers they
read.
'Why do you shinners all wear long hair?' an Auxiliary
asked me. 'Strong man, Greenwood, strong man,' they would
say impressively, when they read the paper or the Weekly
Summary. They jerked their heads knowingly. They spoke of
arrests and raids, about their own and other Auxiliary com-
panies, made up ballads about the I.R.A., and sang a song
of the R.I.C.
During the daytime there was a constant movement; men
would stop to talk, order a drink, or sit down at the fire with
the guard. Their manner to the new prisoners was always
aggressive and harsh ; questions were asked in loud, over-
bearing tones. I knew their faces ; when different groups
returned for duty, they would welcome or curse me according
to mood and disposition; a few would talk to me in jerky
sentences. I was handed the Weekly Summary twice. I
chuckled as I read their bellicose threats and lofty assurance
of police methods to save the country from cowardly gangs
of well-paid murderers. I could not associate these men with
much of a missionary spirit. 'Funny, eh?' I smiled. The man
who had given me the paper laughed. The others looked at me
as if I had broken a taboo.
There was a weighty solemnity about these men as if they
were playing a very important game with undue emphasis on
the details. There was a sense of ritual about their actions.
The military groove canalized thought. I watched them as
they grouped six feet away from me. Here were the enemy
whom we saw through hereditary contempt, distrust, sus-
picion, and hatred. We had been memoried to expect certain
traits in them and they in us. Tomorrow if I escaped I would
be trying to kill them and they would do their best to get me.
Yet here we sat not far away from each other with some kind
of human contact between us. These men believed their own
propaganda; they saw us as types. We saw them as part of
their government machine that wished through them to
produce a certain effect.
In the night they talked more. They sighed for the good
shows of London ; not a decent show in Dublin. They missed
their women ; it was so damned hard to click here now. They
felt the hostility of the people. A tall whiplike officer told of
his erotic experiences in Cairo and Salonika. The others
fidgeted on their chairs. Questioned about an exotic thrill, he
said, 'It's much too overated. Really.' Some drank hard. One
was young. His forehead had pink blotches amongst the
grooves in the puckers. He borrowed money from the others
to look for women. He told of his amours in the back lanes
and tried to get money from the prisoners.
An old major, with a partly bald head that shone like an
egg and a blooded face from good living, often spoke to me.
His kindly face was a contrast to the taciturn looks of others.
How are you today, my boy? You'll soon be out of this.
There's some mistake--you'll be released.'
The Kilkenny man was getting more nervous. 'Why do
they keep us here? There's some reason, the bloody hangmen,
they'll murder us yet,'
'I don't know,' I'd say, 'they can shoot us only once. We
can't stop them.'
'But if they torture me?'
There was no answer to that. I thought of it often, then
tried to bury the thought before it should grip me too hard.
During exercise we were often brought across the Castle
yard to walk beyond the Chapel Royal. I recognized the steps
up which I had once walked in uniform to get a revolver
permit in the Provost's office. The Birmingham Tower
brought memories of escapes : Red Hugh O'Donnell and
young O'Neill in Elizabeth's time. Stray snatches from Carew
and other manuscripts came into my mind. Maybe it was
over that gate that Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne's wife was caged
naked until she died. Two tenders with Auxiliaries, seated on
boards, were always drawn up inside the gates awaiting emer-
gency calls. Double and single-turretted armoured cars moved
up and down the yard with a prowling, gentle purr; lorries
of tin hats drove up.
Five of us were told to go over to the Intelligence Room;
223
we were lined up outside a window whilst eyes peered out at
us. I had heard tales of this Intelligence Room and of
Major -- and Captain --. They belonged to the murder
gang. At night they pulled people out of their beds and shot
them ; they cross-examined and beat-up prisoners. In the
guardroom a young Dublin Volunteer pointed out two more
of the gang ; one had a blue-black swarthiness ; he seldom
spoke.
Again I was paraded with three men in front of the room.
A man of about fifty with a heavy coat and quick blue eyes
walked up and down in front of us. He was portly and moved
slowly on large feet ; his eyes looked as if they had been
trained to detail. He would give a sharp glance then turn his
eyes away. His face was red and flabby with bluish tinges as
if his heart was bad ; he needed exercise. He studied our backs
and watched us walk.
'That's Bruton of the "G" Division,' said the young boy.
He was one of the few members of the original detective
force extant; now he lived in the Castle for protection.
Two Auxiliaries called my name; they walked me over to
Ship Street Barracks, which was inside another Castle gate.
I was handed over to the military. A military policeman, over
six foot three, walking loosely on stilted legs as if they were
a special addition to his body, led me down a dark passage.
He carried a huge key in his leather belt. When he spoke
there was a deep, cavernous, weighty rumble. He fitted the
key in a heavy lock which resisted with a sliding, metallic
sound. He threw open the door. 'Here's a visitor,' he boomed.
Seated at a table near the fire was a man in the brown habit
of the Capuchins, on his head a small round black skull cap.
He had a long, light, dark brown beard which he stroked ;
it had a silky look.
'I'm Dominic,' he said.
'My name is Stewart.'
We shook hands. I had read of his arrest; he had written
a letter about 'Bloody Sunday.' I bent towards his ear and
said, 'Beware of dictaphones.' I wrote on a piece of paper
which I handed him : 'There is some strange reason for us
being put together, let us talk of everything except Ireland.'
He burnt the slip when he had read it.
The cell was large, there were two beds, the ceiling was
ribbed, barrelled vault, the walls were old. There was a large
window opening onto a basement, but the light was bad.
224
Outside I could see two soldiers from the Lancashire Regi-
ment with bayonets fixed. At times they pressed their noses
against the glass and shaded their eyes with their hands. The
window-sill was very thick and the door opening was deep.
I thought we were being watched. I searched the cell slowly
each day, but I could not find a hole or a slit; the vault
would probably carry our voices more. The policeman and
the journey to the latrine in a long narrow passage gave me a
subterranean feeling. The policeman was firmly polite, his
movements were slow and important, he took the key with
ponderous deliberation from his belt, he fitted it in with
precision. Every movement counted. When he spoke the words
had significance ; they filled the darkness of the passage, they
hit against the sound of my feet on the flags, and both
went away carrying the roll further along. Belt, large key,
grinding lock, ribbed vault, the age of the walls and his voice
turned the cell into a dungeon. We were not let out for
exercise, and there was no change or contrast to the atmo-
sphere of our cell. Down the passage might be thumb screws
or a Star Chamber ; through a chink eyes might watch. Why
had I been put in with Father Dominic? Was it so that I
could confess in a loud voice that I had shot police and
Intelligence Officers, or to allow us to boast at leisure of our
part in the movement or to talk of men we might know?
Why was I removed from the hands of the Auxiliaries to
those of the military, and what did this isolated cell mean?
We whispered our doubts and guesses in each other's ears.
We talked of foreign countries. Dominic had been a chap-
lain in Serbia and I knew the country. Frank, since dead, had
told me living stories of the fighting and of the pell-mell
retreat when their friends plundered them. I found it hard to
associate Dominic with a soldier's life. He had soft full lips;
colour came and went in his cheeks when he was excited or
said something that presupposed a doubt in my mind. He
stroked his beard, he was proud of it. He had been Terry
MacSwiney's chaplain when he was Lord Mayor of Cork,
and he had followed him to England and remained through
the hunger strike. It did not seem human that a man could
endure such slow agony or that will could fight to the end.
We were fed from the officers' mess. The food was good;
I enjoyed it. Dominic would say : 'They must think we're
important ; why do they feed us like this?' The better the
food the more depressed he became. 'What do they mean to
225
do with us? They are feeding us too well.' He saw a signifi-
cance in the good food; it was like the fattening of a turkey
in December.
I was not worried by the food. Many things could happen;
they could do us in quietly, or torture us, or keep us in
suspense. I had not expected anything but death to end my
part in the struggle; we had seen the grey face of Death too
often not to be able to know his shadow as we wandered. We
did not expect to live through the war ; there were too many
risks to be taken, but we did feel that our cause would win.
However mean and petty our individual lives and thoughts
were, there was something in us now, bigger than ourselves
even, and that could make up for a certain futility when we
looked too closely into our thoughts.
One day Dominic said, 'You know it was in this room
that Dick McKee and Peadar were murdered ; the Auxiliaries
fought like mad dogs to see who would first get at them.'
Less than a month ago I had met Dick McKee to talk
about training schemes, We had exchanged our notes on
tactical tours and staff rides, and had discussed military work
in general, and books in particular. He had liked a long
memorandum which I had written on the organization, train-
ing, and operations of flying columns. At one time he had set
up and printed An t-Oglach by hand. He was tall, dark, quiet,
but a strict disciplinarian, respected by his officers and men.
'We'll have a good long talk the next time you come back
from the country,' he said, in his pleasant drawl. Peadar
Clancy I had first seen in County Tyrone during the election.
I had marched three companies from Coal Island to a meeting
near Loch Neagh. I met him at a cross-roads marching at
the head of his party. He gave me a firm hand grip; as he
swung out in front of me I watched the way in which he
tilted up his chin. Was the same bunch going to plug us:
was that why we had been brought together? Dominic would
say: 'They are going to murder us.' In bed I often woke up
at a slight noise. I could imagine a crowd shouting outside,
then the rush into the cell as we huddled in terror in a
vaulted corner. Dominic showed his nervousness. A priest, I
thought, should be more ready to meet them than myself.
***************************************************************
An Auxiliary walked into the guardroom. 'Stewart, Bernard
Stewart. Major Y wants to see him in the Intelligence Room.'
There were two men in the room ; one was in civilians,
226
the other in khaki. The man in the uniform of the Connaught
Rangers was medium-sized and slight in build. He walked
with a limp. His face was pale, the pupils of his eyes were
large and black, around them was a thin rim of blue. He
worked his lower lip. The other man was over six feet; well
built, with an air of command, the lines on his forehead were
drawn together when he spoke. He was Major Y; the other
Captain X.
'What's your name?' asked the Major.
'Stewart.'
'Your Christian name?'
'Bernard.'
'What are you?'
'A farmer.'
'Where do you live?"
'In Inistiogue, County Kilkenny.'
'But you don't live there.'
'No.'
'Where do you live?'
No reply.
'Take off your coat,' he ordered.
I took off my coat. He saw the cardigan jacket.
'Where did you steal that military cardigan?'
'I bought it.'
He came over, clenched his fist and struck me over the
heart.
'Where did you steal the cardigan?'
'I bought it.'
He struck me in the face with the full weight of his body.
I fell to my knees.
'Get up. Who gave you the gun?'
No reply.
'Are you going to answer?'
'No.'
He struck me again in the face and blood began to flow
into my mouth and to drop onto the floor.
The Captain said, 'Where do you live?'
'I will not answer.'
'Why?'
'Because if I did, you would burn my mother's home. I am
her only son."
'But we would not burn it.
227
'Well, houses have been burned, and I am ready to suffer
rather than have her suffer.'
'So you are ready to suffer,' said the Major.
He struck me rights and lefts to my face and body. I wiped
the blood from my face with the back of my hand.
'Place your coat in front of you,' he said. 'We don't want
the floor all blood.'
I did so.
'Turn round,' said the Captain.
I turned round.
'Do you see those photographs?'
'Yes,' I said, looking at the wall.
'Well, some of them refused to give information and they
are dead now.'
'Will you answer me?' said the Major. 'Where do you live?'
I did not answer and he hit me again and knocked me
against the wall.
When I stood up again he said, 'Will you fight me?'
'No.'
'Afraid?' sneeringly.
I knew that he could knock me down in ten minutes if not
in one, but I did not want to let him have the satisfaction of
thinking he had fought clean and beat me in fair fight. If
he wanted to abuse his manhood, he could do so, but he would
have no excuse for it.
Said the Captain, 'Do you know that your mother is
supposed to have your name up on the back of her door and
if she has not got it there she will get into trouble?'
I nodded.
'If you just give us the name of the man who gave you
the automatic you can go free, nobody will know, and you
can go back home and save your mother from trouble.'
'I cannot give information.'
'Yes, you can,' said the Major, hitting me again.
The Captain came over near me. 'I can issue orders to have
your house saved. I am the Commander-in-Chief and I will
sign the form now if you will give us your address.'
'I won't give my address, for fear the house might be
burned by parties of police or auxiliaries.'
'Are you a farmer?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Nice small hands for a farmer ; you're a nice bloody farmer.
What county are you from?'
228
I did not reply.
'What is your mother's name?'
'O'Brien.'
'Oh, I know where the O'Briens come from. You're from
Clare.'
I shook my head.
'From Ennis?'
'No.'
'Galway?'
'No.'
'Tipperary?'
'No.'
'Limerick?'
'No.'
'Kilkenny?'
'No.'
'Kerry?'
' . . . No.' I paused purposely before saying 'No.' I had
never been in Kerry save on the border, so he could think
I was from that county if he wished.
'Ha, Kerry!'
He asked me if I was from different towns which he
named, and my 'Noes' became monotonous.
'Were you ever in Dublin?' asked the Major.
'Yes.'
'Where did you stay?'
'With my uncle.'
'Where did he live?'
I did not reply.
'I saw you in Dublin once,' he said. 'You were on a tram-
car.'
'I often went on tramcars,' I replied.
'You passed up Harcourt Street and turned Kelly's Corner.'
'I don't know Kelly's Corner.'
'You went on across a bridge.'
'Over a river,' I interjected.
'No, over the Canal, and you went along Rathmines Road
past Portobello Barracks ; that's where I live,' he added.
'I remember seeing a building.'
'On the right?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Yes,' said he, 'it was on the right. Then you came to the
Town Hall ; what did you do then?'
'I got off the tram,'
'Oh, you went up Leinster Road, I suppose,' said the Captain,
'or perhaps you walked on straight.'
'What did you do?' the Major asked,
'I went to the pictures.'
They looked at each other, as much as to say, 'He's too
damned ignorant.'
The Captain consulted some notes. 'Oh, a nice little plan
about the Kilkenny patrol,' he said. 'You wanted another
murder.'
'Stop,' said the Major, and the Captain shut my black note-
book.
He referred to my notes of the strength of the armed party
that went daily from the military barracks in Kilkenny to the
gaol to relieve guard.
'I have a little plan,' the Captain said. He walked in front
of me to a stove and picked up a poker from the floor. He
dug the poker between the bars. He pulled it out, the point
was a soft crimson; he shoved it back. The Major looked at
me, then turned to the stove. I felt a hollow in my stomach.
The Captain looked at the poker ; it was bent, the crimson
glow ran up close to the handle. 'Now you'll talk.' He held
the poker in front of my face. I moved back from the heat.
'By God, you'll talk.' He held one of my arms tight, then
angled the point forward as if to dig it into my eyes. He
swung it horizontally until it was on a level with my eyes. My
eyebrows were singed ; the heat made my eyes burn. He
brought the poker nearer, I tried to move back, the smell
made me cough dryly. My eyelashes curled up ; the lids
smarted. I tried to keep my eyes open. They were hurting me.
My God, I thought, my eyes, if he touches them I'll jump for
his throat and tear it. 'Will you answer?' I shook my head.
He raised the poker as if he was going to hit me. He put it
back between the bars of the stove.
'Do you think you are going to beat us?' said the Major;
'you're going to answer questions, do you hear?' he shouted.
'Where do you live?' He hit me hard in a passion, smash after
smash.
I got up from the floor. My cheeks were cut, blood ran
from my forehead into my eyes. My eyes were swollen, it was
hard to keep up the lids. As I swayed on my feet, I could
see their faces jump forward and back like land seen under
hot sun or through thin smoke. The blood in my eyes made
230
the room a distorted jumble of reds and blues. A hot salty
taste of warm blood flowed down my throat, and through
my lips when I took breath. My tongue seemed to loosen my
teeth, which were now as big as fingers when it pressed on
them. My nose was pushed aslant; I snorted when I exhaled.
I felt myself trying to sing. I heard the words plainly but I
did not know if the sound was coming from my voice.
"I know my love by his way of walking,
I know my love by his way of talking,
I know my love by his eyes of blue."
'Damn you you swine ' the Captain shouted, his voice
skidded to a shrill note. He gripped my throat with one hand,
he pressed hard over my heart with the flat of the other. He
squeezed my neck with both hands, shoving his thumbs well
in. He turned to the Major, eagerly.
'Will we do him in?'
'No, not yet.'
I dropped to the ground when he took his hands away, I
gulped for breath.
'Get up,' the Major ordered.
It was hard to get on my feet, the calves of my legs
trembled as I knelt on one knee.
'Will you answer questions?' he asked.
'No, I won't, but I'll fight you.'
'Oh, no, you won't fight him,' said the Captain ; 'you're not
going to have the satisfaction of hitting a gentleman.' He
walked to a desk near the window, took a Webley forty-five
Service revolver from a drawer.
'Do you know what this is?'
I nodded.
'Now watch,' He broke the action and spun round
the cylinder on either side, showing me the lead points and the
base of the cartridges. 'You see, it's loaded.' I watched the
six cartridges. 'Get up against the wall.' I backed until I was
touching the wall.
'I am going to give you three chances; if after the third
you don't answer your brains will be on that wall.' He spoke
slowly. 'Who gave you the automatic?'
'One.'
No answer.
'Two.'
He slowly cocked the hammer. I looked along the bluish
barrel, my legs twitched in shivers at the thighs. I brought
my heels together with a snap.
'Three.'
I stood stiff. He pressed the trigger; there was a bang. He
had used a blank cartridge.
Two men came into the room, one small, undersized,
furtive ; the other had a khaki bonnet, a greatcoat covered
the uniform. He had a long thin face, mobile lips; little lines
ran from the edge of his nose to the corners of his mouth.
He looked a lawyer. He spoke with a quiet, pleasant, educated
accent.
'Do you want to be hanged?'
'No.'
'Well, you're going to be hanged for the Macroom ambush.'
'But I was not there.'
'We have witnesses to prove you were there and you'll
hang. Are you afraid of hanging?'
'No.'
'You'll hang unless you tell us your address and where you
got the pistol. We'll give you money and see you all right.
Are you fond of your mother?'
'Yes.'
'Don't you know you are bringing her trouble, and if you
are hanged she will be disgraced?'
'With us, hanging is no disgrace.'
'Look here, my boy, you are young; don't be a fool. No
harm will come to you, you will be saved. Can't you give us
your address?'
'No.'
'Then you'll hang for Macroom.'
'Wipe your face,' said the Major.
I used my hands and coat but the blood still came.
'I'll see you again, Stewart, remember.'
As I crossed the yard, a tall Auxiliary with a bandage round
his head stopped me. 'What's wrong?' he asked.
'They tried to make me give information over there.' I
pointed to the Intelligence Room.
'Did they do that to you?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, damn,' he said as he walked away.
The guards looked at me, but did not speak. After a while
one said 'Try some boracic acid.'
232
'I'm all right.'
Two Irishmen from the company came in. They looked at
me. 'It's a shame to muck up a kid like that.' I heard one of
them say as they walked out.
Two girls walked towards me as I exercised with another
prisoner in the passage leading towards the main gate. I knew
one of them, Aunia Malone. She did not recognize me.
'We are prisoners,' I said. I asked my companion to drop
behind.
'Aunia, don't you know me?' I asked.
She stopped. 'No.'
'Look again.'
'My God, Earnan. Is it you? I did not know you. Oh, who
did that to you?'
'Major Y and Captain X. How did you get in here?'
'This is Dick McKee's sister.' We shook hands. 'We got a
permit to come here. We want to look for clothes and things
belonging to Dick and Peadar.'
'Aunia, my name is Stewart, Bernard Stewart; I was taken
in Inistiogue, County Kilkenny. Don't tell any of the boys or
you know what will happen to me. Get word to the C.S. or
to Mick at once. They are going to hang me for Macroom.'
'Do you want anything, Earnan?'
'Yes, a shirt and some hanks ; I have no clothes and I
can't write to anyone.'
'Anything else? How about sweets?'
I smiled, she knew I liked sweets. 'Beannacht De/ for the
present.' She walked away with Dick McKee's sister.
Later, Aunia crossed to where I sat in the guardroom; she
handed me a box of sweets and a parcel of clothes.
'What are you doing here?' asked an Auxiliary, who came
over to us.'
'Talking,' said Aunia ; she did not turn her head.
'Show that parcel.' As he stretched out his hand, it touched
her arm.
She drew back with the quickness of disgust. 'Take your
dirty hands off me, you Tan.'
'Get out of here ; you have no right to enter the guard-
room.'
Aunia tossed her head. 'Beannacht De/ Leat.' She walked
out quickly.
'Let's have a look,' said the Auxiliary. He opened the
233
parcel. He had always talked to me in a friendly way when
on duty. 'All right, you can keep them.'
Captain X(King) came into the room, he looked at a list as he
called prisoners' names. He came to Coughlan.
'Coughlan?'
A young boy with a dark, fiery head stood up, 'Yes.'
'Say, "yes, sir" to me,' ordered the Captain.
'Answer the officer properly,' said one of the guard.
'Coughlan?'
'Yes.'
'Yes, what?'
'Yes.'
The Captain looked around at the prisoners. His eyes went
up to my blood-stained overcoat hanging on a nail.
'Whose coat is that?'
'Mine,' I said. I spoke in a low voice ; suddenly I was
terrified. I had been expecting him to come in again.
'All right, Stewart. I'll see you again, soon.'
The lawyer who had been in the Intelligence Room walked
over to me : 'Have you changed your mind yet?'
'No, I have not.'
'You'll hang for Macroom, then, Oh, you're a fanatic.'
My injured eyes now hurt me a good deal. I found it
difficult to read, and the pupils seemed to enlarge quickly as
if under strain. I spent more of the day now watching the
Auxiliaries and studying their individual expression, charac-
teristics, and speech.
The cook was a friend of mine. He stopped to talk to me
as I went through to the closets. Often he gave me apples or
oranges. 'You'll be soon released,' he'd say, 'don't worry.'
He walked with the quick, decided emphasis of a man who
had served a long time. 'Old soldier,' he'd say, 'we know the
ropes ; old soldiers never die--they simply fade away.' He
had tangled eyebrows and a jet black moustache, his face was
shiny from heat.
Christmas was coming, there were now three prisoners, the
Kilkenny Commandant and a boy who said he was from the
Dublin Brigade. The old major came in one day.
'How are you, my boy?' The smile went up to the gleam
of his bald head.
'All right, thanks.'
'You'll have a good dinner tomorrow. We'll see that you
get whatever is going.' He patted my shoulder.
234
On Christmas Eve the cook walked over to where I sat on
an army biscuit. 'Come on and I'll cut your hair and shave
you, then you'll look well tomorrow.' He talked as he snipped.
'I'd never pull a gun on an unarmed man. I don't hold with
that sort of thing.' He brought me upstairs to the rooms
where the Company slept. By the side of each bed was a rifle
with bayonet fixed. Some of the men were lying down. 'Always
ready,' he said.
We sat at a table beside the guard on Christmas Day,
four Auxiliaries and three prisoners. It was a good dinner ;
we did not talk much. I was thinking of other Christmas
dinners. Last year with Countess Plunkett; we had a good
time at table, and the year before with Miss Ward at Killy-
begs, after a long ride through Donegal mud.
When we had eaten the Christmas pudding, the Section
Commander turned to the Kilkenny man : 'Do you drink?'
He filled his glass and that of the Dublin boy with port. 'And
you?'
'I don't drink,' I said.
'Fill your glass with water.'
The guard stood up. 'Stand up,' said one. We stood up.
'Gentlemen, The King!' said the Section Commander. He
shouted the old toast as if his loyalty had been questioned.
It rang tensely like a confession of faith. The prisoners drank
with the guard. I sat down. The four kicked aside their chairs
and came over to me. One of them swung me round by the
shoulder as he drew his gun, the others had guns in their
hands. They were cursing.
'Why didn't you drink the King's health, you bastard?'
shouted the Section Commander. 'Why?'
'He's not my king.'
'That doesn't matter, these two drank it and, by God,
you're going to. Here, take it.' He shoved the glass of water
into my hand ; the water splashed on the floor. He stuck
his gun high up on my back.
'That's the stuff,' said the swarthy Auxie who had previously
been pointed out to me as a bad egg. He was leaning against
the mantelpiece. 'Put the swine through it.'
A tall officer with a Sam Browne strap slanted across his
greenish black uniform strode in.
'What's the row? I heard you shouting outside.'
'That swine won't drink the King's health, sir,' said one.
He turned to me : 'Is that true?'
235
'It is.'
'Why do you refuse?'
'I am a soldier of the Irish Republican Army, and I owe
no allegiance to your king.'
He looked at me. He held out his hand. 'Shake hands,' he
said. We gripped hands firmly. He turned to the guard; the
anger was going out of their faces. 'You heard your orders,
didn't you, that prisoners were to be well treated on Christ-
mas Day? My name is Captain --' (I forget the name
now.) He said to me: 'If there's any more trouble send for
me. Now remember.' He turned to the guard. The four came
over to me, we shook hands one after the other.
'I'm sorry,' said the Section Commander; he put his hand
on my shoulder.
'That's all right,' I said. 'I'll drink your health.' We raised
glasses and drank together.
'I know what I'd do with him,' said the swarthy one.
The other prisoners were brought out of the room by
Auxiliaries. My friend, the Major, came in : 'Why don't you
come on up, come on to the mess room and have a drink.'
'There was nearly dirty work here over a toast,' I said. 'I
don't want any more of it.'
'No one will say anything. I'll be with you. Come along to
the mess room.'
Auxiliaries were talking and singing in a large room up-
stairs, some were trying to dance. Bottles of wine, liquor,
whisky, and champagne were on the table.
'Will you drink with me?'
'I'm sorry, but I don't drink now.'
'Oh, well, your health and mine in a little bubbly.' He
poured out two large glasses of champagne, we clinked glasses
and drank. We joined hands around the tables and sang :
'For the Sake of Auld Lang Syne.' We roared the chorus,
swinging our hands to the words. They cheered when the
song was over. With one knee on a chair we drank 'Good
Luck.' 'Prisoner's speech,' shouted the company. The others
spoke. My turn came: I did not like to speak. I said that I
was glad that we who fought each other could be human for
a while. The Major linked my arm as we went downstairs.
I sat by the fire. One of the guard ordered the other
prisoners to sweep the floor. 'It's good enough for them, he
said to me. 'They haven't much principle.' They offered me
cigars and stuffed them in my pockets.
236
Auxiliaries came in; they sat down to talk. 'It's a rotten
job, this,' said a man with a Scotch accent. 'But what can
we do? I was out of work.'
There was a difference in their tone of voice; they dropped
the official soldier manner. I had a glimpse of men who did
not believe in what they were doing, but who would carry
out their work thoroughly ; they forgot that they were talking
to a shinner and a murderer. They asked me to sign Christmas
cards ; I wrote in my large backhand scrawl. 'Won't you
sign your names?' I asked. They wrote their names on a card
for me.
'It's funny, you know,' one said as he signed. A young boy
led me over towards the window; we leant against the Lewis
gun. 'Could you let me have your name and real rank as a
souvenir? I'll keep it.'
'I have no rank,' I said ; 'it's dangerous these times.'
'All right, as you wish. You spoke like a 'varsity man
above-stairs ; better look out; but I don't think they noticed.
Grace is my name, I'm from Trinity.' We talked on.
'You must admit that the R.I.C. have guts to stick it out.'
'They certainly have ; but we can't admire Irishmen who
fight for foreigners against us.'
He laughed. 'That's one for me, too. I wonder when it will
all be over, then I'd like to meet you and have dinner
together.'
'Two years from now when the Irish Republic is recognized
we'll meet on Christmas Day and dine.'
'Remember, that's a bargain,' he said, as we shook hands.
Eighteen
JANUARY 1921
AN officer of the regulars came into the guardroom. 'Stewart,
pack up. Hurry now.' It was evening time and dark. I had
become used to the movement and life of the room. I felt
lonely ; what was I in for now? I was ordered into an
armoured car. The officer sat beside me; two privates in the
237
darkness talked in deep, low tones. I tried to follow the
windings of the car, but after a while I could not make out
where we were going. 'Come on.' I followed the officer, he
had a revolver in each hand. He put one muzzle against the
nape of my neck ; the other tipped at my side. 'None of your
bloody monkey tricks. Move on.' 'Good night,' I said to the
soldiers. There was a pause, then 'good night' in echoing
rumbles. Was an armoured car crew picked because of their
voices, or did the gloom and steel make them sound so
funereal?
I was in a gaol, which one I did not know. Cold thick
shadows and ugly walls ; my boot crashed off the flags. A
clerk in uniform asked questions ; an officer stood by and
looked at me. He spoke in a cold, thinly contemptuous voice.
I disliked him thoroughly. 'Come to attention when the
officer speaks to you,' said the clerk. I did not move my feet
or hands. 'Am I to be treated like a soldier?' I asked. There
was no reply. A soldier walked in front of me with a Webley
in his hand, down a gloomy-looking passage. He opened the
iron door of a cell, the door clanged.
The gas came through a weak jet which spluttered and
gasped, lighting up slightly, now dimming the outlines of the
bare walls ; shadows jumped up, fell and climbed again. I sat
on a few dirty, brown army blankets in a corner. I felt a
sense of desolation sitting there all alone. The hard voice of
the soldier who had brought me through the tall narrow
passage up the clanging stairway kept coming back.
'There's your blankets.' The word 'blankets' rolled in again
and again as if it had untold significance. He had not
answered my 'Good night.'
I was part of an automaton which spoke a regulation voice
and was dehumanized. It could not attempt to assimilate, so
it would destroy. Outside we had laughed at the British, here
it was different. I felt them now as a machine; their officers
could be replaced by others, a spare part efficient for a
specific function would always be found. We ourselves had to
depend, not on organized strength so much as on personality,
understanding, and intimate or intuitive knowledge.
There was always something ponderous about the British
in the outward effect of their organized efficiency, parade
solemnity, and purpose. They were important ; they took
themselves seriously. The inherited class hatred of their officer
type, which helped to maintain the isolation of a caste
238
system, filtered through to the lower ranks of the army.
Behind the mask of assurance and arrogance was another
appearance ; it could be seen in the uncertainty and insecurity
that a movement of the people produced. Facing men of
their own stamp and mentality, the mask was a skin and did
not change much; facing a people whom they had exploited,
walked on, or laughed at, the skin became a mask. I had seen
it lift. Under it was what we feel when we view aspects of
our own futility in a clearly dispassionate way, aspects hidden
by the outward mask which others think to be wholly
strength, poise, or arrogance. Fear of the unknown quantity,
a spirit, uneasiness at a strength which they could not paperize
in an organized rooster way or hit at with organized force,
and the repercussions from their own propaganda which, to
show their achievements, had given us a stature in terms of
their own. Their unreal summing-up of the situation can-
cered them and traditional bureaucracy infected them with
traditional fears.
I found a butt in my pocket which I smoked slowly. I held
it with a pin to make it last. The lock rattled, I was given a
bowl of tea and a piece of hard dry bread; the tea was cold,
it tasted like weak soup mixed with tea leaves. The soldier
sniffed : 'No smoking here,' he said. I slept between blankets
on the floor.
Next day I was brought to another part of Kilmainham
Gaol. I was put in a cell at the corner of a passage. I had a
point of view at any rate. On the left of the passage was the
gaol wall, on my right a row of cells. I was brought out for
exercise with a number of other prisoners; they looked at me
curiously. Even with them I felt alone, they seemed to know
each other. We were not allowed to talk, but went around
on file in a half-circle.
The officer who had been in the clerk's room stood at the
door and watched us coldly. Whenever I came round I stared
back at him. He had a thin face, his skin was sallow, he had a
slightly cynical expression, thinking, I expect, of us swine
whom he had to keep as prisoners. I did not know any of the
other prisoners, but I answered their questions in spite of
the frequent command, 'No talking.' Some of the men seemed
to be able to talk without moving their lips. The small yard
was closed in by grey walls and buildings ribbed with tiny
barred windows. The wall was thick on top and a gallery
ran through it.
239
In the morning, by fours, we washed in the basement in
rusty enamel basins. We talked, splashing in the numb cold
whilst a soldier roared, 'Stop talking. Stop your -- talk.'
Then a banging at doors, opened one by one, a prisoner
orderly shouting, 'Burgoo up, burgoo.' He rattled on the cell
doors with a tin mug. The stirabout was thin, but good,
soupish tea and a hunk of bread. The jacks was at the end
of my passage. I could see it from the round peephole in my
door and could too often smell it. It seldom flushed. Urine
overflowed into the stone passage, its acrid smell spiralled
about, backed by sickly overtones of faeces making the air
taste. A military policeman from a Welsh regiment led us to
it when we banged on our doors. He kept his hand on his
Webley.
The gaol wall was over six feet thick, the cell window
narrowed like a loophole. It was clogged with dust and high
up. I could reach the ledge with my finger-tips by springing,
but they slipped off before I could get a good grip.
Murky light made reading difficult; the books lent to me
were detective stories or tripeish novels. The cell walls were
crusty with age, dirt, and misery. The passage was damp, the
walls oozy and smelly, boots beat out a noise that hit back
off the walls, cell doors opened and shut in iron strength
with a nerve-jumping tear. Gaol was at first a half-world of
bone-cold, smells, muddy light, and crushing walls. I would
stand up to yell with a high sustained note or sing songs. It
was hard to throw myself mentally outside of the walls and
to think what the martial law area was doing, or of what
change winter was bringing to the land. Rain would pelt off
the walls and wind swirl and scream ; both were cheerful
sounds now. The itch spread, when I rubbed my skin small
swellings came ; it was impossible to prevent myself from
scratching.
'Do you stand to attention for the officer?' I asked, at
exercise the first day.
'Yes,' said a boy behind me.
'Have we an O.C.?'
'No, there's no gaol organization.'
The sallow officer came to my cell every morning. Expecting
him I sat on the floor.
'Get up,' he jerked.
I stood up.
'Stand to attention for the officer,' said the orderly.
240
I angled my heels ; the officer looked at a list.
'Bernard Stewart?'
'Yes.'
'Say sir.' I kept silent.
'Bernard Stewart?'
'Yes. .. sir.' Later, an orderly officer would come in, give
a quick glance around. That meant that exercise time was
near.
'Any complaints?'
'Why complaints?' or 'No.'
We scrubbed out the flagged floors of our cells, in turn we
helped to wash the passage. We dipped the dirty rags in cold
water, then swabbed dirt from the flags, and rinsed them
again until our wrists were blue and numb. Grit, dirt, and
urine floated in the heavy zinc basins, clung to our hands,
and shrivelled them to a corrugated redness. But we could
talk, a cigarette would be slipped into my pocket, a candle,
and some matches. At night, wide smelly buckets were clat-
tered on the cell floors; we could not go to the jacks after
lights out.
Papers were not allowed. One night a paper was pushed
under my door. I read it beneath the fizzling gas jet. There
had been a raid on Eileen McGrane's flat in Dawson Street;
raiders took away piles of papers ; she was brought to an
unkown destination. Mick Collins had an office there and a
large press stacked with papers and files. He had been using
the room for over a year. My maps, notebooks, military
library, and clothes were in another room. Who had shoved
the paper under my door? It came as a warning. My maps
bore a geometrical pattern as a sign of ownership. I had
conventional signs of my own which I inserted in coloured
inks on my maps. The notebook contained abbreviations in
code, especially where ranks of men or enemy strengths were
mentioned. They would correspond with the maps and note-
book captured by the Auxiliaries in Inistiogue. In the Intelli-
gence Room at the Castle now they might be reading some
of the captured papers, and I had seen my notebook with
Captain Hardy in the Castle. My handwriting was distinctive
in its illegibility. They would connect up the two sets of
information. Captain X(King), who commanded 'F' Company, had
been in charge of the raid, I afterwards found.
In the guardroom I had felt that Eileen's flat would be
raided. When Aunia Malone came back with the sweets I had
241
begun : 'I'm sure there is a raid coming. Tell Eileen . ..' then
Aunia had snapped at the Auxiliary. 'Eileen McGrane,' I
added as she left the room, but I did not know if she had
heard me. I sat with my back to the wall. It was very cold,
but I did not wrap a blanket around me. Soon I would know.
I would not have much of a chance this time; they had the
drop on me. They would have fun pretending they did not
know anything about me as they asked innocent questions.
My notes would prove I belonged to Headquarters, my note-
books on counties would show parts of the country I had
been through. I did not know much, but now I felt I knew
too much. Offices of departments of the Dail and of G.H.Q.,
arms dumps, a grenade factory, names and ranks of officers
and random threads connecting up the movement. I was due
for a hearty manhandling and I was afraid for myself. I
knew I had got by very lightly in the Castle; now I remem-
bered stories of deliberate torture practised thoroughly.
For hours I sensed my extreme isolation in this hostile
world of gaolers and possible extracters of information. I
seemed to shrink in size before their approaching shadows.
I could not draw courage from any outward source or
memory ; often enough I had handed on my own small share
to tune up men, and I would get it back in increase through
the corporate strength of our union. One plan I had. I would
rush one of their guns, and grab one, or make them shoot me.
Later a reserve of courage began to work its way slowly until
I felt more confidence and an assurance that I should have
enough desperation to meet what would come my way, but
courage went suddenly when I felt the disparity between
thought and action.
A cold fog of fear came in and around the cell. I was now
facing a situation in my mind, answering another's possible
line of thought or action, but the interrelation of events in
actuality had too often no relation to my mental process.
The rough scratchy blankets had a friendly feel under my
hands as I stroked them. Tired, trying to see into a future
that I could not avoid, I folded the hairy blankets about me.
The gaoler officer came next morning. No slithery smile of
triumph on his face. That was well. He suited his work. A
measly-faced Cockney guard came with him.
Life had to be adjusted to fit this vacuum, and dimensions
had to be changed. My sense of time and space did not
exist now, cell volume might close in like a hatbox or draw
242
out to an infinity of blurring shapes. Air, light, and darkness
were different, but passing days brought an acceptance of
conditions and an adjustment. With a stump of a pencil I
worked out tactical problems on the cell walls and out-
manoeuvred the enemy to my satisfaction. The new world had
to be faced and penetrated slowly or by sudden flashes.
Slowly I studied the prisoners. Diagonally across from my
corner was MacNamara. Mac was on trial in connection with
'Bloody Sunday.' 'They call this the Murder Wing,' he said;
'we're all bloody murderers.' He sang loudly, I answered
alternate verses ; down the passage would come a chorus
bursting with discord or a wild whoop, then an angry shout:
'Shut up! You --' When the police rushed at a noising cell
they met a silence, further down the words would be con-
tinued, or a shrill yelp would take them in the rear : 'I'm
here, Mary Ellen, I'm here.' Mac had a gay air, he swung
his shoulders when he walked, and his smile flamed up from
white teeth to his brown-red hair. He had a way with the
police.
Paddy Moran was in the second cell down the passage
towards the jacks. He was due for trial for the supposed
shooting of Intelligence Officers. Of stocky build, but sinewy ;
fuzzy thick hair, showing two moons on his broad forehead.
He had a strong, pleasant face. He knew Collins and
Mulcahy, and he spoke of himself as 'the old gunner'; he
was captain of a Dublin company and had been, I was told,
second in command of the G.P.O. during Easter Week. He
had lived in Keadue near Loch Meelagh in County Ros-
common. It was easy to begin an acquaintance when I could
talk of a country I had liked. The men carried their home
places in their minds ; it was pleasant to take them out of
themselves by building up the skeleton of what they had
known well ; their memories would supply details, and people
the new country of their minds. When you knew a man's
district well and could talk about its personal geography,
you became, for a time, closer than a blood relation. He
knew the lonely shores of Loch Allen, the bare recession of
hills towards Leitrim and the smells of ferny undergrowth of
woods near the lakes of Skean and Meelagh. He was happy
to talk of Crossna and of the people he liked.
Thinking back, we could leave out clashes that then
seemed of most annoying importance ; we could laugh at the
mellow richness of what had furred our tongues. To test his
243
memory, and to take him out of gaol, I would ask him to
walk down the right bank of the Shannon from Loch Allen
to Carrick and come back on the opposite side. Next day we
would add further details. At exercise now he walked behind
me. "Do you remember the colour of the Curlews after rain?'
After another round of the drab yard, I'd say, 'And the reeds
near the shore in the early morning. Wouldn't it be fine to
stand on the Rock of Courage in Loch Key and look across
at the Rock of Doon?'
An orderly who served up stirabout always kept an extra
plate for himself, leaving someone else short; he cut bits off
our overboiled meat ration. Red-haired, very thin, with a sly
face, and a shuffling back-throat Dublin accent ; we wondered
where he put the food. 'He should have a belly like a poisoned
pup,' said a Cavan man, 'but it's more like a frying-pan.'
'Maybe he has worms,' suggested one. 'O man dear, have
sense; it's serpents more likely.' An elderly Wicklow man, a
firm believer in the Redmondite Parliamentary Party, was
almost a curiosity. He was a great believer in the power of
speech. To draw him, the boys would shout : 'Up, Redmond!'
or 'Where's the poor old Party now? Why don't they ask a
question about you in the House?'
Some would appear to be sympathetic, let him talk of
meetings he had attended, then lead him on slowly till a
laugh showed their purpose. Often enough the taunt, 'And
what about Parnell?' would end the chaff by a fiery outburst
of admiration from the others. A wrinkled knob of a man
with bent shoulders and long thin bony wrists, hanging from
short coat sleeves, spattering grey moustache and an indul-
gent nose, which he often wiped with his sleeve. There was
good feeling in the banter; we were all prisoners.
One day an egg was shoved through the hole in the door
of my cell. 'Break that in your tea,' said Moran's voice. The
yolk was too viscid and I did not like the raw taste ; I
was told to beat it up first, then pour in the tea on top. It
made the tea taste as if it had cream in it. Father Dominic,
I was told, had sent me the eggs ; he continued to send them
daily. He raised his hand in greeting when we saw each other
in the yard. When in front of me, he talked back of Cork
and about the boys there, but I did not say that I knew any
of them. Once, he said, 'The Auxiliaries burned the centre of
Cork City the other day.'
Prison discipline changed. The police did not handle their
244
guns; they did not keep themselves in a fearful tenseness as
if someone was always ready to grip them by the windpipe.
They had been told that we were murderers. That meant an
image from a Sunday paper; twitching hands and a furtive
walk, or sullen hardness. They heard us laugh and sing, rag
and annoy each other, joke and refuse to take prison regula-
tions seriously, Even their officers were not respected.
Gradually they learned to talk to us, to laugh, to enter into
the interior life of our wing. They joked about arrests and
hangings.
We stopped to talk at cell doors on the way back or to
the lavatory ; we slipped out to meet each other when cell
doors were opened at mealtime, There were long delays
downstairs when we washed in the morning, we began to
eat in one another's cell, and the smell of cigarette smoke
would delight the passage air. The police asked for rosary
beads and medals ; they were safe now, they said, against
ambushes. None of them were Catholics. They sat in our
cells to enjoy our forbidden cigarettes and they smuggled in
half-pints to a few. Cell doors were left open save when
officers were expected. They played tunes on a mouth-organ ;
an enthusiast with a melodeon taught them the steps of
country sets; we held concerts and dances in our cells. They
taught us some of their songs and bits of regimental tradition.
We taught them our songs and ballads. We parodied their
words, they returned the compliment. Some of the stricter
police cursed violently when the words of some of their
songs were changed.
'All prisonners out.' We were herded in the small exercise
yard. 'What's up now?' 'Is it a move?' was asked. Military
police looked at lists of names. Two prisoners were taken
away. 'What does it mean?' a man beside me asked ; his
lower jaw jerked nervously. 'Identification parade,' said
Moran. Two more prisoners were led off. 'No,' said Mac,
when six had passed out through a small gate, 'we're going to
have our photos took, the policeman told me ; any of you
criminals got a comb?' No one would refuse to have his
photograph taken, I found. Two Auxiliaries stood near a
tripod in a faraway yard. 'Here, hold up your face,' said
one ; 'don't be afraid ; what happened to it? Oh, I remember,
the Castle, eh?' said a tall streak of a man as he pushed my
profile into position. 'Christmas Day we had a good time.
Here you are,' He handed me a packet of Abdullas.
245
Other prisoners got parcels from home ; the food helped
them to avoid the monotony of gaol cooking. I did not like
the food and I ate little. I crumbled the bread up into pellets;
that made it last a long time, and I bit lumps of candle. I
did not care to tell any of my neighbours that I was hungry.
Moran must have guessed that there was nobody to whom I
could write; he asked me down to his cell one morning and
I had a good feed. When I was leaving the cell, he gave me a
parcel of food. I did not want to take it, but he showed
me a box of groceries to prove that he had plenty. A long
drink of good tea in his cell was something to think about
before and after.
He used to talk behind me at exercise. One day, when we
were walking around, the officer brought a new prisoner
amongst us. 'I don't like that fellow's face,' said Moran; 'he
looks like a quitter.' The new prisoner had stooped shoulders,
a sallow complexion, though his face was white as if he had
been long confined. We met him when we went back to our
cells. He was acting Intelligence officer in the Fourth Battalion,
Dublin Brigade. I knew that two friends of mine had been pro-
moted recently, one was commandant and the other company
captain in that battalion. Both I had known at University,
and I was anxious to talk about them, but I did not speak,
I knew not why. Moran and I did not seek his company. He
was nervous, his eyes strayed when one talked; that and his
stooped shoulders gave him the appearance of being broken-spirited
or of being fearful of identification.
We dismissed him from our thoughts; one often met men
in gaol whose spirit had been broken, who were afraid of
being tried by court-martial, who felt they were fighting an
Empire whose resources were practically inexhaustible. One
day the newcomer was called out by Sallow face and returned
after an hour. There was a rumour that Captain X of the 'Q'
branch at the Castle had been to see him, but as he showed
no signs of ill-treatment we did not query the visit. It had
been rumoured that he had been 'beaten up' at the Castle,
but such cases were of common occurrence. A few days later
he was removed and that night one of the police--the one
who used to laugh when he said he belonged to the Welsh-Irish
Republican Army--told us that on his way to the Castle
he had jumped from the lorry, although handcuffed, and
had disappeared in the darkness. We hoped he would not be
recaptured.
246
Later a broad-shouldered man with a bandaged head was
put in a cell. He was said to be the Dublin assistant-brigade
Intelligence officer. He had come from the Castle. 'What
happened?' he was asked. 'Oh, I was bashed in the Intelli-
gence Room' There had been raids in the city; some of our
ammunition dumps had been seized.
At exercise time I saw Rory O Connor, Director of
Engineering, in the next yard hidden by the angle of the gate.
I did not know he had been arrested. He waited until the
soldier was not looking, then slipped through, and worked up
till he was beside me. His sunken eyes smiled out of their
dark blue hollows :
'Where did you get that sweet face?'
'From the noble hearts in the Castle.'
'We didn't think you'd come through it; the C.S. was sure
they'd do you in. Only a few knew you were pinched.'
'How are things outside?'
'Slow enough' They'll begin to move soon and it's about
time. The Brigade will bomb lorries on the streets and give
them general hell. Now, I'll have to buzz; see you at Mass
on Sunday.'
As we quickened our steps to keep warm I heard a voice :
'0 Malley.' I did not turn round. I wondered if my face or
shoulders showed any signs of the name being mine. I had
prepared myself mentally for that; it might be sprung upon
me if they heard I had been arrested and were not sure of
my description. The sallow officer stood in the doorway,
slapping his trousers with a malacca cane.
'Eh! 0 Malley!'
Later a half-glance showed a boy waving at me. I dropped
back, man by man, until I came to him. He was from my old
Dublin 'F' Company. 'Don't howl,' I said, 'and forget that
you know me. My name is Stewart. I'll talk to you upstairs.'
He had been captured with three others in an ambush.
'They're going to hang the bunch of us,' he said.
I brushed against a newly arrived prisoner from Mayo, I
smelt the tang of turf-smoke on his homespuns. That brought
back a memory of firesides and their associations and the
whole sweep of the country in every nature and mood and
season. For a whole day the thought of escape did not come
to me.
A boy named Teeling had been sentenced to be hanged.
Mac, Moran, Whelan and another prisoner were still on trial.
247
The bearing of the sentenced men and of those waiting for
trial by court-martial varied. Teeling was gay-hearted and
easy-going. He had been captured on the morning of 'Bloody
Sunday,' whilst on guard at the back gate of a house in which
officers had been killed; he had been wounded. He was the
only prisoner who had actually been taken that morning.
For him there was no escape, and his whole manner and
expression, the way he held his head, his laugh, his talk,
rugged and direct, showed that he was not afraid to face
death, that it was all in the day's work. He walked with a
slight limp and did not often come down to the yard with us.
Whelan's features were finer and more delicate ; smooth-
faced, quiet and brown-eyed with wavy hair ; he smiled
quietly and steadily. His voice was soft, and when he laughed
with others one knew that the fibre was not as hard and
that there was a shade of wistfulness about him. Moran was
stolid and serious. There was a roll in his walk. Daily, food
was brought up to the gate for him, a thermos of tea and
often an apple cake. He showed me his girl's photograph.
'That's a great girl,' he'd say, shaking his head with a remem-
bering smile which made his face softer and more gentle.
'She brings the grub and the apple cake. I wish . . .' But he
never spoke his wish.
There was another boy whose name I forget. He looked
broken, and his eyes were sad and bewildered, something was
happening that he could not explain to himself, and death
was going to dangle him for no reason he knew of. He was
not connected with the army ; the burden of insecurity and
uncertainty weighed him down. It was pathetic to watch him
and compare him with the others. Looking at him, one felt
what a terrible fate hanging was ; studying the others, one
forgot the noose ; there was a young courage which death
would hand on to the generation which was going to see this
struggle through.
I read The Brothers Karamazov. Several times outside I
had tried the book, but I was not able to read far. I began
Crime and Punishment. I was so excited that I could not
sleep well. The mental excitement of Dostoievsky came over
to me; it put my mind in a whirl of delight and warmth and
overstimulation. I re-read the books. They changed the cell.
Hostages from amongst the prisoners, including T.D.s, were
being used by the British. The prisoner had his hands stretched
over his head ; they were then tied to a steel bar that ran
248
from front to rear of the lorry. 'Bomb now' was painted on
a card near the prisoner. The enemy thought that their use
would slow down or prevent the daily bombing of lorries in
the streets. To us this practise meant that the British were
being hard hit. The Dublin men continued to throw eggs.
A hostage from our wing was taken out one day. His lorry
had been bombed as it passed through that part of Camden
Street known as the Dardanelles, on account of the narrowing
of the houses and the number of ambushes that took place
there. Two bombs had been hurled at the lorry ; they had
rolled off the sides before they burst. The Tommies had the
wind up proper, he said ; they yelled and threw themselves
down and the officer could not make them get up for a long
time.
New prisoners told us what was happening outside. We
cursed in the silence of our cells. It was rotten to be shut up
when everyone was wanted outside. The fight was getting
hotter; that was some satisfaction. I tramped up and down
my cell, banging my nailed boots hard, kicking the walls, wild
that I could not take a part, thinking always of escape.
Military police told us of the raids they had been on: 'Get
Collins and Mulcahy dead or alive, that's what the officers
told us; but 'strewth it's hard, them blokes are well armed.'
Moran and I often talked of escape. Teeling, who was now
closely watched, came into us one day on his way back from
the jacks. The police liked and admired Teeling, they told us
what a fine fellow he was; most of them would be sorry to
have him hanged. 'Mac told me one of the police is friendly,'
Moran said; 'you'd better talk to him.' I met the soldier in
my cell. He seemed sincere; that evening I gave him a note
for the Chief of Staff, and told him where to leave it. I got
a reply, then I sent a sketch of our wing and outlined our
plan. Moran and I had gone through the nearby yards in
the morning when we went downstairs to wash. There was
a heavy gate in a faraway yard ; its two parts were backed by
a heavy steel bar which was kept in position by a huge
padlock. I asked for bolt cutters and a gun ; Moran and I
were ready, I said, to take any chance so that Teeling should
escape ; we would need men from the local company to
guide him through the streets after Curfew. The C.S. wrote
that any plan decided on must include Teeling and me.
I had been out on several identification parades ; one of
the men called them 'indentification.' Seven or eight prisoners
249
were walked out and drawn up in line in front of two zinc
boxes. There were slits near the top, and through them we
could catch the flash from a pair of eyes as we were slowly
scrutinized. A few of the men shuffled their feet and jerked
their bodies uneasily. Sometimes we were examined in
silence; one of us would be made to stand in front longer
than the others. An officer standing to one side of the line
would say : 'Hold up your head. Turn round. Walk this way.'
We looked at one man turning, walking, showing his full face
or profile. Once I held the hand of a man beside me. He
was shivering.
'To hell with them,' I said.
'I can't help it,' he whispered, then the shivers stopped.
A ticket checker in uniform had been arrested in connec-
tion with a raid by the Dublin men on the Kingsbridge
Station ; two waggons of stores and ammunition had been
captured and the military guard disarmed. He was very
nervous ; it would be easy to pick out a man in uniform.
The parades were probably in connection with 'Bloody
Sunday.' The British could not admit that their detectives,
secret service, and large police force were somewhat power-
less. They could always quote in the House of Commons or
in newspapers the number of arrests and suspects held. In
England, an arrest would read as an implication of guilt; to
us arrests meant that the British had to do something to
justify their armed men and bolster up their frequent
statements that 'they had murder by the throat.' There was
no doubt in my mind but that the bombing of troops in the
city would mean the identification of some groups of us for
another offence.
Sixty of us were drawn up in ranks in another yard ;
numbers were hung around our necks on a piece of card-
board; we were moved up slowly in ranks of seven till we
were opposite to a row of zinc boxes. There were long
intervals between ranks. Men stood at ease, slouched or
laughed; faces looked peaked and drawn. Some tried to talk
to prisoners from other wings. The long wait became tension.
Nothing to look at but drab grey, thick walls, small prying
windows with dirty metal bars ; soldiers herding us and
officers watching carefully. I might be picked out for
Macroom or for something else; if I knew what I was up
against, I could face it, I felt, but the uncertainty was hard.
We had no idea who might be behind the slits. This was a
250
big day and there was a ceremonious feeling about it. We're
like the burghers of Calais, I thought, as I looked down at the
piece of string about my neck; was it the thin shadow of a
rope? Our rank halted in front of the slits. I heard a foot
scraping against zinc; an officer to one side of the box whis-
pered to someone inside. 'Right turn.' In file we passed the
row of boxes slowly; two men had to stand longer than the
rest of us. Afterwards, we talked about it ; what did it mean,
why were so many prisoners brought out; what was going to
happen next?
A boy said there had been a woman present.
'How did you know?' he was asked.
'I just knew and I winked back at her. It's a long time
since I gave one of them the eye.'
I was in the exercise yard. 'Stewart!' shouted Sallow Face
with his thin, precise lips. 'Come this way.'
My notes to the C.S. must have been caught; maybe I was
going to be interrogated, or they might have found out who I
was. I followed him into another yard. I saw twenty police
in uniform ; they had rifles. They looked swarthy and for-
bidding; all of them had dark hair. My mouth became dry;
I began to swallow in my throat; my hands were cold at the
tips and clammy when I closed them. 'Put him up against the
wall,' ordered their officer, a District Inspector of Police. I
was frightened--this I had not expected. Would they shoot
me? Anything seemed possible. The police stood about fifteen
feet away, some leant on their carbines with both elbows,
a few had the long-barrelled Lee-Enfield. They looked at me.
Some began to walk about the yard, others got further back
and talked. I saw an old sergeant with thick gold V's on his
arm shake his head. I heard some of their voices, they had
Connacht accents. Suddenly I thought that they suspected I
was Liam Mellows. He had escaped from the west coast after
he had led out the Galway men in Easter Week. He had tried
to get to Germany ; recently he had come back from the
United States.
At exercise we now walked in twos, getting into file when
the police told us the sallow one was coming. Paddy Moran
stepped up beside me. 'You'll get a parcel this evening ; it
must be the bolt-cutters.' We laughed aloud. At teatime our
soldier walked into my cell. He closed the door. He opened
the buttons on his tunic and took out a long package. It was
heavy. 'And here's something you'll like.' He drew a revolver
251
from his pocket. His cap was slanted on the back of his
head, he wiped his forehead. 'Christ, that was heavy. Your
sister said she'd send you some books to read. I met her
today.' Eileen McGilligan, who he thought was my sister,
probably brought my notes from him to Headquarters and gave
him the replies.
The bolt-cutter had two long detachable, three-foot handles.
I wrapped it up in a shirt. The revolver was a six-chambered
Smith and Wesson thirty-eight, and was loaded. I put it in
my trousers pocket. I tried to work a hole under one of the
flags with a nail, but I would have to take one up completely
to hide the gun, and two to get rid of the cutters. I gave up
the idea of hiding them under the flags. That night I prac-
tised quick draws and got my hand used to the grip.
I was moved down the passage to the cell beside Paddy
Moran. It was good to be near him but I would have to
pass two guards to get to Teeling in the night. At exercise
time I fitted the handles in the cutters and tied them from
my shoulders, under my shirt. I padded them with strips of
flannel underclothes to prevent them from rattling. I carried
the gun in my pocket. Cells might be searched while we were
out in the yard, and the least suspicious place seemed to be
myself.
At night we listened for the movements of sentries; in the
daytime Teeling, Moran, and I talked of what we had
observed. There were two lots of night guards; one of four
or five men in the second cell from mine, and four in a cell
close to Teeling, around the corner from my passage. I would
have to pass the guards to get to him. Then if I could unlock
his door we could reach the iron stairs, go down two flights
through a door to our exercise yard, across another yard to
the bulky gate. The bolt-cutters would easily get through the
steel bar, Moran said.
Our soldier, when not on duty, unlocked the padlock of my
cell and fixed the shackle so that it seemed to be fastened.
My hand was small, I could put it through the peephole,
unfasten the shackle, and attach it to a ring in the bolt, raise
up the bolt and slide it back. I worked at the bolt, slowly
sliding it backward and forward in the daytime, opening and
closing the door without noise, whilst Moran kept watch on
the passage. Teeling's cell could not be left unlocked at night;
it had no padlock, but its lock could be opened by pressing
against the jamb with the handle of a spoon. I practised
252
opening it while Moran and I talked, with our backs to
Teeling's door.
My door cramped my hand, but I was able to work it.
One night I opened my door and listened. I was in my
stockings; I carried my boots around my neck and the cutters
inside my coat. Small stirs made me nervously ready to dash
back. It was one thing to listen from my cell, another to be
out in the passage. I got to the first guard cell. I looked
through the crack made by the swinging in of the door. The
light was on, and the soldiers were lying down; their rifles
slanted against the wall or across their knees and they seemed
to be asleep. The door hinge was on my side of the opening;
I had to close the door in case I should have to return in a
hurry ; a sleepy soldier could notice a figure passing in the
light from the cell gas. I pressed hard on the angle of the
door; the metal moved slowly. My fingers were stiff; I had
to rest. I pressed again; there were squeaks. I heard a noise
from Teeling's passage. Someone was coming towards me.
I moved back quietly to my cell, closed the door, shoved back
the bolt, attached the padlock and rolled my blankets around
me. A soldier passed my cell. I tried again when all was still.
My door squeaked, my wrist was cramped. When I reached
the guard cell, I lay flat and looked through. A soldier was
sitting up, smoking.
For five successive nights I tried to get through to Teeling;
on two nights I closed the doors of two guard cells and
reached him. We whispered and I scraped back the lock; the
first time it took a long time to move back. 'Have you got it
yet? Hurry up ...no, take it easy.' Up the iron stairs from
the lower landing came the clang of boots. I shut the door.
I ran to the angle of the passage and watched. Two soldiers
came to the head of the landing; they looked in through a
peephole and halted. Outside Teeling's cell they talked; one
looked in; he beckoned to his pal and he peeped. Teeling was
a curiosity; he was to be 'unged. As they walked towards me
I scudded past the other guard cell, jerked back the bolt, and
got inside the blankets.
Another night I was working on his lock when I heard
movement in the guard cell nearby. I ran back past the
door, the bolt-cutters swung with my rush and clanged to-
gether. As I took the corner I heard the door open. My door
closed quickly with a groan of metal; I had not time to fix
253
the bolt. Two soldiers passed and came back after a long
while.
The guards slept uneasily, some held on to their rifles. I
could never be sure if they were even half-asleep. Sometimes
the noise made by the slight movement of their door made
some more alert. I was becoming nervous ; unimportant
sounds made me glide back; but my fingers were now more
hardened to the swinging backward pressure.
During the daytime I could sleep a little, but not much.
We could not be sure of the other prisoners ; some were
pigeons, or might have been set to watch certain men ; others,
although they were sound, would talk if they noticed any-
thing strange, or might unconsciously give it away by
secretive expression. Outside in the night, men from the
Fourth Battalion waited for us, ready to guide us and to
fight. They might attract attention. Every evening when dark-
ness came lorries and tenders were bombed; more civilians
were killed than soldiers. The military police told us how
nervous the soldiers were passing through the streets. Teeling's
hanging might be hurried up if an unusually heavy ambush
were brought off.
At Mass on Sunday, guards tried to prevent us mixing
with men from other wings, but someone always talked. That
meant more news from the outside. I knelt behind Rory
O Connor, he sat back in his seat.
'What luck?'
'Rotten so far, tomorrow we'll try after tea. Maybe you
can get to the yard; we can't time it, but if we get through,
the gate will be open,'
'Go ahead, don't mind me. I think they're getting ready to
move some of us, and things will be easier to work in the
camps.'
'How about the bolt-cutters; are you sure they'll work?'
'It's a gift ; they'll go through it like cheese.'
I sent out a note to say that we would try again, this time
after tea or before Curfew; the men outside should bring a
rope ladder in case the cutters failed.
Dusk came slowly that evening. I had tea in Moran's cell,
but I could not eat. We waited until Teeling's corridor was
clear of guards. Moran followed me, then Teeling. I gave the
cutters to Moran and knocked at the heavy gate, voices
whispered. Men from the Fourth Battalion were outside. I
stood back in the corner of the wall near a gate in the
254
partition wall with the thirty-eight in my hand. Heavy walls
bulked higher than ever in the dim light; night made them
thick and desperate-looking. This was their strongest prison.
I could hear heavy breathing from the big gate. 'O God,' in
a groan came from the darkness; from cells on top came the
words of a song :
"It's fifty long years since I saw the moon beamin',
On brave manly forms and on hearts with hope gleamin',
I see them again in all my day dreaming."
From the stairway by which we had reached the ground
floor came the clatter of boots. 'Ssh,' I whispered. Small
noises at the big gate stopped. The sound of boots went into
distance. 'All right, go ahead,' I said.
Moran was leaning against the gate feeling his hands.
Teeling was pressing hard on the handles, groaning. 'I can't--
the bloody things won't work. You try.' I pressed slowly on
the handles, I increased the force, my arms became taut and
my body trembled with the effort, but nothing happened.
Teeling took one handle, I used the other ; sweat gathered
on my eyebrows and dripped over my eyelids, my shirt
became sticky. 'I'll try again,' said Moran. I could hear his
short, grunty breaths.
I rapped on the door. 'Cutters won't work. Throw over
rope.'
'All right,' came through the gate. It was cold, but my face
was in a glow from excitement. It would be harder on the
last man to climb, as there would be no one below on our
side to hold the ladder strands taut, and he would have to
jump from the top of the wall. I was going to be the last. If
Teeling got away, Moran and I would be content even if we
were interrupted from inside. I was going to shoot it out, but
Moran had no gun. We could hear light noises against the
wall. There came sharp, snapping, rattling crashes ; they
seemed to continue when I could not hear them with my
ears. The terrible silence that followed was even worse. 'For
God's sake, what's that?' whispered Moran. I shivered with
the cold. Something had rolled on the sloping corrugated
roof of a shed which jutted out from the wall. Groping in
the dark I came upon a length of twine ; it was weighted
with lead. I pulled on the cord. It would not move. It was
caught on the top of the wall. I sent Moran back to the gate
to tell the men to jerk up the string. I tried to move it at an
255
angle, but there was no give. 'I'll have to pull,' I said to
Teeling. He caught my left hand and pressed it hard. He
laughed. 'All right, heave ho!' I pulled, the twine became
taut; I pulled again. It snapped. I had a piece of twine and
a lead weight in my hand.
Through the gate I said, 'We're going, good-bye.' All I could
hear was 'Better luck.'
'Hurry up,' said Moran anxiously; 'they must have missed
us.'
I hid the cutters under a pile of lumber in the shed. Up-
stairs we ran, springing quicker when we heard the sound of
marching feet on the second corridor; the night guard was
coming on duty.
We had no faith in the cutters, but we meant to try again.
If the weight was padded and luminous; if the ladder had
extra cords attached, an accident might be avoided. 'If the
next attempt fails, we'll have to fight it out,' I said ; 'my
nerves may crash.' Moran agreed. Day guards carried Web-
leys ; they had rifles ; night guards had rifles in their cells.
If we disarmed them, we could rush the main guard at the
front gate with bayonets fixed. If we failed or were beaten
back, we could fight it out in the yard, or fall back on the
unused part of the building.
'Teeling is game,' Moran said ; 'if we fail next time we
might be able to pick up two other men to fight to a finish.'
That would make five. Simon Donnelly, whom I had last met
handling men at the election in East Tyrone, had been
brought in that morning ; he would make six. Our soldier
came into Moran's cell, always he cheered us up with his
dancing laugh. His tunic was unbuttoned, he rubbed his hair
and perched his cap. "Strewth, it's hard ; what will Micky
Collins say?' A week ago he said he had met Michael Collins.
'In a public he was, an' he said your name will go down in
the history of Ireland.'
'Teeling is not going to be hanged,' I said; 'we'll fight,' I
told him we were going to seize the rifles. 'We are sure of
three men--Moran, Teeling, and myself.'
'Yes,' said Moran, 'and it's going to be a fight to a finish.'
'You have four,' said the soldier.
'What four?' asked Moran; 'we're dead sure of three.'
'Four,' said the soldier; 'I'm your fourth, Ga blimey,' We
smiled into each other's serious eyes. There was a pause, then
we shook hands and linked our arms on each other's shoulders.
256
I felt a rich, happy glow ; we knew what we were going
to do. Our soldier would find out the strength of the guards,
their hours of relief and general alertness, and the quickest
and best way to get to the main gate.
The unorganized condition of the prisoners in the Murder
Wing helped us to plan an escape. There was nothing tangible
for the enemy to thrust at; we had slowly won over most of
the day guards by adjusting them to ourselves. Our morale,
through increasing control of our part of the gaol, was good.
The police were slack ; they were soldiers first, and soldiers
make bad gaolers. Sallow Face alone, of the officers, was
more watchful ; his face and manner made a warden of
him. The real danger would come from anyone amongst the
prisoners who might be watching Moran or Teeling, from a
slip made by our soldier, who was as intense as we now were,
or from the betrayal of our purpose through our close-knit
comradeship. I had no intention of being hanged. I was going
to escape, dead or alive.
A small bottle of drugged whisky was sent in. If we could
give it mixed with more drink to the night-guards I could get
quicker to Teelng's cell, but how to get on proper terms with
them was a problem. Some of them would ask for cigarettes
after lights out; I often pushed some through the peephole.
I would hear, 'Thank ye, mate,' and an awkward silence as
the man continued to stand against the door.
A man in plain clothes came into my cell. He looked like a
pleasant official from the R.I.C. depot; there was an air of
protective humanity when he spoke.
'Bernard,' he began, 'I'm your friend, now don't forget
that. They have made up their minds to hang you for the
Macroom ambush.'
'But I wasn't at Macroom, and they know it right well.'
'They will hang you if you don't give your mother's address.
Think of what she is suffering, she doesn't even know where
you are. I can tell her you're safe, can't I?'
'But they will burn her house, that's what I'm afraid of.'
'Bernard,' he said soothingly, 'don't be afraid ; remember
I'm your friend, I don't approve of what some of them do.'
'I know that.'
'Well, Bernard, think it over. I'll be back again in a few
days, and that will be your last chance, and they'll hang
you for Macroom if you don't give your mother's address.'
257
He placed his hand on my shoulder. 'It's not much to ask.
Remember, Bernard, I'm your friend.'
'I know you are, thanks very much.'
He had kept me back from another identification parade.
As I hurried down the identification yard, I wondered if there
was any connection between his visit and my possible selec-
tion through the slits.
That evening Teeling came into my cell after tea; his eyes
were beating up and down with light. He grabbed my arms.
'Come on, quick. It's all right,the bolt's cut.' He rubbed
his hands.
'When? You don't . . .'
'Just now, the soldier and I. Like this,' he snapped his teeth.
We held our hands crossways and gripped hard. We both
laughed.
'We'll get Paddy and take Doyle and the boys from the
First Battalion,' I said.
Paddy Moran was writing a letter. 'Come on, Paddy,
Teeling's cut the bolt.' He stood up. 'God, that's great, but
. . . I'm not going.'
'You must. You're with us, you were willing enough the
other night.'
'No, I'm not going, I won't let down the witnesses who
gave evidence for me.'
'To hell with the witnesses,' I said, 'come on.'
'O, come on, Paddy,' said Teeling, 'come on.'
Moran shook his head slowly, smiling.
'I'm your senior in rank, but what's the sense in giving
an order? You talk to him, Teeling; I'll get Doyle and the
others.' The First Battalion boys were not in their cells. That
morning they had told Sallow Face what they thought of
him; he had sent them to punishment cells on a lower land-
ing. I could not find our soldier ; there was no chance of
getting a key. I went to Simon Donnelly's cell.
'Hop it, Simon, we're escaping--now.'
He smiled. 'Is that all?'
'I'm serious, Simon, come on, You know the neighbour-
hood.'
'Good,' he said as he followed me.
Teeling's face was strained. 'It's no use, he won't come.'
'Someone has to die for this, Paddy,' I said. 'Maybe Teeling
or myself, but they'll hang you for certain if we get through.'
'God keep you now,' said Paddy Moran, as he held our
258
shoulders. 'I'll start a concert to keep the police busy; you'll
not be missed until lockup.'
We were sad as we left the cell. On the passage towards the
stairs I went into Desmond Fitzgerald's cell. He had been
Director of Publicity.
"Any atrocities, Desmond?'
'No, but I saw Mabel today ; she was asking for you.'
"Desmond, could you please lend me sixpence for tram
fare?'
He smiled. 'I can give you five shillings.'
'No. Sixpence will do. I'm tired of this place,'
He laughed at my joke as he handed me the silver. 'For
tram fare, young shaver.'
We opened one half of the gate, it was heavy to move;
then we closed it. I was first with the thirty-eight in my hand.
I saw figures in the darkness close to the wall; one had a
peaked cap, but they had not heard me. I touched Teeling
with my hand : 'Soldiers, there's something wrong ; an out-
side patrol, I think. I'll stick them up and if I have to shoot
you two make a dash for it.' They halted whilst I went for-
ward. A soldier was holding a woman tight in his arms. I
went back to tell the others. We moved on under the wall,
passing other soldiers and girls locked together.
The wind was cold, it blew clean and sweet in our faces.
Gas lamps beamed out of the blackness ; front porches shone
onto small evergreen shrubs in tiny gardens and the stars
winked at us in a friendly manner. 'You'd better hide the gun
somewhere,' said Simon; 'you're never sure of a hold-up in
the streets.' It was fine on top of a tram. We felt inclined to
sing and shout; instead we pinched each other with delight.
There was so much colour, dun brick shining, people walking
along the South Circular, and talk coming up from the street.
We held our faces into the wind. Simon got off near Camden
Street, we went on to Malone's in Pleasant Street. Aunia
opened the door,
"Hello, we've paid a call,' I said.
'Oh, oh, oh,' she said, pulling us in by the hands.
"This is Teeling.'
In the kitchen we were hugged and kissed by Mrs. Malone,
Aunia, and Bridge. Mrs. Malone wept and smiled by turns;
she ran her hands over my face. 'They hurt you,' she said.
But it's all right now; if only poor Peadar and Sean Tracey
259
were here to see this day.' Aunia put on her coat. 'I'm off to
the Brigade. This house isn't safe now, we think it's watched.'
Later she linked our arms as we walked along the Canal bank
to Doctor R.'s house near Mount Street Bridge.
Nineteen
FEBRUARY 1921
TEELING'S escape itched Dublin Castle. The only prisoner
against whom there was definite evidence in connection
with 'Bloody Sunday' had escaped from their strongest gaol.
Doctor R.'s mother knew who we were. She went in the
evenings to play a game of bridge with her Unionist friends.
They had discussed the escape. 'They're afraid now of other
escapes, and the Unionists don't know what to think,' she
said. She chuckled as she thought of her talks at the club,
when her house held the escaped men.
Sean Russell, our Director of Munitions, walked away with
Teeling, who wore dungarees and carried a set of plumber's
tools. Tom Cullen, Assistant Quartermaster-General, brought
me to the south side, to the house of two elderly ladies,
school teachers. My name was now O Brien. They waited
anxiously when I was out close to Curfew, which now shut
us up at ten o'clock. They hovered near me at meals. 'I'm
sure you don't like that ; it's not properly cooked,' one would
say when I had eaten what I thought was a large amount of
the disparaged dish or dainty. They said I had no appetite.
They went to Mass and Holy Communion every morning.
Their confessor had told them that the men in charge of our
movement had been appointed by God to make Ireland free.
'Ireland will soon be free, thank God,' they said, 'and the
boys can go back to their homes and work for her in another
way.' They talked eagerly of the escape. Teeling had left
Dublin, they said ; but Stewart was still walking about the
city. Wasn't it dangerous for him?
260
At night I slept on a sofa. Near my head was a holy-water
font; an oleograph of the Sacred Heart and a picture of Our
Lady of Perpetual Succour had been pinned above my bed.
In case of a raid, I was to hide in a small triangular space
underneath the stairs and I would be quite safe there. One
morning I left one of my guns under the pillow. When I came
back, the pillow had been neatly patted into shape. They did
not talk about the revolver, nor did they again mention the
retreat under the stairs. They chatted and talked eagerly to
me. They leant on the table and looked at me when I used
maps or wrote. They were very kind and staunchly timorous.
On the north side of the city troops had begun the round-up
of a district which was beleagured for five days, A
house-to-house search went on, all traffic within the area was
stopped and permits were given to all those who moved about.
Machine-gun posts on the roofs, barbed wire, sandbags, and
sentries on the streets backed by armoured cars and tanks,
made the occupation impressive. The combing gave some
prisoners and an ammunition dump. At an hotel away from
the encircled district I met Mick Collins, who had cycled to
keep the appointment. He shook my hands a long time.
'Well, Earnan, you're born to be shot, you can't be hanged.
Why didn't Paddy Moran come with you?'
'I don't know. He thought there was no case against him.'
His face became grave. 'They'll hang him as a reprisal
now. His trial is still going on. What do you think of the
Auxiliaries?'
'A tough bunch ; they look good soldiers.'
'Yes, a bloody fine crowd.' He nodded his head with force.
Perhaps he had met some of them, I thought.
'I think the Castle could be attacked through "F" Company
quarters,' I said.
He placed his elbows on the table, he leant his chin on his
right hand. 'You think so?'
I drew a plan of the lower Castle on a sheet of paper, and
marked in the buildings and defences as I had seen them. Our
men could get through the houses in Dame Street to the
latrine, hold up the guardroom, block the sleeping quarters,
and deal with the landings in turn. 'I'd like to guide an attack-
ing party.'
He looked at my sketch asked questions and took notes.
'It might be done,' he said. 'I'll see about it.'
I was nervous at first in the streets, then I became surer of
261
myself. I saw Auxiliaries whom I knew from 'F' Company
swirl by. They would be sure to recognize me, I thought ; and
I had often to stop myself from trying to run. Troops spilled
out suddenly from armoured lorries, which were now wire-
netted to protect them from grenades, and from armoured
cars ; both ends and byways of a street would be blocked
simultaneously by soldiers and Auxiliaries. All between their
converging bayonets were searched by patrols and Intelligence
officers, for papers and arms.
Through the streets in file, well strung out, passed the
squads of Igoe's Gang, consisting of police from the county,
in civilian clothes. They were on the lookout for men whom
they knew. They could hold up quickly and their formation
would protect them against attack. They lived in the R.I.C.
depot. They changed their assumed names frequently, and
were known by numbers even when giving evidence in secret.
Patrols from 'F' Company Auxiliaries, in mufti, moved out
on foot from the Castle on special work. Our armed H.Q.
Intelligence Squad moved around looking for Intelligence
officers and detectives; they watched suspects or waited for
members of the castle murder gangs. The A.S.U. of fifty
men from the Dublin Brigade were also on the prowl.
At times I heard the quick loud crash as one of our eggs
burst and the answering fire from rifles and machine-guns.
There was a sense of tension in Dublin. The quietness of an
evening could become strain that might only be eased when
it was fearfully broken without warning.
Outside Stephen's Green I saw men attack a netted lorry
and an armoured Lancia of troops. Eggs shattered in a
tearing smash, one burst above the Lancia ; automatics shot
quickly, rifle reply came more slowly, then the rifles merged
with the swaying thresh of a machine-gun. The passers-by ran
or threw themselves on the pavement. I lay down, watching.
A man flattened on his blood in the cobbled street, two
soldiers lay loosely against each other in a corner of the
Lancia; up the street men tried to stop the red stains on a
woman's white blouse. Women beside me were moaning and
praying : 'O Sacred Heart of Jesus, help us.' I ran for a lane
beside the College of Surgeons and was soon in York Street.
At dusk on almost deserted streets duels took place between
bombing squads of our men from the five Dublin battalions
and armoured lorries. In the night-time, after Curfew, patrols
of troops moved on rubber soles, and enemy Intelligence
262
officers went about on raiding parties or rushed a house.
Night was their prowling time. The underground meshes
could open to send out their agents in security. Circulars
offering money for information, and telling what information
to give, were slipped under doors.
I changed from house to house. Three men from the
Fourth Battalion took me in one evening ; they were well
armed. During the night I heard screams. 'Oh my God, save
me! Quick, save me!' I rushed towards the noise with my
gun, thinking that a raiding gang had got quietly into the
house and were going to shoot their prisoners. One of the
boys sat up in bed screaming ; his companion was hidden
under the bed, his body twitched and his hands swayed like
an autumn leaf. Their nerves had gone suddenly. We sat up
with them till dawn. In Ranelagh I slept with two boys
whom I had known in the University. I was shaken out of
my sleep one night ; 'A raid,' said one. 'Get your gun.' I
pulled on my trousers, slung my boots by the laces around
my neck. Lorries had halted outside. We saw men in civies
and tin hats get down. We heard footsteps further down the
street and in the cinder lane at the back of the house. One
would hold the back door, two of us would open fire as we
drew back the front door, then dash out the back way. We
heard the heavy thud of a knocker being swung violently and
a shout: 'Open the door! Quick!' The raid was taking place
next door.
I met the Commandant of the Fourth whose men had
waited for us outside the walls of Kilmainham. 'It's well you
escaped,' he said ; 'our men were fed up waiting for you
night after night; we had to arrest three Tommies and four
girls whom we found near the gaol walls, and we kept them
prisoners until the escape came off. We thought you'd never
be able to escape. Some of our men had to be near the gaol
in the early morning and two of them used Corporation
brushes to sweep the roadway in front of the main guard-
room so as not to attract attention.'
I told him about the broken-looking man who had escaped
from his escort going to the Castle. 'Fouvargue's his name.
He was our Assistant Battalion I.O. and that escape of his
was faked. The British let him go. It's said that he broke
under torture in the Castle, and that he gave information.
Yet judging by results he mustn't have, for he had plenty of
information to give.'
263
A month later the body of a man was found on an English
golf links ; pinned to his chest was a card : 'Spies and Traitors
Beware!' It was Fouvargue. Under the name of Somers he
had tried to join our groups in England who were burning
the homes of Tans and destroying communications, but he
had been tracked down. I often thought of what Paddy
Moran had said: 'I don't like his face; he's a quitter.'
Later on I was told that he had been taken out, rushed
four times on raiding parties when in the Castle, and had
then been sent to Kilmainham as a stool-pigeon. Perhaps
terrified by the ill-treatment he was trying to deceive the British,
and yet he must have known that even if he didn't give away
important information his life was forfeited.
Frank Gallagher was busy in the preparation of the Irish
Bulletin, which was daily forwarded to the foreign press and
to members of the English House of Commons. Somehow,
the Bulletin always got through the cordon. 'It's time for you
to acknowledge the I.R.A. at last, Frank,' I said. Previously
we had been referred to as a suffering people who in despera-
tion were attacking their oppressors. We went to a house
which we had often visited before my arrest. Honor and
Sheila Murphy worked for our publicity. Mrs. Murphy's son
had been a naval officer; the house was safer than most on
that account. Frank, to rag me, discussed the Kilmainham
escape, and I listened to their pleasant talk about it ; previously
I had been O Brien to them, so they did not suspect his
allusions. That night I slept with a naval sword on a chair
at the foot of my bed to reinforce my other weapons.
*********************************************************************
I endeavoured to pick up the threads of the movements
from random talks and conversations, by reading reports for-
warded to our Headquarters from brigades, and by meeting
officers of the H.Q. Staff. A week after my arrest, Lord
French, the Lord Lieutenant, had issued a Proclamation
stating that the counties of Cork, Tipperary, Kerry and
Limerick were subject to martial law. Four days later,
General Macready, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in
Ireland, sent out another proclamation.
"After the 27th of December, 1920, any unauthorized person
found in possession of arms, ammunition or explosives will be
liable, on conviction of a Military Court, to suffer Death.
Any unauthorized person wearing the uniform or equipment
264
of His Majesty's Naval, Military, Air or Police Forces, or wear-
ing clothing likely to deceive, will be liable on conviction to
suffer death . . .
"Note well . . .
"That a state of armed insurrection exists; that any person
taking part therein or harbouring any person who has taken
part therein, or procuring, inviting, aiding or abetting any
person to take part therein, is guilty of levying war against His
Majesty the King, and is liable on conviction of a Military
Court to suffer death.
"The forces of the Crown in Ireland are hereby declared to be
on active service."
Three weeks later, in January, the martial law area was
extended to Counties Clare, Waterford, Kilkenny, and Wex-
ford.
Major-General Strickland in the martial law area began to
shower proclamations. People could be prosecuted for not
reporting that others were in possession of arms. Motors
were dismantled. Those still in use could not be used beyond
a twenty-mile radius. He prohibited the use of motor cars,
motor cycles and pedal bicycles between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.
"It is forbidden to assist rebels in any way, or to provide them
with food, clothing, vehicles, shelter. People are warned that
they must not fail to report rebels or any movements of rebels,
without delay. Anybody disobeying this order will render them-
selves liable to be prosecuted before a Military Court or dealt
with summarily.
"No person must stand or loiter in the streets, except in pursuit
of their lawful profession or calling. All meetings or assemblies
in public places are forbidden and for the purposes of the order
six adult persons will be considered a meeting.
"Anyone found defacing the proclamation will be rigorously
dealt with. All occupiers of houses must keep affixed to the
inner side of the outer door a list of the occupants, setting forth
their names, age, sex, and occupation.
"Notice is hereby given that on account of the numerous
attacks which have been made by rebel forces on motors and
lorries conveying forces of the Crown, officers and leaders of
the rebel force (commonly known as the Irish Republican
Army) will in future be carried in Government motors and
lorries.
"In order to prevent outrages by strangers taking place in
Dunmanway and district, it has been decided that six male
inhabitants shall be held responsible for each week for inform-
ing the O.C. Auxiliary Police at the Workhouse, Dunmanway,
265
of any suspicious stranger arriving in the Town, or of any
occurrence or circumstance which points to contemplated outrage
"This plan is further intended to protect other inhabitants
from intimidation and to render it possible for any Loyalist to
give information without the rebles being able to trace its source.
"The following individuals will be held responsible for providing
information from and including 16th February 1921, up
to and including 22nd February 1921:... Should any outrage
occur in Dunmanway, or within two miles of the Market
square, the whole of the above-mentioned will be placed under
arrest.
Dunmanway.
Lieut.-Col., 1st D.Q. II K Company, Aux.Div.,R.I.C.
Removal of this notice will entail punishment for the
entire District Council."
British generals and Irish chief secretaries since 1916
frequently assured Lloyd George that the Irish Question
would soon be settled. Macready, given a free hand in April
of 1920, promised to settle Ireland before the opening of the
autumn session of the British Parliament; the Tans and
Auxiliaries were not enough; Orders in Council regulations
were passed in September which gave him more power as
Commander-in-Chief, civilian inquests on men killed by the
British would not be allowed; Courts-martial replaced civil courts.
Lloyd George said there would be a solution by Christmas.
Extra batalions came with tanks, aeroplanes, armoured car
Companies and martial law. Now, Strickland, commander of
the Sixth Division, promised to have the martial law area in
hand by 1st April.
The Bishop of Perth, once chaplain to the Australian forces,
had come over as an emissary. A truce was discussed and
partically agreed to, until Lloyd George, backed by Wilson,
again decided that arms would have to be first surrendered
by the I.R.A.
'K' company of Auxiliaries burnt the centre of Cork City
in December, with the connirance of military curfew patrols,
and the help of the R.I.C. The company was removed to
Dunmanway, where the cadets wore a piece of burnt cork as
a cap badge.
Bishop Cohalan of Cork had pronounced sentence of
266
excommunication on those in his diocese who carried out
attacks on the British.
Barricades had been put up at the entrance to the British
Premier's house in Downing Street; detectives shadowed the
British Cabinet and the House of Commons was strongly
guarded. In England farm supplies and warehouses had been
burned by our men operating to the plans of Rory O Connor.
As a result of the carrying of our T.D.s as hostages in
lorries, it had been decided by our G.H.Q. to arrest about
ten English Members of Parliament and keep them hidden
in England. Then notice would be given to the British that if
a T.D. was killed in an attack by the I.R.A. on a vehicle in
which he was being carried, one of the prisoner Members of
Parliament would be executed. As our men in England were
ready to make the simultaneous arrests, the operation was
called off.
The English Labour Party appointed a Commision which
visited Ireland and published a report. The Englishwomen's
International League and the British Society of Friends
published reports.
The American Committee for Relief in Ireland, organized
in New York, in December 1920, sent a delegation who
reported:
"Material damage to Irish shop-buildings, creameries, and
private dwelling-houses inflicted by the British forces during
the past twelve months amounts approximately to #20,000,000
. . . the cost of replacing the buildings will be approximately
#25,000,000. We found there are 25,000 families in pitiful need
of instant help . . . from the crippling of the co-operative
creameries 15,000 farmers are suffering severe loss."
The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland was
elected from a committee of representative Americans sum-
moned by the New York Nation; it interviewed witnesses
and published the evidence.
January 7, 1921 : Official report after an attack on a police
patrol at Midleton, County Cork:
"Although it had not yet been possible to identify any of the
persons who were actually engaged in these attacks, the Mili-
tary Governor was of the opinion that the preparations could
not have been carried out without the knowledge of many of
the local residents, who were therefore held to be guilty, at
least to the extent of having failed to give information to the
267
military or police authorities. It was accordingly decided as
a punitive measure and as a deterrent example to other dis-
tricts to destroy certain houses in the vicinity of the outrage,
which were definately known to be occupied by the military
section of the Sinn Fein movement."
Irish Independent, 17th January, 1921:
"An extraordinary scene was witnessed at Ballina yesterday
when Crown forces arrested Messrs. P. Beirn, John and M.
Moylett, D. Molloy, D.C., and M. Corcoran, V.C., and com-
pelled them to parade the streets carrying Union Jacks. One
of the men was forced to trail the Republican flag on the
street. The procession was headed by an itinerant musician
playing a banjo, while a motor load of armed forces brought
up the rear. Before being released the men were compelled to
kneel on the ground and kiss the Union Jack, the Republican
flag being at the same time burned. All the men were promi-
nent merchants."
Irish Independent, 17th January, 1921:
"We have received the following message from our Ballina
correspondent: I am requested by the commander of the
Auxiliary Forces to contradict the statement that the merchants
who passed here on Friday evening with Union Jacks were
compelled to join in the parade, or that they were temporarily
arrested. He states that they were merely asked to come to the
auxiliary headquarters, and that when desired to carry the
Union Jacks through the town they did not object. He also
states that the street musicians joined in the procession volun-
tarily."
Irish Times, 26th January, 1921:
"Royal Irish Constabulary rounded up prominent residents
of Fermoy, marched them to the bridge in the centre of the
town where they were compelled to paint on the walls such
inscriptions as
God Save the King.
God Bless the Black and Tan."
January 27th:
"Any person who save in the due necessary exercise or pur-
suit of his lawful trade, calling or profession should stand,
loiter in any public place," is liable to arrest and prosecution.
All Dublin hospitals were required to furnish daily to the
268
military authorities a list of patients suffering from wounds
caused by bullets, gunfire or other explosives.
February, 1921. A.E. wrote:
"On behalf of the Irish co-operative movement I demand the
setting-up of an impartial tribunal to investigate the illegal
destruction of co-operative property by the armed forces of the
crown. . . actual injury is estimated by experts to be between
#250 and #300,000, while the annual trade disturbed is almost
#1,000,000."
Strickland, Commander of the Sixth Division, with head-
quarters at Cork, had sent a report to London about the
burning of Cork City. Lloyd George promised to publish the
Strickland report, but changed his mind.
March 6th. An English paper remarked on my notes, which
had been captured by Auxiliaries whilst I was in a cell in
Kilmainham
"The diary of this particular organizer is of great importance
as showing the 'I.R,A.' depends entirely for its continued exis-
tence on such organizers, who, going from place to place,
paint the virtues of the Republic, and keep the show going.
They are the liaison officers that keep the various seditious
societies in touch with each other, and with the civil popula-
tion, and although isolated ambushes would still be possible
without them, concerted action would be impossible. . . .
"The writer of the diary seems to have been an important
itinerant 'I.R.A.' organizer whose travels extended into the
four provinces."
Some English papers would have us sporadic gangs and
would eliminate the mass feeling behind a simple operation.
The Manchester Guardian, Daily News, Westminster Gazette,
and The Times wrote up incidents of the campaign in Ireland,
and made discord in the general chorus of newspapers which
made the most of gumen shooting troops in the back.
My friends in Kilmainham were hanged on different dates :
Paddy Moran and Whelan; and together the boys from the
First Battalion whom I had been unable to reach: Bernard
Ryan, Patrick Doyle, Thomas Byrne, Frank Flood. In Cork,
prisoners had been shot by firing squads in Victoria Barracks.
I wanted to get away to the country again, but the Chief
of Staff told me not to move until my health was better. I
saw an oculist and had to wear spectacles, which I hated, but
as they changed my appearance I became more reconciled.
269
The movement was now becoming respectable, success had
drawn in many who had not even a half belief, I saw a new
paid bureaucracy being built up in Dublin, and I heard the
comments of some, who looked down on the fighting men
and others who were bearing their share of the dirty work.
I met Ginger O'Connell in McGilligan's of Leeson Street.
He was now Deputy Chief of Staff. Ginger looked as easy-
going as ever, yet he had changed. He was applying his
organized thought in a more practical way. He was the only
man on H.Q. Staff whom one could discuss military
problems with, now that Dick McKee had gone. In Dublin
it was proposed, he said, to train a number of officers and
send them out as organizers.
'It's about time, Ginger: Dublin has an idea that drill
instructors can direct the country at this stage. You know
well what duds were sent out.'
'Like yourself!' and he laughed. 'Would you be willing to
undertake training?'
'No; I would prefer to go back to the martial law area.
I can be of more use there. I don't like the idea of being a
paper officer.'
He told me that Headquarters intended to start a military
college in Dublin where officers from different areas would
receive training courses.
'It will be hard to keep it going.'
Ginger smiled. 'We'll manage it all right. The C.S. wants
you to meet the President tomorrow. He'll be there with the
D.I. You'd better take extra precautions.' Ginger left the
house.
An hour afterwards, Mabel Fitzgerald, wife of Desmond,
Director of our Publicity, whom I had left in Kilmainham
Gaol, knocked at the door. 'There's a hold-up,' she said;
'the street is being surrounded ; you'd better go to another
house up the street.' I remained at the head of the stairs
leading to the garden. It was too late to move now. I heard
banging at doors down the street and then loud knocks at
our front door.
Listening out in the garden I heard footsteps in the lane
beyond the garden wall. The night was dark and cold. I
heard loud voices from the house, flashlights flared around
rooms, men leant out of windows and prodded the blackness
with light. They walked on the roof. I climbed to the next
gardens, and lay on the ground. They might search the garden
270
I thought. I climbed the back wall; at the end of the
lane figures stood out against the light of a street lamp. I
crossed the lane, climbed the opposite wall, and worked my
way across gardens towards the street, but soldiers were in
the furthest gardens. If I open fire, I thought, they will take
cover and search where the shots came from, then I can cross
the lane and get back to McGilligan's garden. I fired with
my Parabellum automatic. The range was about seventy-five
yards. I heard soldiers shouting ; rifle shots spread out, then
clumped together towards my last shots. Firing continued for
a while. I got back to McGilligan's garden, waited, then slept
in their house.
Mick Collins opened the door of a house near the sea. The
house had a front garden. In a long front room with bay
windows, screened a little by trees in front, were Eamon
de Valera and Dick Mulcahy. The C.S. smiled slowly ; the
muscles of his mouth only moved when he smiled. 'It's hard
to kill a bad thing,' he said. De Valera shook hands with
me. He was tall, his lean stringy build overemphasized his
height. His face was drawn and pale as if he had had little
exercise or was recovering from illness. The lines running to
his mouth edges made furrows; ridges stood out in relief. He
looked worn. He smiled with his eyes. The lines on his face
broke as if ice had cracked. His voice rumbled from the
depths with a hard but not a harsh dryness. Dev. the Long
Fellow, or the Chief, had come back from the United States
two months ago. He had helped to float the foreign loan
of $5,000,000, and had aided the Irish vote, influenced by
Article 10, that kept the States out of the League of Nations.
At home he was looked up to with awe. There was a sense
of sternness about him, dignity, a definite honesty, and a
friendly way of making one feel at ease. He had lost personal
contact during the year and a half he had been away.
We sat around a table. 'They tell me that you know most
of the actual situation in the South,' he said. The C.S. laid
out a large map of Ireland on the table.
'Things have changed since I have been in gaol, sir, and my
information is three months old.'
He pointed to Tipperary. 'Tell us about the county. What
are the military and police strengths, our strengths?'
I pointed out posts and barracks, outlined our battalion
areas, gave, as far as I could remember, our armament,
and told him the support the people gave us. He had not the
271
human qualities of Collins, the Big Fellow. Dev. was more
reserved, a scholarly type. He was cold and controlled. Collins
might solve a problem boisterously, by improvisation, solve
it by its own development. De Valera would find the solution
mathematically, clearly, with logic.
He questioned me about Clare, Limerick, Cork, Kilkenny.
He did not know the names of our senior officers. His ques-
tions showed that he did not understand the situation in the
South. The main strategical strengths of the enemy he knew,
but things had changed since he had been in Ireland. They
had changed since I had been in gaol. Mulcahy and Collins
asked me questions to bring out points which the President
had overlooked.
'We are forming divisional areas,' Mulcahy said. 'The
Deputy Chief has already discussed the matter with you.'
I nodded.
'You are to command the Second Southern Division; two
brigades in Limerick, two in Tipperary, Kilkenny County,
and perhaps Waterford. We will talk over the other divisional
areas in detail during the week.'
I always felt that the C.S. could not be flurried or rushed.
He had a quiet strength that was impressive. He had thought
over each area in his mind. He could summarize a brigade
quickly. The talk lasted for over three hours.
'What time is it?' asked de Valera. 'There's a Cabinet
meeting this evening. I must get my papers ready for it.' He
shook hands. 'Take care of yourself now, a chara dhi/l, agus
beannacht De/ leat.'
I sat in a smaller room with Mulcahy and Collins.
'What did you think of the interview?' asked Collins.
'He did not know much about the army in the South,' I
said.
Both laughed as if amused. Collins mentioned some of
the questions the President had asked ; they laughed again.
I felt uncomfortable. Dev. was the President. After all, I
thought, how could he be expected to know the military
situation thoroughly? Cathal Brugha, the Minister of Defence,
did not know the senior officers well. He worked as a traveller
whilst his deputy was paid his salary. That desire to work
without pay was understandable, but his position as M.D.
needed all his energies. Many members of the G.H.Q. Staff
did not know the country. They depended for information
upon reports which were forwarded by some areas only, and
272
then never in detail, and on the spasmodic visits of officers
to Dublin. They could add to their knowledge by talking
with T.D.s, but few of them knew the tides of our military
effort. G.H.Q. Staff had ceased to inspect the country; only
by inspection and by actual touch with men on their own
ground could a complete idea of the senior officers, their
difficulties and drawbacks, be properly appreciated. I resented
their jokes at the expense of the Long Fellow.
I moved into the city to Fitzwilliam Place. It was strange
for me to come at night to a friendly house, whose people
were not much mixed up with our movement. I listened to
piano pieces and songs, after-dinner talk, and chatter. I should
have liked to read or write, to work over my maps of the
South. I carried a revolver, an automatic, and a hand grenade.
They would not show as I sat on a sofa, but I was awkward
in such a place. Should I tell them I meant to fight? As a
matter of course a guest was shown the roof and how to get
to it; and the back yard. I met Frank Gallagher. Fitzwilliam
Place was very comfortable, I told him, but I would like to
have somebody I knew with me ; then it would feel more
real. He laughed.
'I can imagine you seated like a Sphinx trying hard to
adjust yourself. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll speak to Major
Childers ; he's our Director of Publicity. He wants to talk
to you, anyhow.'
'But I carry two guns, Frank. I don't want to yank anyone
else into trouble.'
Later I got a note. Major Childers would be very pleased to
meet me, and he would be glad to borrow one of my guns.
After dinner, Erskine Childers sat with me by the fire. We
talked easily. He wore a double-breasted coat which fitted
closely to his slight form. His hair was greying. There were
lines of thought and of worry on his face. During a halt in
conversation his face would become reposed and take on
an abstracted look. He was serious and courteous with no
mannerisms. I liked him very much that night. I told him of
the country and the people; we laughed at our blunders and
the sayings of our men and of the people. I told him the story
of my imprisonment, bit by bit. We were not inclined to talk,
but he drew me out slowly.
'I should like if you would write that story as simply as
you told it,' he said; 'you gave them credit when they were
kind.'
273
I hesitated.
'It will be of use,' he said. 'We have not had many
first-hand reports of ill-treatment. People are afraid to write or
to sign their names.'
'I'll write it for you tonight and I'll sign my name.'
We chatted of books and men. He told me stories of the
Naval Reserve and of his work as an aeroplane observer
during the World War, and we talked of the sea and of ships.
I found him an admirer of my friends Moby Dick, Arabia
Deserta, and Hakluyt.
On the way to bed we examined the skylight to the roof.
I placed a few pieces of furniture to one side of a landing.
They would serve to block the stairway if we had to rush for
the roof. I lent him my automatic.
Next morning I showed him what I had written. He read
it. 'That's good, it will be of use. I'll have it typed at once
You can write.' We spent another pleasant night together.
Two days later, one of our Publicity offices was raided
Major Y and Captain X from the Castle were in charge
of the raid. I laughed when I thought of their reading my
statement about themselves in the Intelligence Room. It
would not be healthy for me if I should ever fall alive into
their hands again.
Two divisions would be formed at once, Mulcahy told me,
the First and Second Southern, then would come the Fourth
Northern under Frank Aiken. Liam Lynch, Brigade Com-
mandant of North Cork, was to Com-mmand the First Southern.
It would consist of West Limerick, Kerry, County Cork, and
Waterford. It would be the largest command. I was to get to
North Cork, hold a meeting of brigade officers there, form the
command, and appoint Liam Lynch Divisional Commandant.
The girls and women glorified the fighting. Often one of
them said : 'It must be great to be able to fight. The men
are splendid.' I felt inclined to say what I thought of their
enthusiastic talk. Where was the glory in driving men, of
mucking around in rain and slush, trying to plan operations
which officers would use up their energies to avoid carrying
out? Where was the pleasure in staff work, sending dispatch
after dispatch for information? Some would say, 'I wish I
could fight.' One wished they could. Then they might see the
other side of the medal. They would have to accept respons,-
bility for the lives of those under them and for the people.
The women were more bitter than the men. If one had
274
enough work to do, there was not time for spleen. Soon I
could forget all that talk when I met the boys in the country.
Then again I would rage at the war and our subjection to its
tyranny. Would I never again get the taste of blood out of
my mouth or sit down in peace to read a book?
I was given a heavy rug as a present by Kathleen McGil-
ligan, so that I could sleep out with some chance of warmth.
I called at a few other houses to see my friends. I did not say
good-bye. It would seem a chance visit to some of them, but
by this time they were used to my sudden disappearances. Now
there would be more anxiety. The numerous proclamations,
imposition of martial law, increased activity of our men in
attacks, the shooting of prisoners in the South, their hanging
in Dublin, had made our lives to our friends more uncertain
than ever. They thought the martial law area meant certain
death for men who were active. And we had learned of death.
We were very glad to know our friends were still alive and
when we met them, affection was not hidden. When we
parted, it was again an unfinished story which the fearful
imaginations of those not actively engaged filled in apprehen-
sively. The strange loneliness of meeting people you liked,
and whom you would go away from soon, mirrored the
overwhelming transience of life and its precarious tenacity.
It created a melancholy mood.
Twenty
APRIL 1921
POLICE peered into the carriage windows at stations on my
way down to County Tipperary. The day before two trains
had been held up and the passengers searched by the military.
I had an attache case filled with maps, memoranda about the
new divisions, and my own notes. Police, Tans amongst them
by accent, got onto the train at a station, but did not search
the passengers. The people in my carriage were quiet, as if
they were not sure of each other ; but one man who had
275
heard the Tans laugh and joke suddenly burst into talk. He
had an ashplant between his knees. His sharp Northern
speech had a restraint that matched the settled gravity of
his long jaw. He had been in Carrickmacross during a raid
on a yard where there was a mare waiting for the stallion.
There were eight stallions in loose boxes. The Tans drew
their guns and made the groom serve the mare with the other
seven. 'They ruined the poor mare,' he said, 'the bad beasts.'
And he swore and damned their souls here and through
erternity as strongly as he had then sworn inwardly. He saw
the struggle through the sufferings of the mare.
The men by me were country men and they nodded in
heavy sympathy. That aspect of the fight in terms of cause
and effect summed up for them the situation. The unneces-
sary cruelty of it made them bitter about other extravagant
viciousness that shook them more than the ordinary aspect
of the scrap. Their mouths opened to stories; through the
episodes I saw the nightmare of the non-combatants and felt
the strength of their inertia.
There were no police at Goold's Cross, where I got off.
We had used the station for the past year. I waited until all
the people had left the station ; perhaps I might meet some-
one I knew. As I was walking out of the station door, I saw
two lorries of soldiers pull up at the railway bridge. The
soldiers got down. I put my hand through a slit in my
overcoat till it gripped the handle of my forty-five.
'What are they doing here?' I asked a porter.
'Devil a one of them knows. They often search the
passengers, but they're late today. Maybe the boys have
trenched the roads.'
After a long halt soldiers unfixed bayonets and climbed
into the hill lorries. I walked across the bridge and into the hill
country of Glenough.
'Glory be to God, but it's himself; my, but you're heartily
welcome,' Mrs. O'Keefe said, as I walked into the kitchen.
'We thought we'd never set eyes on you again; but it's you
have the Devil's own luck, and we wouldn't doubt you."
Soon Con O'Keefe and Ned Reilly from the Battalion Staff
hurried up. It was good to hear Ned's slow, careful speech
Around the fire we talked of what had happened, since I
had been last there. 'Poor Sean Tracey ; God rest him, it's
a little we thought he'd be over at the moat of Kilfeackle
the last time you were here together.'
276
I looked at the back of the door. No names hung inside.
'What about the proclamation?' I asked.
'Devil a one of us bothers about it; the people don't put
any heed on it, either.'
The girls of the house stopped work to listen to the talk.
The hill country was the same, martial law or not. I laughed
suddenly. I thought of the Dublin people who were hood-
winked by the might of a paper threat; they thought that
terror stalked through the South.
'Seamus had a tight shave this morning,' said Ned Reilly
--Seamus meant Seamus Robinson, the Brigadier. 'We were
crossing the road below, five of us, when two lorries came
around the bend. We fired and ran for cover. Their Lewis
opened on us, but they hit no one. Seamus stuck the muzzle
of his Colt automatic into a bank when he was scrambling
through. He couldn't get the mud out to fire and he was
raging mad.' I could see Seamus trying to clean the mud from
the barrel.
'It's as well you got a fright,' I said ; 'those were the soldiers
that might have tried to search me at Goold's Cross.'
I left my rug and attache case behind. I went on to the
Brigade Centre.
Mrs. Davin came from behind the corner of the house. She
held me at arm's length. 'Well, Ernie, you haven't changed
much except for your grand clothes, but you'll soon get rid
of them. The boys nearly went mad when they heard you'd
escaped.'
Her daughter went away to tell Seamus and his staff. I sat
down by the fire. Mr. Davin came in; slightly bent, grey-
haired, dignified, an old pipe in his mouth. 'A thousand
welcomes,' he said. 'Many's the time we talked about you
and we didn't expect to see you walk into the yard again.'
He was fond of talk and he could remember, word for word,
poems he had read or a political speech that he had glanced
at years ago,
"They're fine now, the boys,' said Mrs. Davin, 'and very
independent. They have their own houses.' I looked surprised.
'Dug-outs, but it's you are behind the times entirely. A whole
world of things happened since we saw you last. The local
lads helped to dig them with Kennedy: dug-ins they should
be called, says one of the boys after he had sweated with
the shovel.'
Seamus came with Con Moloney, the Vice-Commandant,
277
and Sean Fitzpatrick. They shook my hands and slapped
me on the back. We sat around the fire talking, watching
pancakes brown on a pan. I saw them nudge each other.
They looked at my boots and laughed. 'Nice yaller boots and
a crease in his trousers. The regular staff officer for you.'
'God be with old times when his coat was full of holes and
he cursed with the mud beyond his middle,' said Kathleen
Davin.
They laughed and ragged me. It was good to be in South
Tipperary again.
'Let's go down to 48,' said Seamus.
'Why 48?'
'You remember 48 in Dublin. That's the name of the
Brigade dug-out.'
Seamus's girl lived at No. 48 in Dublin. In a field with a
rise in it they halted and searched about in surprise.
'Why we've lost it,' said Seamus.
'It must be the fairies,' said Sean Fitzpatrick.
I could not see any trace of a dug-out. Sean Fitzpatrick
put his hand on a long sod of green turf. He lifted it up.
I could see an opening. The sod rested on a trapdoor.
'The grass is watered daily,' said Sean.
We climbed down a ladder. We were in a long wooden
room; railway sleepers and part of the pavilion from Cashel
golf links had provided the wood. Bedding was rolled up on
one side. There were typewriters, files of papers, wooden
slits; small-arms and rifles hung from wooden pegs, grenades
and ammunition were stacked on shelves. It looked neat and
business-like. Motor car batteries gave light. The room was
dry, clean, and comfortable. The officers worked away at
typewriters and maps whilst Seamus and I talked. A brigade
officer could always be found there. They were very proud
of the dug-out; picked men from Rose green company had
built it. Late that night we rolled up in blankets. The air was
stuffy when the trapdoor was shut for any length of time.
Up and out in the open in the morning I smelt spring. A
hawk swooped to show his speed lines. Lambs played follow
the leader, supple calves kicked what seemed like disasso-
ciated hindquarters in the air, and long-legged awkward colts
tried to nibble grass through wide Gothic-angled legs. It was
good to be able again to lift a hand in salute to a mountain.
I could see the external world in a new and, to me, a
fresher way now. Gaol had opened up a wider gap in my
278
mind and eyes, or had stripped both of a skin that had inter-
fered with a more essential kind of seeing and feeling. Houses
in the countryside had a new sense of form that I had not
before felt in any conscious way. I had noticed how white
or colour-washed walls were lifted out of a mountain-side
by rain. That lifting gave them a dramatic sense, but here in
the lowlands I could see sturdy strength and a definite grace
in their building. The people had taste. Again I had to learn
from the country rather than from the towns.
Across the dip in the ground was the Brigade Centre,
Dispatch riders came there daily from the eight battalions
on bicycles, by horse and trap, on horseback and on foot.
Intelligence reports, replies to orders and administrative
correspondence were read and checked by the Brigade
Adjutant or his assistant. An urgent order could be for-
warded to all companies in the Brigade before the late night.
This system had been working for over six months. There
had been no leakage in spite of the number of dispatch riders
who used to change weekly from each battalion. Hedges of
branches or improvised gates were dug in at crosses where
by-roads left the main road. The enemy would probably think
the gates were the entrances to avenues leading to houses.
Their lorries did not travel the hidden by-roads. The people
were staunch. Every house supported the Republic. Daily the
people fed dispatch riders and visiting officers; they supplied
oats to the horses, although each dispatch rider was expected
to carry his animal's feed. The area was safe, 'safe as the
Rock of Cashel,' they said. In a ring were police posts :
Golden, New Inn, Cashel, Fethard, Cahir, Clonmel-- the last
three held military garrisons ; '71' was a dug-out near the
Centre. In it I found golf clubs and balls from the Cashel
links.
'I'd like a game of golf,' I said, as I tested a club.
'So would we,' said some of the boys. 'But you'll have to
learn us.
We brought the clubs back to 48. Next day we would play
golf on our way to the Centre.
South Tipperary had two columns of men now, about sixty
in all. One was under the command of Denny Lacey; John
Joe Hogan was in charge of the other. Both columns had
wandered around the area, but they had done no fighting
worth talking about. No posts had been attacked since
Drangan.
279
I waited for my attache case, but it did not come on. Ned
Reilly was careless enough. I would have to start for Cork
without some maps I needed. Next morning we played cross-country
golf on the way to the Centre. I told the men how
to use the different clubs, but they whacked away as if they
were using hurleys. We looked at each other and laughed.
Some carried rifles, canvas slings of ammunition, and golf
bags; others wore Sam Browne belts, and revolvers or auto-
matics were strapped on their legs.
'If lorries surrounded us suddenly from the main road,'
said Sean Fitzpatrick, 'wouldn't it make a fine newspaper
heading!"
'I.R.A. Officers Surrounded Playing Golf.'
'Deadly Struggle at the Third Hole,'
'The Dead Men were Armed with Golf Bags and Rifles.'
'That would create the proper effect,' I said. 'It would prove
that we were people of leisure in good social standing.'
As I drove up the avenue to Tincurry, dogs barked. Moss,
my dog, jumped forward. He scampered about in joy ; he
tried to climb into the trap. I was hugged by Mrs. Tobin,
Mae, and Eva.
'God be praised, and His Blessed Mother,' said Mrs. Tobin-
"The boys said you'd never get out alive. He'll be surely
hanged, they said, and Dinny Lacey used to tease Mae and
Eva here about it, but I knew nothing'd happen to you. I kept
on praying to Our Blessed Lady.'
Apple-cheeked Johanna wiped her hands in her apron.
'Begor, Master Ernie, it's yourself. God help you, but you
must have suffered with them bad beasts.'
I wandered through the garden amongst the glossy green
of the rhododendron leaves. I sat near the blasted pine and
under the pink-and-white buds on the twisted branches of
the apple trees. Moss was still by my side. My clothes were
speckled with mud where he had jumped up; but this was
an unusual event; he could paw away. He rubbed his nose
against my trousers and licked my boots. His sensitive amber
eyes were full of affection. I leant across the railing of the
wooden bridge. I could hear the water as it gurgled in liquid
sound below on stones in the brook to make ripples, eddies,
and splashings ; from the continuous noise came water
cadence and a water beat with a motif that could be followed
up until one became lulled by the sound. It was hard to think
280
when one looked at water or listened for the recurrent sounds
of water poetry.
Many boys had passed over this bridge. Where were they
now? Some dead; others serving with columns or in charge
of areas. Up the stream we had built a dam to bathe in;
further up we had made improvised bridges when we had
practised field engineering. Across the roadway we had tested
the visibility of various colours and formations at different
ranges. We had measured the penetration of rifle, revolver,
and automatic bullets. On that tree we had made a range
card near a position which we could hold if attacked.
At the elm trunk on the water's edge we had planted slips
from the large tulip tree in the garden, Sean, Seamus and I.
It would bear flowers. Eva, a little girl, in a black-and-white
print frock, had cried; she was to look after the slips. When
we were killed, they were to be placed on our graves. There
was only one other tulip tree in Ireland, Mrs. Tobin had
told us, but the shoots had died. Straight ahead was the
valley narrowing as the out-thrusts of the mountain closed
in towards the southwest. Threads of bluish smoke rose
slowly. On the right the slopes of the Galtees with patches
of sloping wooded ground. Galty Mor stood by itself, mist
rolling on top; through patches of thickened cloud I could
see a glimpse of deep blue steepness; beyond would be The
Glen, well-wooded. On my left the full range of the Knock-
mealdowns rose out of the faraway hedges. There were woods
low down on the slopes, but further up there was an empty
red-brown bareness which showed up the mountain strength.
In the front lawn the copper beech, my landmark, had
changed ; its leafless branches rayed out. On the lower moun-
tain slopes the winter bareness was relieved by the warmth of
the evergreens and the green and grey-green of the grass.
I met Eva as I came back to the bridge. 'Do you remember
our tulip slips, Eva?'
'Indeed I do, and I cried. Poor Sean has no tree over his
grave now.'
'You had best sleep up the hill tonight,' Mrs. Tobin said,
as we sat around the fire. 'I feel that something is going to
happen and I'm all nerves.'
I walked up the mountain. I was welcomed with strange
courtesy by an old man. We talked of life on the hillside.
Sheep-herders there knew the sheep-grazers by their faces,
he said, even in a flock of five hundred. He was bitter against
281
foxes. They killed the lambs in the lambing season. That
was a hard time. I had often given a hand to men searching
with lanterns for lambs that had been dropped. 'And would
you believe it,' he said, 'once a cub was caught in a trap
and somehow the mother cut its throat with her teeth. She
wasn't going to have one of hers a prisoner. I often think of
that when I see prisoners pass along the Mitchelstown road.'
He had a sense of big words and he used them with care
except once when he spoke of water 'perpetrating' through
the soil.
Tincurry had been raided in the night-time. Cahir Military
Barracks was less than a mile and a half across the fields.
Near to Ballyporeen I took the mountain road to Araglin
which was in North Cork Brigade. Military from Fermoy
had raided the village that morning. They had taken six
prisoners. Boys scouted the steep road to the river Black-
water. Often troops lay in ambush near our crossing-places.
Two men with English accents were fishing near where our
boat was kept. The scouts arrested and brought them down-
stream ; they would keep them prisoners for two hours so
that they could not get back to Fermoy.
A company on the far shore sent on cyclists' scouts. Cork
always took good care of senior officers. Tipperary was lacka-
daisical; protection was left more to chance or insistence. As
the road climbed, I halted to look towards Fermoy. We were
on a bluff. 'Whist,' said my driver, 'look.' A mile away we
could see horses moving, about ten of them. I looked through
my prismatic glasses. They were cavalry and coming in our
direction.
'Some of the battalion column are yonder,' he said, point-
ing towards a clump of trees. I found three men there, one
of whom had served in the column I had trained last October.
I sent off word to the column commander telling him to hurry
on with the rest of his men, to place his machine-gun on our
left. Nearly half a mile away was a small hillock. We lay
down behind it to take breath and then spread out. I looked
for the horsemen. There they were in twos spread out at
intervals, but behind them was a large force of cavalry. That
meant a round-up of some kind and the small column would
be of no use. We ran back as quickly as we could. The rest
of the column was straggling towards us from different
directions.
On the bare slopes of Claragh Mountain, near Millstreet,
282
I met Liam Lynch and some of his staff. The Kerry border
was five miles away; the West Cork men could come through
the passes or across the lonely stretches of the Derrynasogart
Mountains ; East Cork had the Boggeragh to climb.
'We have your Winchester for you,' said Liam. 'We kept
it clean, and I had a hard job to prevent some of the boys
from lifting it. And we have a lance and sword from Mallow
that yet belongs to you. And here's a present for you.'
He handed me a copy of the photograph taken by the
Auxiliaries in Kilmainham. My hair was wild, my face was so
battered that nobody could possibly identify me from the
photograph.
'It was sent out to the police,' he said, 'and I must say you
look a murdering tough.'
He talked of what had passed in North Cork since I had
been there, and I told him of Kilkenny, Dublin and South
Tipperary. The column I had trained had been broken up;
officers had gone back to train a small active service unit in
each battalion.
'Do you remember our Quartermaster, Paddy McCarthy?
He was killed in a fight with Tans in Millstreet. Paddy
O Brien was wounded by an ambush of Tans near his own
place. He's now Brigade Quartermaster.'
Paddy McCarthy was a loss. I thought of his unfailing
good-humour, his broad laugh and the lilt of song that would
burst out at unexpected times. His quartermaster's magic sack
would no longer open to disgorge ammunition, cigarettes, or
mine batteries.
Liam Lynch told me about the attempted round-up of the
old column. A new man, an ex-soldier, deserted one night
when the colurm was in the mountains and made his way to
the Buttevant Camp. His absence was not heeded. Before
dawn next morning fifty lorries of troops attempted to con-
verge from different directions. The column sentries opened
fire on an advance party of soldiers who were rushing a
house. Liam got out of his billet in his shirt and trousers, but
saved his papers. The column retreated up the mountains
where another party of British should have been, but
trenches, broken roads, and mud had delayed them. Three
boys had been killed, two of them when prisoners. The ex-
soldier had been traced to Bandon Barracks in West Cork,
but he never ventured outside. 'What do you think he did it
283
for?' asked Liam. I could not guess. Traitors ran too many
risks now to make life pleasant for them.
'You'll be excommunicated, Liam,' I said, 'when you take
Cork One into the division.'
He laughed. 'Old Cohalan had dinner with Strickland, I
suppose, before he took the pen in his fist, but nobody minds
him now.'
Liam Deasy, Brigadier of West Cork, came over the moun-
tains. Tall, finely built, quiet and deliberate in speech as it
rose and fell in the singing Cork cadence. With him was Tom
Barry who commanded the brigade column. His light bushy
hair stood up straight like a wind-blown hedge. There were
two guns on his belt ; they touched almost when he stuck
both hands in his trousers' pockets. He had a battered nose.
Assertive, aggressive almost, spitting out his words directly ;
he was fearless and very much admired by West Cork. 'Free'
Murphy came west from the Kerry border hills. Loose of
gait, with a Kerry brightness; he had been a school teacher.
West Limerick, then Waterford came. We waited for the
Brigadier from North Cork.
'There must be a round-up somewhere,' said Liam Lynch,
'or he'd be here by this.'
Early next morning we saw a man coming down the hill-
side. He wore a light blue swallow-tail coat and trousers. The
woollen coat was heavy. He wore a derby hat and carried a
twisted stick under his arm.
'By the living God, it's Sean Hegarty,' somebody said. He
lifted his hat to our shouts. He had a beard and mutton-chop
side-whiskers. We stood around in a ring laughing. It was a
perfect disguise. He scratched himself vigorously. We knew
only too well what was wrong--the itch. He had been delayed
by a large round-up on the far side. Now whole villages and
part of a countryside were ringed by soldiers and police.
Intelligence officers questioned each man in turn.
I presided at the meeting; Sean Hegarty interrupted often.
He had a biting, gnarled tongue that flayed. Remarks were
evidently expected of him, everyone grinned, but Liam was
getting annoyed. He spoke of our Headquarters Staff and
the ease with which memoranda could be written, but it was
another story to carry out their fanciful instructions ; that
rigmarole about strategical necessity was all right, but how
about arms and why was the pressure on the south not
relieved? Why didn't some other part of the country begin
284
to fight? And why doesn't H.Q. organize or train the Mid-
lands, the West, or the East? And why doesn't Dicky Mul-
cahy or Micky Collins come down to inspect brigades in
Tipperary, Cork, and Kerry? Then they could see how
things were. Sean Hegarty was the oldest there. He must
have been over thirty. Most of the others were under twenty-
five. His acrid spleen worked itself off; but he only voiced
our general discontent. I pointed out how hard it was for the
Q.M.G. to smuggle in arms, and how many trusted people
of ours in America or England had to handle them before
they would reach a brigade in safety.
A divisional staff was appointed by Liam Lynch ; brigadiers
argued about him taking some of their best men, but all
realized that more co-ordination was necessary in pitting
strength. Officers discussed their several commands.
British columns of three platoons and larger ones of two
hundred men were moving through mountainous West Cork.
They slept by day and walked in the night, but they were so
absorbed in continuous protective work that they were not a
menace to us. Round-ups from cavalry and infantry directed
by aeroplanes were becoming more frequent. Larger areas
were being swept, but the results from the enemy point of
view were small. There was the difficulty of our wounded and
their treatment; we had not many stretchers and immediate
care had to be left to chance. Very few of our wounded died.
The men were hardy, they had lived clean, but British raiding
parties would take them away and, to avoid them, wounded
had to be moved often across country on makeshift stretchers.
Roads would have to be more thoroughly destroyed, railways
were still intact. Many areas had made use of dug-outs. It
looked as if they would help to solve the problem of sweeping
or combing movements by enemy troops. We had used land
mines with success on the roads against armoured cars and
lorries, but there was a shortage of explosives and of grenades.
The I.R.A. had complete control now of the hill districts
and villages ; raiding troops did not move out at night,
which was a relief. In many places the people made blowers
by knocking the bottom out of a glass bottle. By blowing
through the neck a booming horn sound was made which
could travel a long distance. It meant enemy in sight. Our
unarmed sentries on the further hill had some. Officers told
of conditions in their areas; some spoke with a savage,
285
passionate bitterness ; others talked directly as if they reported
observed facts, and some with a sense of humour.
In West Cork townspeople slept out-of-doors in the night-
time or in each other's houses to avoid raiding parties.
Funerals of men killed in action or murdered on the road
were broken up by soldiers and police. Crowds of civilians
with hands held high up stood there whilst their captors
leisurely talked or searched. For long hours the people had
to keep their hands up; sometimes they had to kneel or to
sing 'God Save the King.' Tans and Auxiliaries had to teach
them the words. People had been flogged with whips, belt-
buckles, and canes. During the funeral of an I.R.A. man, or
when one of their friends had been killed, people in towns
went into mourning for the day, but police made them reopen
their shops. If a British soldier or policeman was killed, the
shops were forced to put up shutters and houses had to pull
down blinds.
There had not been many official executions by the British.
Torture of prisoners by some of the Intelligence Staff of their
Sixth Division had gone on as usual. Kelly, one of their
Intelligence officers, was badly wanted by the Cork men; they
elaborated what they would do to him, but I had my doubts.
I had seen how decent the men had been to police prisoners
who had had a bad record. East Cork had shot many spies.
Hegarty had the name of not being very particular about
evidence, but that might be talk. All information connected
with an espionage case had first to be sent to Dublin and the
sentence confirmed by our H.Q. before an execution took
place.
The last subject for discussion made us all eager. Arms
were to be run in somewhere in the South. The best landing
place on the coastline from Waterford to the mouth of the
river Shannon was discussed. That was over five hundred
and eighty miles. Kerry, due to the slashes of its fiords, had
three hundred and fifty miles of coast. Liam Lynch and I
had worked out distances to points inland. We used a map
showing the strength of enemy positions and the possible lines
of distribution of the cargo. Now we filled in the arms each
brigade had and the number of men serving with columns.
The officers showed their minute knowledge of their areas.
Finally West Cork was decided on. It had many bays and
mountains to back it and difficult road access for the British.
A Cork sea captain and some of our officers were in Italy
286
bringing off a deal twenty thousand rifles, two hundred
rounds for each rifle and six hundred machine-guns. My
miscellaneous knowledge of weights of different types of
weapons and ammunition was at last to be applied in a practical
way. Our faces shone. It was too good to be true and almost
like a fairy tale. Here were we, who thought in terms of
seventy or eighty rifles to a brigade and an odd machine-gun,
talking of thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of
ammunition.
'By God, but we'll bate them into the sea when we land
that stuff,' said a Cork officer.
Between the two divisions there would be close on one
thousand rifles--a rifle to about every one hundred and
seventy men ; but that number was small compared with the
combined force of military, police, and marines in the same
area. The bulk of the cargo would be great, one hundred and
fifty tons. During the landing, road communication in West
Cork would have to be thoroughly destroyed, but wriggling
through routes would be kept open for transport. Columns
would concentrate on the neighbourhood to hold the ap-
proaches, feint and actual attacks would be made through
the martial law area to hold and divert garrisons. Some arms
would be dumped in West Cork, the greater part would pass
through our division, the Second Southern, for Connacht, the
Midlands, and the North. Each officer had to work out how
best to deal with the entire garrison of his area and contain
them for at least forty-eight hours. The West Cork men
showed the proposed landing place on their maps. They felt
they could hold up the posts within striking distance. Looking
across the table at some of the officers I had known pre-
viously, I could see our fight in the deeper lines of care and
worry, in the general air of determination and in their pleasure
at meeting again.
Towards evening we watched the officers start off on long
journeys: Some up the hills, others down the slopes towards
level ground. Our last view of Sean Hegarty through glasses
was a vigorous scratch as he crossed a fern-red crest.
Early next moming a scout rushed up to the house. He
could hardly speak through excitement and want of breath.
'Police coming hither across the fields. They're close by.'
We had heard no bottle boom from the sentry on the hill
top. The scout could not tell how many police there were.
There was a hurried scramble for papers; many were left
287
behind. I packed mine into my haversack and with Paddy
O Brien, Brigade Quartermaster, followed the others. We two
lay down behind a wall.
'I'm fed up,' I said; 'there are five or six of us and we can
fight. I'm not going to frisk like a goat.'
'I'll stay here,' he said.
I had my Winchester. We could not see any police. We
came back under cover to the house. It had not been raided.
A patrol of the Tans from Millstreet had come up from the
road, passed within a field of the house, and had gone back.
They missed a good haul of papers. The sentry on top said
his bottle had been shot out of his hand. He brought down
a piece as evidence. We were sceptical. He had done what I
had known many of our sentries to do--run or lie down when
he saw the soldiers approach.
We moved to the foot of Musheramore. It was as naked
as we were on the day we were born. On the far side of the
mountains in a valley were British troops on a small muddy
road.
'They're trying to make a round-up, but they're stuck in
the mud now and can't move,' the local commandant said.
'More than ten lorries of them.'
'Break all bridges in front and behind them,' said Liam
Lynch, 'and snipe them coming on evening time.'
'Why not mobilize a few columns and let them have it hard?'
I said.
'Sniping will do,' said Liam.
That night was wet. The troops who had encamped near
their lorries suffered from our snipers. Next day a convoy
with railway sleepers was sent from Cork to make roadways.
The long line moved back slowly towards their base. They
had to abandon lorries which were immediately burnt by our
men. The troops had no reason to love mountains or rain.
Up in the cottages on the side of Museragh I heard the story
of O'Sullivan Beare's retreat from Dunboyne in the middle
of a harsh winter. A picked body of fighting men guarded
the women and children. They fought their way through the
mountains and the deep narrow passes. They hewed through
forests, squashed in bogs and starved till they reached friends
in the mountains of Leitrim. Here the story was a living
memory. It had happened in 1603. I heard the names of the
scouts who had guided O'Sullivan Beare, and the Irish who
had helped the Sasanach.
288
Near Millstreet and down towards Macroom the people
knew where he had camped; the mountain-sides he had
climbed. One could trace his path through the mountainy
Irish-speaking districts, where the foreigner, the Gall, had
never penetrated. Liam and I talked of this desperate, hurried
march. It was an epic. Sometime, when the war was over, we
two would start from the ruins of the Castle of Dunboyne
with a good Irish speaker and trace our way through the
tradition to Ti/r Conaill.
But the future was far away. Next day Liam and I with
three officers went in a motor car towards Mourne Abbey.
We wore trench coats and carried rifles. A Volunteer thought
we were Tans. He hurried to report to his company captain.
Dispatch riders gathered the armed men of the neighbourhood
together. An ambush position was held, the road trenched
around a bend. They waited for the return of the Tans.
Next day Liam showed me a report from Company Intelli-
gence to the Battalion Adjutant. 'They're quicker than you'd
think sometimes,' he said, laughing. 'It's well for us we came
back by another road.'
The pupils of Liam's eyes blackened with rage as he read
a dispatch. He handed it to me. Scattered houses had been
blown up in North Cork as a reprisal for an ambush that had
taken place nearby. He stuttered : 'I'll bloody well settle that ;
six big houses and castles of their friends, the Imperialists,
will go up for this. I don't know what G.H.Q. will do--but
I don't give a damn.' We selected six houses and castles from
the half-inch map, then sent off the order.
Liam and I talked together of our areas. We wanted to issue
a proclamation stating we would shoot any of the British
captured in arms, but that would have to mean a steeling of
our men in a determination to fight it out themselves when
captured. Soon all motor-car traffic would have to be stopped
except that of doctors who would have to paint their cars
distinctive colours. It had been a warm, dry spring ; that we
welcomed for the joy of it, but we needed rain to help us to
break up the big round-ups that dry weather induced. Before
I left Liam we agreed to exchange a few young officers who
could be attached to our staffs; they would keep our divisions
closer in touch and learn of any new developments in our
methods or organization. 'I wish you could stay with me,'
said Liam; 'there's plenty of work here for the two of us.'
289
Twenty-one
MAY 1921
IN the Cahir Valley I had difficulty. Military and police were
scouring and raiding as I crossed on foot. Lacey's column
had fought with and disarmed troops the same day, and had
fought their way through an encircling movement. They had
captured Potter, a District Inspector of Police. Tincurry had
often been raided since I had left for Cork.
'They lie around the house till the dawn,' said Mrs. Tobin,
'then in they come. You're respectable now, if you please.
It's Mr. O Malley the officers ask for. Oh, he'll be glad
enough to meet you, I tell them ; but why don't you raid
during the night? Are you afraid of one man?'
I wondered how they had found my name, and how they
suspected I had been in the valley.
'I'm afraid you can't sleep in your new room yet,' she said.
'It'd be too dangerous now. I had a dream about you the
other night.'
My room had been named when part of the house was
being rebuilt. It looked out on the yard and had a stairway
which would make escape easier. In her dream a house I was
in had been surrounded, and it wasn't Tincurry. As I came
out to fight in the open, I had been wounded many times, and
had managed to get in again. 'You were all covered with
blood,' she said, 'so here's a dash of holy water for you and
be more careful.' But her dream was not to come true for
another year and a half.
I climbed the Galtees, sweating under the load of arms,
equipment, and my haversacks. Near the top I threw myself
flat as I heard the whirring of an aeroplane propeller ; it
passed close to me, probably carrying mail and dispatches to
Tipperary Barracks. From the crest I could see the Glen of
290
Aherlow beneath, the thin water glint of the Suir, and the
woods towards Bansha, from which the peeler once 'went on
duty and patrollin-o.' Away to the north were our friends
the mountains of Mid-Tipperary. A black mass with grey
splotches, the Rock of Cashel, stood out in the Golden Vale,
then the Moat of Kilfeakle; at the side of it Sean was buried.
I took a compass-bearing on the Moat of Knockgraffon
beyond the Suir, which was to be my landmark on the way to
the Centre. When I reached the river, I shouted and whistled.
Soon a boat came over for me. Boats used by us were now
hidden away. Raiding troops from Cahir had stove in the
bottom of all boats on the river near them to prevent our
men from crossing.
At the Centre I saw two spies who had been court-mar-
tialled. The local men were waiting the G.H.Q. confirmation
of their sentence before they shot them. It was awkward to
keep spies ; they had to be guarded. It was stupid of the
enemy to send brave men around trying to link up with our
companies or columns. They did not seem to understand
the tightness of our organization or the change in the minds
of the people. Volunteers who moved away to live in a new
county had to have a transfer from their old company, new
recruits were known by the men in their area. A stranger had
not much choice now in a good area. People would report
at once that they had seen a stranger on such a road. Before
nightfall he would be rounded up and questioned by us.
I was told that my bag, which I had left in Glenough, had
been captured whilst I was in Cork. That explained how the
raiding officers knew my name. There was a fair amount of
information in my notebooks.
Traynor, a Dublin Volunteer, was under sentence of death.
District Inspector Potter was offered in exchange. The British
refused; they would allow four named prisoners to escape as
if by accident from internment camps if Potter was released.
The offer was refused. Traynor was hanged. Potter was shot,
and, as a result seventeen houses in South Tipperary were
blown up by military, amongst them Tincurry.
I had chosen Con Maloney as Adjutant for the Division
and Dan Breen as Quartermaster. He had a deal of influence
with our Q.M.G., and that was often what counted most
when arms were distributed. Word came that Con's brother,
Paddy, had been killed fighting, with Sean Duffy, Comman-
dant of the Tipperary Battalion, when surrounded by Tans.
291
His father's house and chemist shop in Tipperary had been
burnt. My books had been sent from Dublin to his house for
safety; I had often gone in to handle them or to take a few
away with me to read.
Brigade staffs from the five brigades that constituted the
command came to the first council meeting of the division ;
but there was a delay. Sean Wall, Brigadier of East Limerick,
and Chairman of the Limerick County Council, had been
shot dead on his way. The Brigadier of Mid-Limerick and the
Vice-Commandant of East Limerick had been held up in a
running fight with their columns; six of their men had been
killed. Two men taken prisoners, after a drumhead court-
martial, had been shot next day by the British. Our columns
had been co-operating with Cork in another arms landing
that was to consist of Thompson guns from the United States.
The landing had not come off.
South Tipperary, I knew, would have to be the backbone
of the division. It was the strongest brigade and the best
organized. Next would come East Limerick. Mid-Tipperary,
Mid-Limerick, and Kilkenny were poor. For a month or more
Kilkenny was not to be officially attached to the division.
Arrangements were made by the officers present to start small
columns in each battalion, and to make brigade columns fight.
They were to assist their battalion officers in planning attacks
on posts.
Con was to find a suitable headquarters and organize divi-
sional communications whilst I inspected brigades. I visited
battalions in the low country around the city of Limerick.
They were bad enough. I was told by the Brigade Comman-
dant that it would be too dangerous for me to go into the
city. Soldiers and police were very active ; there were many
spies, touts, and secret service agents. I went to Limerick to
see for myself. Military and police patrols moved up and
down the streets. They halted and searched people. The police
were insolent. I saw men struck with the butt end of rifles
for not putting up their hands quickly enough when ordered.
They were kicked for no reason that I could see save that the
police were drunk. In the night-time I heard heavy hammer-
ing in the street. I grabbed a gun, pulled on my trousers, and
rushed to a front door. I thought the noise might mean a raid
on the house I was in. The street was blue-white with search-
lights. Police and military moved outside two houses opposite.
They smashed in the doors with sledgehammers and rifle
292
butts. Later three men were bundled into lorries. They were
in their shirts and trousers.
In the city the Volunteers had two battalions; but they did
not seem to ruffle the surface of enemy occupation. For long
there had been internal trouble : a row between our First and
Second Battalions. It had meant jealousy and bitterness ; our
effectiveness there suffered. The city was the headquarters of
a British brigade. I felt that we would have to rely more on
the material resources of Limerick than on the driving force
of her officers.
I overheard a long conversation between three commer-
cial travellers in the snug of a pub. whilst I was waiting for
Intelligence reports. They talked of Tipperary town and of
the girls whom they looked upon as 'good things' there.
Commercials had their own freemasonry, the transient nature
of their work made them gallants in the eyes of the stay-at-homes.
It evidently helped, as they inferred, to make many
who were thought to be staid by the rest of the town open to
reason. The surface life of the small town was changed by
many an undercurrent before they had finished their talk.
I toured the seven battalions of East Limerick, a country
I had tramped over from the straight slender thrust of the
larch plantations on the side of Seefin and the hill passes
leading to County Cork up to mountainous valleys beyond
Doon. Here I knew the men. I could appreciate the situation
more rapidly. Houses I had once slept in had been blown up
by the military as a reprisal for defeats by the boys of the
column.
There were many good dug-outs now in the high double
banks in the low lands ; they were well hidden. Military
cycling patrols were active, the network of roads helped
them. Men on the run were in charge of columns or stocked
them; and men from the companies were taking their turns
for service. Batallion and some company staffs were now
working whole time. Practically every town had an enemy
garrison and although most of the people in a town were
friendly to us it was difficult to make our men organize and
tap the information there. It was harder still for us to obtain
information about enemy movement and routine when our
reliable I.R.A. men had to leave towns to avoid arrest.
I walked up the sloping rise of the old racecourse where
Jerry Kiely, O'Keefe and I had once panted dry-mouthed.
I met Owen O'Keefe near Kilteely. He had deep lines on
293
his face. He did not talk much; he was resolute when he did
talk. 'Welcome back,' he said, 'some of the boys won't be so
glad to know you're round again, but the times have a stir in
them now.' He told me of what had happened in the past five
months. 'You remember Martin Conway ; he was wounded
after a dance, and foolish it was to hold it for the Tans killed
five lads that night and they followed him with bloodhounds,
but he killed the first of them before he fell dead.'
Martin from the shores of Loch Gur used to drive me in a
trap behind a black stallion that spanked away in pride; his
fierce dog was a friend of mine. He was wild enough himself.
He had spoiled a very good ambush by jumping out onto
the road between two lorries to open fire with his
long-barrelled Webley-Forbsbury.
'And do you remember Tobin of the Galbally Battalion?
Well, he was tracked and died of wounds outside his mother's
door, and Martin Scanlan, he escaped from the Tans in
Limerick and hid in a hotel cellar. They searched the hotel
and the cellar and were going out when a woman said: "He's
there," and they tried again and murdered him.' He had been
a school teacher. I had appointed him from the ranks to
command a battalion when I was last in Bruree.
'I'm the makings of a poor soldier,' he had said, 'but there's
my hand on it that I'll do my best.'
Every one of our little fights or attacks was significant;
they made panoramic pictures of the struggle in the people's
eyes and lived on in their minds. Only in our country could
the details of an individual fight expand to the generaliza-
tions of a pitched battle. What to me was a defeat, such as the
destruction of an occupied post without the capture of its
arms, would soon be sung of as a victory. Our own critical
judgments, which adjudged action and made it grow gigantic
through memory and distance, were like to folklore. To an
outsider, who saw our strivings and their glorification, this
flaring imagination that lit the stars might make him think
of the burglar who shouted at the top of his voice to hide the
noise of his feet. Actually the people saw the clash between
two mentalities, two trends in direction, and two philosophies
of life ; between exploiters and exploited. Even the living
were quickly becoming folklore; I had heard my own name
in song at the few dances I had attended.
Many of us could hardly see ourselves for the legends built
up around us. The legends helped to give others an undue
294
sense of our ability or experience, but they hid our real
selves; when I saw myself as clearly as I could in terms of
myself, I resented the legend. It made me other than myself
and attuned to act to standards that were not my own. That
was different from the other subordination of oneself to the
movement.
'We brought off a good ambush at Dromkeen with the
Mid-Limerick lorry of Tans. Man, we rose them off the
road with bullets; we killed eleven of them. I got this very
belt off the D.I. We thought he was dead. He lay that quiet;
after, we heard he was stunned. I got his gun, too.'
I looked at the belt. The ammunition pouch was cut in a
peculiar way, 'That's mine,' I said.
O'Keefe drew away. 'No, it's not.'
'It has my monogram on it,' I said, 'under the flap and so
has the belt. Now, show me the gun, it had four ridges on the
grip.'
'That's right' he said. 'But it's not your belt.'
'Do you remember the night I was surrounded at Bally-
firren House near Oola? I threw my belt at the revolver
flashes. There were two guns in it. That week I had gone
down with you to the cobbler and he fixed the holsters and
pouches to my liking.'
O'Keefe still looked unbelieving.
'Let's go to the cobbler and ask him if he recognizes the
pouch and holster?'
We walked to the small shop. O'Keefe took the gun in his
hand and handed the belt to the cobbler.
'Did you ever see this before?'
The man blinked his eyes. They were weak. The light was
not good. He handled the leather. 'Yes, I remember now. Last
year it was. It's a good job,' he said patting the leather.
'It's yours all right,' said O'Keefe, when he stood on the
road.
'But you own it now. Sometime when the fighting is over,
I'd like to have the belt and the gun back.'
'There's my hand on it,' he said. We shook hands in troth.
I intended to return the belt. It had been given to me by a
Dublin artist. It had belonged to her brother who had served
in the British Army, and she had taken it from her house
unknown to her people.
*************************************************************
Con had found a place where he could work in Donohill.
295
The house was a little off the road; a small bohreen led to
other houses. Close at hand near an old fort were a series of
small hills. The people were good here ; they did not talk.
Eight miles away was Tipperary. Oola, Cappaghwhite, Anna-
carty, and Dundrum Barracks were less than six miles from
us. Limerick Junction was near; that was an advantage for
dispatches by rail. In a house-to-house search our position
would be dangerous. If we could build a dug-out on the
slope of one of the hills with a covered passage for escape,
we could put up a fight amongst the small hills.
The house consisted of a kitchen and two rooms. 'Mrs.
Quirke's,' it was known. She was a strong character, a tall
woman with long bones ; untidy hair in wisps stuck out at
the back of her neck and on her forehead. She was always
at her ease in conversation. I never saw her ruffled. She took
satire, banter, and discussion at her ease, and she seemed to
look on danger as a joke. Her voice was rough, but she was
never angry. When we were worried, trying to work out a
problem, she poked fun, smiled at us, or later in the evening
made us laugh with some trite remark. In her heart I'm sure
she thought the boys were only play-acting, God help them,
trying to be soldiers. She assumed that I was delicate because
I was thin and did not eat much; bottles of an iron tonic
which followed me round were a proof that there was some-
thing wrong with me. First thing when I got up she had an
egg-flip ready for me, and she put whiskey in it. 'What good
is it without a drop in it, I'd like to know?' Instead of a
feather dipped in holy water, the usual good-bye, mine was
now an egg-flip and a warning word not to get killed. My
welcome whenever she saw me through the half-door or heard
my shout in the distance was an egg-flip.
Once Con laughed when I had finished my drink : 'Do you
know why she gives you the egg-flip?'
'No.'
'To carry you to the next house the way you won't die
here, that's what she said.'
If I got up late there was absent the usual moral sense
which righteous early risers have and by which they infer
the hour one gets up and forget the hour one goes to bed. When
I left her orders to be called at a certain hour, she often
would not; then I had to make a hurried scramble in badly
kept-in rage to attend a staff meeting or inspection. If I said
anything to her she would say calmly: 'Musha, I knew you
296
were tired, God help you, and you wanted the rest.' She
respected my many papers and maps and did not disturb
them, and she had no passion for a meticulously settled
organization of articles of furniture. I never knew how unreal
our ideas and the--to us--importance of our doings were to
her. She was a woman, the house had to be swept, food to
be cooked, the small percussions and repercussions of life
to be solved and lived ; but she followed with womanly
sympathy, helped us with her mothering instinct and her easy,
restful strength.
We used a large table in the kitchen. I was working on
training notes, intelligence. operations, and the quarter-
master's department. Dan Breen was away with a column,
and the paper work of his department fell on me and on
Michael Fitzpatrick, the assistant Q.M. He was a well-built
boy of middle height with deep red hair and a bad temper.
Mick Fitz's temper was more sudden than mine, but it was a
sudden flare. He said exactly what he thought, then there
was a quiet period until he went up in smoke again. Con was
even-tempered and easy-going. We were tied to our type-
writers. Con had learned to type, I was beginning. I hit the
keys searching in anguish for a letter, or sat back to curse
when I looked at what I thought was a correct sheet.
The administrative work piled up gradually. I found it
hard to select officers to fill vacant posts on the staff. It
would be better to leave them vacant than to have them filled
by men who did not know their work or had not enough
energy to begin to learn it. It would be easy enough to work
with accepted organization, but here, work, due to uneven
standards, reduplicated itself without end. Orders and instruc-
tions that were to be passed on by battalions to companies
were often hidden securely and remained there in the dumps
specially built for papers, or were burnt at once to avoid
risk. Some men gave more time to thinking out excuses for
avoiding operations than the actions would themselves need.
Outwardly some were efficient whilst procrastination and
irresoluteness gnawed at their guts. Tipperary Battalion was
fairly good, but it had seen little fighting. Troops moved
around cautiously and in large numbers. They never raided
Donohill.
As I looked at my collection of pens, I thought of what
Sean Moylan had said the last time I had met him near the
Kerry border. He was preparing to blow up a masonry
297
bridge. 'We started the war with hurleys and, by God, we'll
finish it with fountain pens.' Now the pen was almost an
indication of our rank. I had four for coloured inks and two
for ordinary use.
After nightfall the neighbours came in one by one for a
chat around the fire. The door latch rattled, a voice would
say, 'God save!' and there was an answering chorus of 'God
save you!' from the fire. They talked of the day's news; most
of them now had read the daily paper. They passed com-
ments on the fighting, as reported, and talked of rumours and
stray bits of information they had gathered at the creamery
or in Tipperary. They discussed foreign politics in detail and
their judgments were shrewd enough. If they were in a
difficulty about geography or history, someone would say,
'Ask himself.' That meant me. Change in rank did not mean
anything to the people; we were 'the boys' to them whether
we tried to direct divisions or served as Volunteers on flying
columns. Their observations on turnips that needed rain,
sheep with the staggers, springing heifers, yaller cows and
their calves, 'Jaysus' fluid for maggoty sheep, were mingled
with the doings of neighbours, the marksmanship of the Tans
who shot at their grazing geese, or with a story startling in
phrase and in the deft use of words.
I had often thought over our affection for certain figures
in Irish history; we spoke of them personally as if they were
present or had just left us, and called them by their Christian
names or nicknames. This habit was shared both by the book-read
and the lip-memoried. Con of the Hundred Battles,
Brian of the Tributes, Silken Thomas, Gerald the Earl, The
Su/ga/n Earl, Shane the Proud, Red Hugh, Owen Roe, Miles
the Slasher, Lord Edward, The Chief. From the fire I would
hear the names again. Red Hugh and Lord Edward were
the most loved, and yet, Red Hugh had died in Simancas in
1607, but his name flowered like a slow sunset.
I felt I understood the country better now. I had sloughed
off some conventional skins, and the layer of the importance
of bookish reading which had prevented a closer contact
with the life about me. The people had, essentially, warmth,
feeling and heart, and they knew of life through living. I
had been sponsored by the movement and nurtured by the
people. They softened down actuality. A long distance might
be 'a mile and a bit,' or 'only a few perches across the fields';
weather about which there could be no doubt as to its
298
rottenness would be, 'a soft day, thanks be to God.' If I
came in feeling like the end of the world from anxiety and
hunger I would be told, 'Arra, but it's yourself is in fine
fettle these times.' The hovering terror would disappear with
'Please God, it'll soon be over,' though I suspected they
thought it might last to the Fair Day of Jerusalem.
I found many changes in home life. The sons of the house
might be officers now, away with a column, or on the run.
The older people listened to them with diffidence and respect;
their opinions were asked for and their remarks were passed
on to the neighbours. Houses were neater and the girls tidier;
a column might come suddenly to the neighbourhood and
men might be scattered in billets, or men on the run from a
town might stay with them.
Officers were more serious. They had become graver and
more responsible. Administrative work had broadened and
danger had hardened and had made them more alert. They
spoke in a different and manlier way, their voices had assur-
ance and their thought was clearer and harder. The men had
a lithe, disarming strength and reserves of staying power.
They talked of bloody happenings with zest and laughed
about gruesome doings, but they were not callous. In imagi-
nation some of them flavoured their interpretations of reality.
There was a strange mixture of gentleness and resolute fierce-
ness about some. Many an old score lived in their long
land-memory, and was settled, known and unknown to senior
officers, with weight of gun.
A bitterness and ferocity came from a present extravagant
killing or torturing by the British. I cursed blindly for hours
when I heard that a man in East Limerick had been tied
behind a lorry and dragged until the life burst from him,
and when I read a Kilkenny report of a hostage during a
fight being made to stand up whilst a Lewis gun resting on
his shoulder sprayed a column of our men. Such happenings
relit an old race hatred, but it would die down again. I could
see it work in the men. They faced their task squarely. They
were fighting ruthlessness and they did not want to give
mercy.
Our flamboyance had been whittled clean enough, we stood
out clearer and bleaker, but we took a lot of time to grow
up. Our comradeship in a desperate cause was reducing our
disparities and was uniting us in a bond, yet class distinctions
would jut out, and our merging in what we were glad to
299
call 'the people' was a figment. We could not see any definite
social shape or direction to our efforts. We were not critical
of our leaders and our work absorbed our judgment in its
immediate local use. History might have taught us where in
ourselves we would find reaction, but our blind spots were as
many as the holes in a strainer.
Going through the country I often felt as would a traveller
on a railway journey as he looked at the passing life about
him, dissociated from it. The people had to live the round of
the soil and solve its problems of economic and of living
relationships, which were more of living than my relation to
the fighting effort only ; beneath the will necessary for the
action and decision needed for command was my other less
resolute and retiring self. The strain was there always, but
work kept it away. Always alert and steeling myself, wonder-
ing if peace would ever come, yet pushing on officers and
columns to make the fighting more thorough, feeling what the
unarmed people were going through, but planning operations
that would bring down on them more than equivalent
brutality.
I was learning by trial and error. I had been taught the
real value of organization by my abuse of it in over-
direction; now I had to unlearn in training, operations, and
the outward appearance of discipline. I had stumbled from
one military book to another in mistake or advance, and
from a saturation of their subjects I was revising methods,
guided by our changing conditions. Columns were slowly
learning what they had ignored at classes. They were familiar
with their weapons, the military aspect of the ground they
crossed, and protective movement, but they were weak in
manoeuvre and musketry tactics. Formerly, brigade officers
had directed operations in person, now battalions and column
commanders planned their own schemes, but they were slow
enough in making fight when it did not fall their way.
Roads had been more thoroughly destroyed, bridges had
been blown up or torn down by manpower. We had very
little dynamite or gelignite left; explosives were needed for
land mines and barrack attacks. Picks and shovels had to do
most of the work and 'picktite' became our explosive. British
military rounded up the men of a neighbourhood to fill in
trenches and remove obstacles, but the roads were pitted
corrugations. County Councils that had given allegiance to
the Dail no longer paid men to work on the repair of roads.
300
Lorries of troops carried cranes, cross-cuts, and ropes to
remove obstacles, and portable steel bridges for crossing gaps
made by trenches and broken bridges.
Men in the companies snipped telegraph wires to interrupt
enemy messages or cut down poles intermittently, scouted
for columns, watched out for round-ups, noted movements
of troops, guarded prisoners, and sniped barracks. They held
up trains to search for mails ; later they read letters for
information, stamped them 'Censored by I.R.A.', and left the
mail bags where they would be found. They took the goods
of boycotted Belfast houses from waggons and burnt them.
A boycott had been enforced by the Dail on Belfast firms;
 employees there had been forced to take the oath of allegiance
to the King; those who refused were driven out of work and
from the city. There had been heavy bombing, sniping, and
burning ; the British said they were unable to prevent the
armed Ulstermen from operating against civilians who were
defended by the ill-armed I.R.A. Curfew had not been
imposed nor martial law proclaimed, although casualties were
twenty times as heavy as they had ever been in the South.
In the press the Ulster situation took on a religious aspect.
In some of our areas a brigade levy had been enforced;
people were expected to contribute according to their means,
and if they refused their cattle were driven off and sold.
We had to pay G.H.Q. for the small driblets of arms that
came to us, but our main sources of supply were the enemy
supplies we captured in action. Our G.H.Q. did not send us
money to buy office supplies or to clothe columns; some of
our staffs bought food to reduce the strain on the resources
of friendly houses that fed men continually. The people did
not complain ; even amongst those who had a reputation for
being stingy there was an inherent hospitality, or a show of it
that could be made more apparent by tact on our part. We
could select our own billets now and quarter men on hostile
houses. People were jealous if column men were not billeted
on them and a column commander had to be diplomatic.
The Tommies looked upon us as 'ill tribes, and that must
have connoted something wild and fierce. Official reports
from the Castle would always make us appear to act in well
armed bands of two hundred men or more. The Tommies
were told we would shoot them if they surrendered. All this
did not help to resolve their fear of the unknown.
We could not keep prisoners ; soldiers and police, when
301
disarmed, were put on the roadside to walk to their posts.
Often they identified men who had helped to feed them.
The soldiers had become isolated from the people and their
leave was cut down ; sometimes they would follow the
example of their officers who were generally arrogant and
brutal in raids and in their treatment of prisoners, but on
the whole they kept an essential humanity. To their officers
we were 'rebels,' 'shinners,' 'cowboys,' and 'well-paid mur-
derers' ; their caste systemn made them see us as the lower
orders or 'natives.'
It would be hard to say which side was under the greatest
tension. We had no base and no possibility of reinforcements
being rushed when needed. We had always to be on the alert
against raiding parties. Our good men were harder to replace,
our officers and staff officers bore the brunt of the danger
and more of them were killed. Casualties with us were always
personal. There was the fear of arrest and of ill-treatment or
'shot trying to escape' on the road when prisoners, and the
diffused sense of terror and helplessness amongst the people.
The enemy could have regular meals, a standard of com-
fort, the advantage of numbers and training, more than
ample supplies of ammunition, and well-cared-for and efficient
weapons, but they were dealing with an unknown element
which formerly they had been accustomed to suppress by a
display of force. Thier imaginative contempt at first and their
fears had magnified our strength, and they were operating in
a hostile countryside when they left the shelter of their bar-
racks. They were undermined by our Intelligence system
which created in them distrust of their most tried officials.
Their Intelligence files even in the Castle were brought out
for our Intelligence to read and note, and were then quickly
brought back. Information came through from the War Office
in London and from the Castle sometimes before its contents
was issued to the military or R.I.C. to act on. In some of
their barracks notices were posted up warning all ranks to
guard their tongues. Officers were instructed not to talk
between separate blocks of one barracks about anything that
might be construed as information.
Their campaign of terror was defeating itself; it had made
conservatives liberals and had treated the lukewarm as
extreme ; it had affected the discipline of their army and
police. Co-operation between the forces was not happy;
Auxiliaries and Tans did as they pleased, the older, men of
302
the R.I.C. disliked the intruders and their doings. Their civil
and political authority resented army interference and con-
trol. Unionists stood aloof ; they suffered from both sides,
but they resented the campaign of Dublin Castle.
In Great Britain bishops and ministers of various
non-Catholic denominations addressed letters of protest to Lloyd
George; professors and lecturers in the University of Wales
united to dissociate themselves from his policy in a long
letter. Leaders of the intellectual life of Great Britain
published a manifesto in which they protested against their
Government campaign of terrorism.
Taxes continued to be forwarded by County Councils to
the British Local Government Board in Dublin, but now
some councils refused to forward the monies. The Dail was
slowly gaining control and in increasing that control was our
main effort. The British could defeat some of our columns
and round up our men, but they could not maintain civil
administration when they had lost the support of the people.
The Dail endeavoured to isolate customs offices ; but in
the burning of the Dublin Customs House, one of the finest
buildings in the city, all its records were destroyed and
British administration was disorganized. Auxiliaries and
military rushed to the burning buildings; seven of the I.R.A.
were killed, eleven wounded, and a hundred and one arrests
were made. My brother Cecil, a medical student, had been
amongst those arrested. I found later he had to jump from
a top window with a companion who was shot dead as he
jumped. A passer-by, cross-eyed with excitement, brought
home word that my brother had been killed and that the
dead boy was a prisoner.
****************************************************************
Liam Lynch and I had arranged that our two divisions
would co-operate in a series of attacks on a certain day.
Few of our battalions had carried out operation surveys
according to my instructions ; some sketches and plans of
the vicinity of posts and barracks had come in to me. On
the evening of the day arranged for the operations, our
divisional staff, which had carried out the only attack on
police in our area, met with Dinny Lacey's column. He had
about thirty-five men, but had done nothing that day.
Lacey had brought his column many times through South
Tipperary, but it had seen very little fighting; that was due
partly to bad luck, the uncertainty of enemy movement, and
303
our faulty Intelligence System. He was very religious; he
fingered his beads often as his well-spread-out column crossed
country. He was strict and had his men well in hand; he
did not talk much, and then decisively. He was very stub-
born. In anger a white temper paled his face and his voice
stuttered or came in a swifter rush. Strong and well-built
with regular unemphasized features, he was very much
admired by his men who called him 'Captain Dinny,' though
he was Brigade Vice-Commandant.
Some of the column wore green-grey uniforms, but most of
the uniforms in the area had been captured by enemy raiding
parties during the past five years. Some wore their caps back
to front; a few had uniform caps; one boy had a triangular
 forage cap, and there were hats with pinned-up sides and
turned-down brims. All wore riding-breeches and leggings.
The men had rifles, khaki slings of ammunition or leather
bandoliers ; some had grenades slung dangerously by their
levers in their belts. There was a Hotchkiss gun section.
There were a few ex-soldiers who had served in the World
War, but as they had been trained only in trench warfare
they lacked individuality and initiative and looked too much
to their N.C.O.s for guidance; they were little adaptable to
our conditions.
The men had an air of assurance, constant exercise had
hardened and burnt them ; they were looked up to as old
soldiers by the men in the areas through which they passed.
The men were young, cheery, and fond of 'caffling.' The
column had its own slang; when the men were in a house
where long flitches of bacon hung from the ceiling, they were
content. 'The sky looks good,' they'd say to each other, as
they looked up at the rafters.
I said what I thought to Lacey. The main intention of the
combined operations was to relieve the pressure on the First
Southern, and here he was with thirty-five men, yet had made
no attempt to fight; as Brigade Vice-Commandant he could
have arranged for fights in at least three battalions. 'We can't
meet the beggars,' he said, 'they go too cautiously now.'
'Why don't you go into the towns? If the British won't
come out we'll have to go in.' I sent the Tipperary Battalion
Commandant to get information about the strength of the
military evening patrol and of movements of Tans in Tip-
perary; next evening at dusk half the column, reinforced by
304
local men and scouts, would move into the town to attack
and bomb the patrol and Tans.
We were not going to give any quarter to the Tans that
night or worry about the mixed company in the hotel bars
and pubs that we would bomb and shoot up. The Tans in
Tipperary had never spared either the countryside or their
prisoners. The Battalion Commandant and I had worked out
a defence of the town against reprisal parties, and we felt
easier in mind about the night's work.
Next day we worked around until we were close to the
town. I intended to leave the machine-gun section in a
position to cover the retirement of our men from the town.
Towards dusk we moved through a grove of trees north of
Tipperary and close to it;our advance guard made prisoners
of disconcerted courting couples whom they sent back to our
reserve to hold until shooting began. I was with the advanced
guard. Close to a road the Tipperary Commandant shouted
'Halt!'to a man who began to run; a thick hedge held us
up. When we got through, the man was on the road. 'He's
a tout,' the Commandant said; 'he's always with police and
he'll surely report us.' The man had seen a number of our
main body in front of a grove of trees. Police and military
would be on their guard now, or might be rushed out to
where we had last been seen. The column marched away into
the night towards Donohill.
Twenty-two
MAY-JULY 1921
Eamonn Price, Assistant D.O came down from Dublin to
a council meeting of the Second Southern Division. At its
first meeting brigade officers had objected to the intimation
from G.H.Q. that two of the divisional staff would receive
five pounds a week each as salary. None of the other whole-time
officers in the brigades were paid. After a debate it was
decided that salaries would not be accepted until officers
305
engaged solely on army work and the men in the columns were
paid ; that would be Tibbs's Eve, we knew. Price told us
the C.S. insisted that myself and the adjutant must accept
money as a 'disciplinary measure,' and he would enforce his
command. We took the money, but transferred it to the
divisional arms account with the Q.M.G. Seamus said, 'It
looks as if they want to have men in charge of divisions they
can call H.Q. men.' It was strange, we thought, that the C.S.
should treat our refusal as indiscipline.
Price wore city clothes ; he did not carry a gun, but he
borrowed a Webley which made him rise in our esteem.
We had to cross bridges and water ditches; we threw our-
selves flat when we heard the noise of lorry engines. We
crawled close to enemy posts to show him their defences and
squelched at night through water-logged bottoms. At the
end of the third day his trousers were in flitters. Jim Leahy,
the Brigadier, was with us; usually we were our own scouts,
moving in the various thinnesses or breadths of a triangle, in
line or file. I could not rely much on scouts supplied by
the companies. They were never alert save when an objective
danger was pressing. Small streams, stone walls, barbed wire,
and long wet grass were natural enough to us in a tramp,
but they were strange to Price, and we did not select the
easiest way. As he was the first member of the Headquarters
Staff to inspect the martial law area, I wanted to show him
conditions and expose him to the same risks as our senior
officers.
One evening above Dovea, we were making for Borriso-
leigh. In the distance was the gap in the Devil's Bit flat
against a pale lemon sky. The light was failing as we crossed
a marshy field rising up to a road, judging by the telegraph
poles. We could hear voices in the stillness, and the wind
rustled in the purple-topped reeds. We saw six figures behind
a stone wall on the road ; they halted to watch us as we
stood. They had rifles on their shoulders. Price was the rear
point of our triangle. 'Police' shouted Leahy ; 'and there's
no cover.' The field was bare. 'Let's rush them' I said. we
ran up the hill, Leahy and I shouting. We might as well be
shot going forward. The group near the wall scattered, but
no shots came. When we reached the road, we saw two men
with spades on their shoulders ; the others had run away.
'You're both mad,' said Price.
Near Thurles next night Leahy whispered to me as I
306
worked at a table with Price, 'Come outside a minute.' The
sentry from the local company had refused to stay on sentry
duty. 'He told me to go to hell,' Leahy said. 'You'd best
settle him.'I talked to the sentry. Why was he picked? he
wanted to know ; he had been working all day. He was
tired; we were tired, too, I said. The Brigadier had told me
the man had not been on sentry duty for the past three
months, and he would be relieved inside of three hours. He
was a fat-faced man with a dribbling moustache and scowling
eyes. I was tired and there was a long walk before us next
morning.
"You can be court-martialled for disobeying an order on
active service, and you know what the result might be,' I said.
'I'm not going to do sentry work,' he said slowly.
I took off my Sam Browne belt; two guns were slung in the
open holsters. 'Take one,' I said; 'we'll fight it out beyond
that clump of trees over there. I'm fed up driving men to do
their duty.
He looked at my belt. 'I'll do my share of sentry work,'
he said. We shook hands.
Near Emly in East Limerick a scout rushed into the house
where Price and I were in bed. 'Soldiers searching the next
house! Hurry out! Quick!' In trousers and long boots with
my shirt in my teeth I got through a back window; we
dressed behind a hedge. The soldiers passed the house we had
been in and searched the next house on the roadside. Two
lorries of soldiers dusted a road as we crossed a bog; we lay
flat, but they had not seen us. Later in the day we nearly ran
into a cycling patrol from Kilmallock; trying to avoid them
we found ourselves close to sentries who were guarding a long
convoy that had halted on the Kilfinnan Road. I counted
twenty lorries through my glasses; offcers and men, white
with dust, were standing on the road. We watched the convoy
move off as we sat on the slopes of Slievereagh. 'I've seen
as much as I want to of East Limerick; Price said with
emphasis. Next day I would be able to pass him on to the
Cork men and be free from anxiety.
Tomas Malone had part of the East Limerick column near
a pass that led into County Cork. This was a country of
steep hills and narrow defiles between the Galtees and the
Ballyhoura Range. The people were very staunch ; our
columns rested up here and troops found the hill country
difficult. We had good protection now. In the early morning
307
someone grabbed my shoulder hard. 'Get up quick, the
soldiers are making up the bohereen!' I spread the column
men behind a hedge and waited. Later a scout came ; a
British cycling patrol had searched a house at the end of the
small road leading up to our position and had then gone back
to the main road. 'It's the Galbally patrol under Shaky,' he
said. An officer from the Galbally post had been nicknamed
Shaky, because he suffered from a mixture of shell shock and
drink. He was an eager collector of candlesticks ; when he
raided a house he placed the candlesticks on a table, com-
pared them and took away any he fancied for his collection.
Such was Shaky in folklore. Price and I went back to bed.
'They won't come back by the same road,' I said. An hour
later I heard a shout outside. 'They're coming!'
'Where are they?' I asked, as I buckled on my belt.
'Searching the second house on the bohereen.' Ours was
the fourth. I told Tomas to cover the approaches to the house
and to guard his flanks well. Then I went back to bed.
An aeroplane made a forced landing fourteen miles from
Limerick City ; a battalion column rushed to the landing-
place to find pilot and observer attempting to burn their
papers. The column men set fire to the plane. That was the
second plane the East Limerick men had burnt. In their
dispatches was an order from Dublin to the Limerick military
to raid at once for Michael Brennan and his column which
were in Roxborough, close to the city. There was a list of
houses to be blown up and information true and imaginative
about us. 'Columns are being broken up,' one report stated;
'this may be the last kick, but remember the last kick is always
the hardest.' Word was sent at once to Michael Brennan,
Brigadier of East Clare.
We were becoming most popular. Respectable people
were beginning to crawl in to us ; neutrals and those who
thought they had best come over were changing from indif-
ference or hostility to a painful acceptance, with the know-
ledge that some kind of peace settlement would be made.
Soon we should have to destroy railways, the main supply
artery of garrisons. That would mean a food survey and
arrangements for exchange of surplus food between areas
and a closer contact between our divisional staffs and county,
city and borough councils and Dail members. The Dail,
unable to meet as a body, carried on its work in committees.
It was not safe for it to meet as a parliament. As we de-
308
stroyed communications Dublin would be cut off from the
country; we should have to build up civil control by areas,
and the First and Second Southern would act together.
Liam Lynch and I had exchanged our ideas on, and our
plans for, the future. We saw what hardening was to come.
The people of this country would have to give allegiance to
it or if they wanted to support the Empire they would have
to clear out and support the Empire elsewhere. Race did
not matter ; it was a question of allegiance to Ireland that
separated Celt, Viking, Norman, English, and their inter-
mixture there.
On inspection I brought a list which Con called 'The
Hundred Awkward Questions.' At councils and staff meetings
I questioned officers in turn. I checked their information at
the next visitation ; often there were wide discrepancies. I
could evaluate brigade information when I attended battalion
staff meetings or councils, and both brigade and battalion
statistics when I inspected companies. Facts and figures, I
might find, had been given out of pure airiness of mind or
from desire to make a good show. Supervision was irksome,
but I needed to know the individual officers personally down
to company captains, and to understand as far as I could the
actual difficulties of each area to form judgment on develop-
ment, possibilities, or lack of activity.
I found in many companies that only a few of the men
had seen grenades or rifles and that training schemes had
never been enforced or orders carried out. Some companies
neglected to block roads when ordered. That meant our small
columns were open to sudden raids or round-ups, and due to
negligence men were killed or captured. Information
captured or sent through our Intelligence was often not for-
warded quickly enough by dispatch riders, and again men
were killed as a result.
I had thirty-two battalion areas to cover, and close on
seven thousand men to be responsible for. To sit down and
attempt to direct might have been possible if battalions had
any uniformity in armament, ability, experience, or desire for
action, or if there was any possibility of information being
forwarded quickly so that I could keep in touch with the
situation in battalion areas. Staff work dealt too much with
the building-up of administration, but soon it would have to
tackle opinions seriously.
309
I slept out with men from Rosegreen Company at the
Centre under a tent which had once been a hayrick cover;
some had hammocks which they slung in the hedge from tree
branches. I was working in 47 when a scout came to see me.
Three men had been captured on the hillside ; they were
British officers, and the Rosegreen men had them in a dug-out
lower down. I met the two boys who had captured them.
One had a rifle and two rounds of ammunition, the other an
empty bandolier, when they saw the three men coming across
the fields. The boy with the rifle halted them; the men began
to run. He fired. One of the men was wounded slightly, the
others came back and all three surrendered. Each had an
automatic in his pocket and an identification card. Two were
gunner officers from Fethard Artillery Barracks, five miles
across the hill. I sent two boys up the hill to find out where
the officers had stopped and what they had been doing. Later
one came back. The officers had been searching hedges; at
a house on the slope they had asked about dug-outs. They had
questioned the young man of the house.
I brought them up one by one. They gave me their names,
ranks, the name of their commanding officer. They had been
out for a walk, they said.
'Any officers we capture in this area are to be shot until
such time as you cease shooting your prisoners.'
'We have nothing to do with the shooting of prisoners,' one
said.
'This is not a personal question. Our men whom your men
may capture and later shoot will have nothing to do with your
being shot. My mind is made up about it. You will be shot
at dawn tomorrow.'
'Can't you consider the matter?' one asked.
'You will have to consult your officers,' another said ; 'you
can't do it without authority.'
'I happen to be in command of this area. This is my
authority. It would be better to prepare your minds. I will
get food ready for you.' I gave them cigarettes. A boy with
a rifle lay near the entrance to the dug-out.
A scout rushed down to where I sat. Beside me were six
riflemen who had been mobilized in the meantime.
'Soldiers with a machine-gun. They've just come over the
brow of the hill and they're searching.'
'Easy,' I said, 'the officers will hear you.'
The scouring soldiers came from Fethard. Other sections of
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troops would possibly be making their way in our direction.
I blindfolded the officers so that they could not see where
they were going. The covering on their eyes made them help-
less ; their hands were free, but tying a man's hands was not
a job we liked. Men held them by the sleeves so that they
could walk more easily. One of them limped. He had a slight
flesh wound. I put him on a cart.
'If we are surrounded,' I said to the one whose face I liked
best, 'I'll let you go. I'm not going to shoot you like dogs.'
The guard of riflemen grumbled.
'But you'll shoot them tomorrow, anyhow,' said the Brigade
Q.M. 'Where's the difference?'
The Q.M. was right, but it was tough to have to turn on
them suddenly when we were hard put in a fight to shoot them
like injured beasts.
One of the officers said, 'We can do first-aid for your
wounded if there's a fight.'
A sloe-skin dusk came slowly down on the steep western
slopes of Slievenamon and across the woods there. It blurred
the valley of the Suir below the Comeraghs; hedges of tangled
hawthorn with fresh leaves, in amongst the neat stems of
spruce, stood out against the rise of hills. There was a strong,
spicy smell carried across from the bright pink blossoms of
a corner hedge of wild crab.
We halted at a gateway. A horse and trap came up. The
officers got up into the seats.
A young girl came out from a house. She peered at the
men in the half-light. 'Who are they?' she asked.
'English officers,' said a guard.
'Shooting's too good for them,' she said bitterly, as she
looked up at them. They looked down at her with set faces.
'Oh, leave them alone,' I said.
'God help the poor boys,' said a woman beside her, 'per-
haps they'd like a sup of milk.' She came back with a large
jug and three delph mugs. The officers drank. They thanked
her.
We walked into the closing-in darkness, riflemen in front
and behind the trap, until we were a distance from where
the officers had been captured. I expected a big round-up in
which the countryside would be combed by troops from
Cahir and Clonmel--both strong military posts. They would
probably converge in the triangular area of which Fethard
was the apex. We came to a farmhouse up in the fields some
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way off the main Clonmel road. Sentries were posted. The
girls and women of the house got ready supper ; they did
not ask any questions. A fire was lighted in the room where
the officers were. After supper I went into the room. The
blinds were drawn so that they could not look out. It was a
large room. They were seated at a table. One had his head
in his hands.
'Would you like to see a clergyman of your own religion?'
'No,' said one. The others shook their heads.
'Would you like a civilian, an Imperialist, to stay with
you?'
'No.' They did not need anyone.
'Here's writing paper and envelopes. You can write to
anyone you wish. If you give me your words of honour that
you won't mention anything of military importance, you can
seal the envelopes yourselves.'
Each gave me his word. There were beds for them to sleep
on.
I sat in the kitchen by the fire. The woman of the house
had gone to bed quietly. None of us spoke for a long time.
I was putting myself in the place of the men inside. My turn
might come, too, and soon. It seemed easier to face one's
own execution than to have to shoot others. 'It's very dark
outside,' said the Quartermaster. 'I hope the boys are keeping
a good lookout.' He strode into the darkness.
He was an elderly man. Freckles showed through a wine-red
face. There were thin folds in his neck. He had a long
skillet of a jaw, he showed the wide gaps between his teeth
when he smiled. His step was as deliberate as a gander's.
He would have his say no matter what happened ; he was
accustomed to jump objections--for that was a quarter-
master's offensive. He could advise about a round of ammu-
nition as seriously as we would discuss or draw up a plan
of operations. He was the oldest of us, about thirty-five years.
He spoke slowly and carefully, toothing his words in a dry
humour.
None of us was twenty-four ; the youngest officer inside was
about that age. One was tall and dark with brown eyes. He
had ill-treated prisoners in Tipperary, one of the Rosegreen
men said. He had been insulting when on raids. One was
stout with a thick neck, his hair was a little thin. He had
been more anxious to talk and to remonstrate than the
others. The third was quiet and reserved. He had a sensitive
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face and he did not talk. I liked him best. I was worried
about him because he was wounded. It was an accepted con-
vention that a wounded man should not be shot until he was
able to walk. I did not bother about the convention, only
the presence of the wounded man made its own conditions.
I did not see any sense in keeping him for a few days longer.
It would be harder on him if his companions went first.
'I wish it were over,' I said to the Q.M. There were two
other men seated on chairs making a round of the fire.
'It'll be over soon enough,' he said. He was calm enough
about it. I knew that I would continue to shoot their officers.
Of that, there would be no doubt, but this kind of work was
hard enough. If we shot enough of them, it would make the
others think a little. I don't know what we talked about. Odds
and rags of conversation about men in other battalions, the
relative merits of different kinds of explosives, the making
of improvised Stokes guns and the history of this part of
Desmond. Two men went out to relieve their comrades. I
walked outside in the darkness. The night was misty, the
moon shone softly through cloud veils. Sounds carried well;
away through the distance came the lonely bray of an ass;
it was answered in sardonic harshness nearby. Sheep coughed
drily in the shelter of a hedge and a cow chewed loudly.
'It'll soon be dawn,' said the Q.M.
I knocked at the door. They were seated around the table.
Their faces looked worn and drawn. None of them had slept.
'Have you written your letters?'
'Yes,' said the thin swarthy one ; 'here they are.'
'If you would like to send your money or valuables to your
friends or relatives, I will forward them for you.'
'We would like to send them with a note to our C.O., Major
Y, in Fethard,' the quiet one said.
I found an empty Fry's chocolate box on a side table. They
put their watches, money, and rings inside.
'Would you like some tea? It'll be dawn soon and we'll
have to be on our way.'
'No, thanks, we don't want anything.'
We walked down the sloping fields towards the roadway.
The sky was clouded with heavy grey. The light was dim,
a cold dawn wind blew across the thick hedges. It ruffled
the grass which was shiny with dewdrops. Men with rifles
formed an extended five-pointed figure. An officer walked on
each side of the Q.M. I was behind with the third.
313
'It's a mistake,' he said. 'It won't do any good. We could
be good to prisoners.'
'None of us want to do it,' I said, 'but I must think of our
men.' I could see the ultimate implications of our pro-
posed action. The sky lighted silvery grey, the wind dropped.
We caught up with the three in front. 'Stiff banks those
for hunting,' said the tall, swarthy officer. They smiled as if
they had thought of horses and the sight of a red-brown fox.
'There's not much hunting now,' I said. We had stopped
hunting through the martial law area.
We reached the roadway. There was a wall in front of a
church. The three officers were placed on the green grass
edge of the dusty road.
'Do you mind?' I said, as I placed their handkerchiefs
around their eyes. One handkerchief was of silk and claret
coloured.
'No.'
'This is good-bye,' I said.
They shook hands with the Q.M. and myself. Their hands
were cold and limp. They shook hands with each other.
The six men of the firing squad stood near the other side
of the road. One of the men fumbled for a while with his
magazine. He could not click it into place. An officer pulled
down his handkerchief and looked at us, then he put it back
over his eyes. Perhaps he thought we were trying to frighten
and test them and that we did not intend to shoot.
'Ram in the magazine,' I whispered to the Q.M.
'Are you ready?' asked the Q.M.
One of the officers nodded. They joined hands. 'Good-bye,
old boy,' they said, inclining their heads.
'Squad' . . .'Ready' . . . 'Fire.'
The volley crashed sharply. The three fell to the ground;
their arms twitched. The Q.M. put his revolver to each of
their foreheads in turn and fired. The bodies lay still on the
green grass. We stood to attention. Then slowly we went up
the hill across country making for the Centre. None of us
spoke till we had crossed a good many fields where wind had
snaked the rye grass.
*****************************************************************
Enemy columns wearing civilian clothes and equipped
somewhat like our columns, or in full war kit with helios
for signalling and bloodhounds for tracking, had been moving
through parts of Tipperary and Kilkenny. They slept during
314
the day, usually, and tramped into the night. Another column
might try to pass itself off as one of our own from an outside
area. A man with an Irish accent would act the prisoner ;
with hands tied behind his back he would be kicked down
from a lorry and left in a kitchen to talk to the women about
the local lads and ask that word be sent to them for a rescue.
His supposed captors would leave rifles lying about and act
in a seemingly careless way in hope that an attempt would be
made to free the prisoner.
I inspected Kilkenny Brigade. The brigade staff had sel-
dom sent our orders to battalions ; they had never been
on inspection. On the western border of the county enemy
patrols were numerous. I had a running fight with one at
night. Further south towards Mullinavat I was surprised by
a sudden round-up. In the darkness we moved through their
cordons and lay out for the dawn. Early in the morning with
two officers I took cover suddenly as we were about to cross
a road.
Two lorries passed quickly. I saw a man upright in the first
lorry. He was tied with ropes by outstretched arms to the tail-
board. There was blood on his face and clothes. Later in the
day I was told he was a dispatch rider who had been captured
the previous evening with a dispatch of mine on him. He had
not talked.
The weather continued dry, the grass was burned with
heat ; fine weather helped sweeping operations and round-ups.
The division, which in men, arms and extent was the
second most important of our units, was not fighting enough,
and was not helping to draw off troops from the First
Southern. Kilkenny and Limerick, two cities at the extreme
limits of our area were not being made use of to radiate
strength and to supply good officers and material to their
surroundings.
Divisional spirit was hard to build; I was handicapped by
having no brigade of my own to back me. Liam Lynch had
North Cork in which he had lived continually. It would have
been better, I now thought, to have placed Seamus Robinson
in charge; he could fall back on the resources of Tipperary 3.
That brigade, our best, lived too much on its reputation.
Tracey, Robinson, and Breen had created a tradition and had
done most of its fighting ; battalion officers, however, were
now inclined to fight it out when surrounded. Staffs in three
battalions recently had fought it out to their end, but columns
315
in East Limerick had seen more fighting. It was a continual
worry to me that I was not improving the division more
quickly; someone else in my place would do better work, I felt
I was not getting enough support, I knew, and I found it
hard to define the cause, whether it lay in myself or came
from the brigade officers. Micky Fitz, Con, and I discussed
the situation frequently with our Divisional Engineer, Bob
de Courcey of Limerick, and our Intelligence Officer. The
division partook of our general decentralization ; the martial
law area was solving its own problems by itself. G.H.Q.
issued general instructions but our operations were our own.
We had not yet reached the stage when we could carry out
operations on an extensive scale to a headquarters plan or
even to a divisional plan.
I decided to organize a divisional column of one hundred
men. We should move in three parallel columns and begin
in County Kilkenny, the area which had done least. As time
went on, I knew we should have to strengthen some of our
columns to close with the British columns which were begin-
ning to move round in our area. We needed careful training
in manoeuvre, and we should have to go into the towns to
look for fight. I intended that we should sleep out ; that
meant hayrick covers, ground sheets and blankets. I sent
word to brigades to select men for the new column. Our men
in small columns could, I felt, meet the same number of
men or more in the open, but as our numbers increased our
officers would be more liable to be outmanoeuvred by the
British officers. I hoped that as a result of our new action I
could select some officers whom I would send to sleepy areas
for organization, training, and operations. I knew that action
and comradeship would knit more closely the officers and men
of a column, and that any later orders to them would be
more promptly obeyed.
I began the organization of a divisional company. Its sec-
tions would act as a permanent guard to our headquarters
and could be used for dispatches. Our Q.M. would equip the
men with grenades and through our Q.M.G. we might be able
to arm them with Mauser automatics. I intended to train the
company as N.C.O.'s and give them a thorough grounding in
scouting and in protective work.
There was no munitions factory in our area. Grenade tops,
now of aluminium, since the capture of a Headquarters' factory
316
in Dublin, were sent through our Quartermaster-General.
Steel piping for bodies was made in Limerick or supplied
from Dublin, but in action the new grenades burst in one
direction or might fail to detonate. 'Cheddar' for grenades
and 'war flour' for land mines for attacking armoured cars
and steel-plated lorries were made in Limerick, but in small
quantities.
There had been rumours of peace. Lord Derby, a Catholic,
to please the Vatican after Archbishop Clune's repulse, and
Lord Haldane and others had come over to size up our
leaders so that the English Cabinet could resolve the strong
and weak points of their opponents. Cope, the Assistant Irish
Under-Secretary, was busiest of all in Dublin. Michael Collins
began to appear in print; he was called the Irish de Wet.
Brugha, Dev., or Mulcahy were never mentioned. Sir James
Craig, the Northern leader, had met de Valera, and General
Smuts had talked with him. Rumours came about the removal
of prisoners from the internment camps at the Curragh, Bally-
kinlar, Beare Island, and Spike to a faraway British posses-
sion. The battalions on guard duty were badly needed for
service. Nineteen fresh battalions of infantry and marines
came over.
There were rumours about a withdrawal of all British
troops to the coast and the use of a blockade; the internment
of all Unionists so that the remainder of the population out-
side the new camps could be treated as active enemies. The
British intended to man railways, post-offices, telegraphs and
telephones, with troops, issue passports ; but that would mean
a special enlistment in England of fifty thousand men for
service in Ireland. The Chief Secretary, Hamar Greenwood,
had a plan for martial law in three provinces if the Southern
Members did not attend the Southern Parliament on the 14th
of July. Executions of our men had stopped; official military
blowing-up of houses had ceased, perhaps they realized that
a castle of their friends counted more than a cottage of ours.
Destruction of town halls and the burning of creameries and
farm supplies had slowed down.
In December of 1920, a Government of Ireland Bill had
provided for a Southern Parliament of twenty-six counties
and a Northern of six. At the elections in the South, one
hundred and twenty-four Republicans had been returned and
four Unionists representing Trinity College. King George
opened the Northern Parliament in June ; the Southern
317
Parliament was not a success. Only the four members from
Trinity carne to the opening. The other members had given
their allegiance to Dail Eireann, the Government of the
Republic, and they would not sanction the partition of their
country made by the British Parliament.
On the 9th of July, a Dublin boy came to Mrs. Quirke's
whilst I was away. A dispatch rider was sent for me. The
boy would not tell his business to any other member of the
staff. He handed me a typed order.
"In view of the conversations now being entered into by our
Government with the Government of Great Britain, and in
pursuance of mutual conversations, active operations by our
troops will be suspended as from noon, Monday, 11th July.
RISTEARO UA MAOLCHATHA
Chief of Staff."
Two days from now, on the 11th of July at noon, we were
to see that all officers and men in the division observed the
terms of the truce which had been agreed to by the British.
There was no intimation as to how long the truce would last.
Con typed my orders to the five brigades. We sat down to
talk about the news in wonder. What did it mean? And why
had senior officers no other information than a bald message?
Would the truce last a week, or perhaps two weeks? We were
willing to keep up the pressure which had been increasing
steadily ; soon, in a month or more, the division would begin
operations in the towns and use columns by sections. Bewil-
dered, we waited for Micky Fitz, the Quartermaster, to
discuss the speeding-up of 'cheddar' and 'war flour.' And so
ended for us what we called the scrap; the people later on,
the trouble ; and others fond of labels, the Revolution.
Put on the kettle now and make the tay, and if we weren't
happy, that you may.