In November 1920 a group of British intelligence men, known as the Cairo Gang posed as businessmen and lodged in various houses in Dublin. Through his intelligence operations, their activities became known to Michael Collins. In simultaneous pre-dawn raids on Sunday 21 November Michael Collins’ squad killed eleven British intelligence officers. In retaliation the Black and Tans invaded the football match at Croke Park that afternoon and fired indiscriminately at the teams and at an estimated seven thousand spectators, killing twelve civilians including one of the Tipperary players and wounding sixty.
In Millstreet, County Cork, the RIC, the Macroom based Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans had subjected the citizens to a wild night of firing. Because of the way the RIC Auxiliary patrol was attacking civilians, some members of a small battalion column took up positions on the night of 22 November and, in the fight which ensued, two Black and Tans were wounded. The brigade suffered a serious blow, Captain Patrick McCarthy, who had joined the volunteers immediately after 1916, was killed.1On the night of his death he was attended by Fr Joe Breene and later that night his body was removed to Eugene O’Sullivan’s house where it was guarded by his comrades. The next night, Liam took charge of the funeral procession to Lismire where he was buried with full military honours. Anticipating British reprisals for the shooting of the Black and Tans, the IRA occupied Millstreet in order to protect its inhabitants. However, the British did not leave their post, so before dawn he sent the column to billets outside the town.
At Kilmichael outside Macroom, on Sunday, 28 November 1920, thirty-six volunteers of the Third West Cork flying column, under the command of Tom Barry, successfully carried out the first major guerrilla ambush against the British forces in Ireland. During the ambush Barry’s volunteers accepted in good faith a surrender call by the Auxiliaries. But the Auxiliaries resumed the fight and fatally wounded three of the volunteers. Barry and his men retaliated. Sixteen Auxiliaries (based in Macroom Castle) were killed in the ambush, another was seriously wounded and a further soldier was killed subsequently.2Large quantities of arms, ammunition and documents were secured.
Following this, Lord French announced ‘Martial Law in the County of Cork, East and West Riding, the City of Cork, Tipperary, North and South Riding, the City and County of Limerick.’
Further to this General Sir Nevil Macready, commander-in-chief of British forces in Ireland, proclaimed that persons caught with illegal arms or explosives were liable to sentence of death. Public meetings were forbidden and each householder was to affix a list of the occupants inside his/her front door. Indiscriminate shooting of people pursuing their ordinary peaceful activities was the order of the day as was the burning of shops, creameries and other stores.
A notice printed in all the daily newspapers and displayed in Macroom ‘ordered that all males passing through Macroom shall not appear in public with their hands in their pockets. Any male infringing this order is liable to be shot at sight’.
(Outside Mitchelstown in Lynch’s area one evening in July 1920, a group of boys and girls were having a crossroads dance when a military lorry passed by and opened fire. Amidst a hale of bullets, the boys and girls ran for shelter. Two men, McDonnell and McGrath had been shot dead and the military immediately left. Subsequently, at an inquest, the soldiers swore that they were attacked and had fired in self-defence. The jury, despite British intimidation, brought in a verdict of murder against the soldiers.)
Liam Lynch continued to take every opportunity, which presented itself in each of his seven battalion areas, to attack British forces. On 19 December a successful ambush was fought under the command of Thomas Barry at Glencurrane near Liam’s birthplace. The columns captured eighteen rifles, five or six hundred rounds of ammunition and two dozen mills grenades. Of the eighteen men in the two lorries, two had been killed and three wounded. The Fermoy column, under the command of Patrick Egan, surprised a lorry of British troops near Castlelyons. The first volley that they fired hit the driver. The lorry crashed and its occupants scattered through the fields and were pursued by the IRA who forced nine British soldiers to surrender their arms.
At the beginning of 1920 Liam’s brigade had had very few arms but by July quite a substantial amount of serviceable rifles, revolvers and grenades had been acquired. Most of the arms and equipment had been captured from the occupation forces, and Liam was completely aware that they had to depend on their own resources, so they would have to continue to capture more arms in order to maintain the struggle. At the beginning of 1920 only a few members of the brigade were on whole-time active service, but by the end of the year, seven columns, each varying in strength from fourteen to thirty men were in the field, all able to get reinforcements from their own battalions at short notice.
Another colleague of Liam’s, Liam O’Connell, was shot in an attack on an armoured car in Dublin on 14 October 1920. When he was being buried at Glantane, near Mallow, Liam made one of his brief public statements:
We are here at the grave of one of our volunteers whose young life is given for the freedom of Ireland. We will revenge his great sacrifice and will continue the fight until it is brought to a successful conclusion. Many more may follow Liam O’Connell before this country obtains its Independence.
The deaths of young officers like McCarthy, Clancy, O’Connell and Michael Fitzgerald were all severe blows to the brigade, yet the deaths of these young men somehow strengthened the hearts of their comrades; it heightened their morale and gave them the strength and determination to fight on. Liam mentioned this in a letter to his mother:
I am living only to bring the dreams of my dead comrades to reality and every moment of my life is now devoted to that end ... Thank God I am left alive to still help in shattering the damned British Empire.3
1 Patrick McCarthy was arrested in 1918, took part in Belfast hunger-strike under Austin Stack and was transferred to Strangeways Jail, Manchester; escaped September 1919, returned to Ireland, joined the volunteers, involved in Mallow raid and all ambushes in the area.
2 Details of Kilmichael ambush in Meda Ryan, The Tom Barry Story, pp. 30–33.
3 Letter to his mother, 22/7/1921 (Lynch private family papers).