By September 1920, republican courts or Sinn Féin courts were effectively replacing the British judicial system in most of Ireland. The British were losing control of the country to the Republicans. Moreover, the war in Ireland had dragged on for over a year and a half, and newspapers in Britain were questioning the brutality of the British forces in Ireland; English horror at what was happening in Ireland would ultimately be a factor in bringing the war to an end, as public pressure was increasingly brought to bear on the situation.
Newspapers in Ireland also carried daily reports of the killings, ambushes and burnings carried out by the IRA and the British. A typical front page of any newspaper from the time makes hard reading but illustrates the extent of the war and how it affected daily life. The IRA began to form ‘flying columns’, small groups of mobile Volunteers who would live away from home and spend their time in the field, staging regular ambushes on British patrols. The IRA, under Liam Lynch, temporarily captured a British Army barracks in Mallow, and the town was attacked and burned the following night in a reprisal by the British. Two of the IRA Volunteers who had fired the first shots of the war, Dan Breen and Seán Treacy, had a miraculous escape after their safe house in Dublin was raided by the British, but Breen was badly wounded in the encounter. Treacy was shot dead two days later outside the Republican Outfitters on Talbot Street. As reports of hostilities continued, the Republicans were winning the propaganda war decisively.
TYPICAL WAR REPORTS FOR ONE DAY
The front page of The Liberator newspaper, published in Tralee, County Kerry, on 30 September 1920, gives a flavour of the intensity of the war at the time. Ardrahan village in County Galway was attacked by the Black and Tans in a reprisal for an ambush on the RIC. Shots were fired in Dingle, County Kerry, during the night. A civil guard made up of civilians was formed in Trim, County Meath. Seven RIC men were ambushed by masked men in Waterville, County Kerry, and a policeman was shot in the face. Two policemen were shot dead by the IRA in Templemore, County Tipperary. An RIC man, Sergeant Dee, who had been shot five times in the chest in Drimoleague, County Cork, was still alive but in a critical condition in hospital. The condition of eleven IRA hunger strikers in Cork Gaol was reported as being very grave.
Nor were those the only incidents reported in that edition of the newspaper. A British Army officer had been wounded in an ambush in Dundrum, near Limerick Junction. Five men had been arrested in Galway by the RIC, and charged with being members of the Republican Police. Persons unknown had set fire to Dingle railway station in County Kerry. A jury had returned a verdict of murder against a British Army officer and sergeant (who did not attend an inquest) for the shooting of seventy-year-old James Connolly at Unshinagh, Kinlough in County Leitrim. A raid had been carried out in the Wicklow Hotel, Dublin, by the British Army and men in plain clothes who were ‘searching for a man’. The report noted that one of the men in plain clothes was masked. ‘Armed men’ had attacked Arva Barracks, Cavan, where the RIC surrendered and the building was burned to the ground. (Those ‘armed men’ were the Longford IRA under Seán MacEoin, the ‘Blacksmith of Ballinalee’). The newspaper goes on to report on the sacking of Mallow town in County Cork by the British Army, where the Cleeves Condensed Milk Factory (whose owners were Unionists) was amongst the destroyed business premises; the total damage in Mallow was estimated at £100,000.
On a lighter note, the paper reported on how some ordinary people in Ireland were reacting to the war. A public meeting in Clonmel, County Tipperary, had been held, at which it was unanimously decided to arrange for the taking of a total abstinence pledge in the town until such time as Ireland was free of British rule.
IRA FLYING COLUMNS
Organisation Memo No. 1 (1920) was issued by Óglaigh na hÉireann (Irish Volunteers or IRA) GHQ on 4 October 1920. It concerned the formation of flying columns:
At the present time a large number of our men and officers are on the run in different parts of the country. The most effective way of utilising these officers and men would seem to be by organising them as a Flying Column. In this way … they would become available as standing troops of a well-trained and thoroughly reliable stamp, and their action could be far more systematic and effective. Permanent troops of this kind would afford an exceedingly valuable auxiliary arm to the remainder of the Republican Army, which is in great measure only a part-time service militia. These Flying Columns would consist of only first-rate troops as the work required of them would be very exacting.1
However, it should be noted that flying columns were already in operation in June 1920, several months before the GHQ issued these orders. The historian Thomas Toomey notes that the ‘founding of the first flying column, and the whole concept of flying columns, is generally accepted as having originated in east Limerick.’2
Members of the West Mayo IRA Flying Column.
A typical IRA flying column would use bicycles, which were relatively cheap, light enough to carry over fields, and most importantly a very popular mode of transport; there was nothing suspicious about a few men cycling together. Vast distances could be covered by a flying column, which ideally consisted of twenty-six combatants. The duties of flying columns would comprise two distinct types of action, auxiliary and independent. For auxiliary action the Brigade commandants would assign the flying column as an invaluable extra force for a local attack in his area. Independent action would comprise attacks on hostile patrols and raids on postal deliveries and enemy stores. Commanders of flying columns had wide discretion but were to keep in contact with local O/Cs to avoid interference with each other. Except ‘by definite arrangement with the Brigade Commandant of a neighbouring Area, which offered an opportunity for action’, flying columns were to remain in their own Brigade area.
The West Connemara Brigade IRA Flying Column wearing the uniform of trench coats, bandoliers and leggings.
Dan Breen recalled that a member of a flying column could always be recognised
… not only by the rifle and revolver which he usually carried, and the trench coat, bandolier and leggings which were part of his regular outfit, but also by the razor and toothbrush which he carried after the manner of a fountain pen, standing up in his breast pocket. Discipline in this matter was very strict, cleanliness was considered essential. A column man with a dirty or unshaven face was unheard of.3
CAPTURE OF MALLOW BARRACKS
On 22 November 1919, the original Cork Brigade was divided into three Brigades. Mallow became the Fourth Battalion attached to the Second Brigade IRA. On 28 September 1920, Liam Lynch, Commandant of Cork Number 2 Brigade, led the only capture of a British Army Barracks during the War of Independence. Two IRA men, Richard Willis and Jack Bolster, were working as civilian contractors in Mallow Barracks, and they took note of the movements of the Seventeenth Lancers, a British mounted regiment. The Lancers used to exercise their horses every morning on the outskirts of Mallow; when they were doing so, there were only fifteen men left in the barracks. On the morning of 28 September, Lynch’s men went into action. One of his staff officers, Owen Harold, had been billeted for some time in a house facing the barracks, where he watched the movement of the troops.4 Lynch posted a sniping party in Mallow Town Hall in order to get a line of sight on O’Brien Street where the local RIC barracks was. If the police were tempted to go to the aid of the military, they were to be fired upon.
Willis and Bolster were inside the army barracks with Paddy McCarthy, who was posing as the foreman of the job but who was actually an IRA quartermaster. All three were armed with revolvers. Another staff officer of Lynch’s Brigade, Ernie O’Malley, approached the door of Mallow Barracks under the pretence of delivering a letter. As the sentry opened the door, O’Malley and a couple of others pushed the door in and overpowered the soldier. Lynch and the rest of the IRA piled into the barracks. A British sergeant by the name of Gibbs ran to the guardroom but was mortally wounded. Meanwhile, the three ‘workers’, Willis, Bolster and McCarthy, ran into the guardroom and arrested the soldiers.
When the British had been rounded up and locked in the stables, the IRA set the guardroom on fire using petrol and hay. The raid enabled them to commandeer a large haul of equipment: twenty-seven rifles, two Hotchkiss light machine-guns, a revolver, a large quantity of ammunition and a number of Verey light pistols (flare guns).5
SACKING OF MALLOW
The capture of Mallow Barracks by the IRA was a blow to the British morale and they took their anger out on the civilians of the town. The night following the raid was one of terror in Mallow. British Army detachments from Buttevant and Fermoy indulged in an orgy of drinking, looting and burning.6 Drunken British soldiers rampaged through Mallow, throwing petrol bombs into the homes and businesses of the town. The Town Hall was destroyed and the local creamery, Cleeves, where several hundred people were employed, was burned to the ground. The ashes were still smouldering in other towns that had been looted in the previous days and weeks: Balbriggan, County Dublin (20 September), Miltown Malbay, Lahinch, Liscannor and Ennistymon in County Clare (22 September), and Trim, County Meath (27 September). The Liberator carried a report on the ‘Terrible wreckage in Mallow’ inflicted by the British Army. In fairness to the RIC, the newspaper reported that the police had provided refuge in their barracks for civilians, and noted: ‘an extraordinary feature of the attempts to save burning houses after the wreckers had departed was the active participation with the townspeople of the local police, including the Black and Tan section.’7
British Army armoured car blocked by a tree felled by the IRA.
Two days after the burning of Mallow, several houses and two creameries in Tubbercurry, County Sligo, were burned by the Black and Tans in revenge for an IRA ambush which had seen the death of an RIC district inspector, James Brady. It was clear that reprisals against civilians were part of British policy in Ireland.
British Army officers inspect damage to a bridge on the Ballinspittle road in County Cork, following an IRA attack. Local labourers can be seen carrying out repairs.
THE CAFÉ CAIRO
The Café Cairo on 59 Grafton Street was often used for meetings by Dublin Castle spies and informants. There are many references in modern Irish history books to the ‘Cairo Gang’, and indeed there are some images referenced as being the ‘Cairo Gang’. However, the term was rarely used by the IRA or the British during the war. The exception is Dan Breen who made reference to it in his recollections, My Fight for Irish Freedom, published in 1924: ‘Major Smyth had been on service in Egypt. He applied for intelligence work in Ireland, was accepted, and brought over eleven picked men with him to avenge the death of his brother. They became known as the Cairo Gang.’8
George Osbert Stirling Smyth, decorated by the British and the French for gallantry during the war, was the brother of Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Brice Smyth who had been shot in Cork on 17 July 1920 (see Chapter Five). George Smyth, a serving British Army Brigade Major in Egypt, was determined to avenge his brother’s death, and arrived in Ireland in August 1920, but there is no evidence to suggest that he brought men with him from Egypt. There is no mention of a ‘Cairo Gang’ in the Bureau of Military History witness statements or in pension records. It seems more likely that the term ‘Cairo Gang’ used by Dan Breen derived from the café as opposed to the capital of Egypt.
Another place the British secret service agents, British Army intelligence officers and Auxiliary intelligence officers frequented was Kidd’s Back (or Kidd’s Buffet), which could be accessed from Nassau Street or from Grafton Street, via Adam Court. IRA Assistant Director of Intelligence Tom Cullen, and Frank Thornton, Deputy Assistant Director of Intelligence, together with their comrade Frank Saurin, an IRA intelligence officer, regularly ate and drank in Kidd’s Back. David Nelligan introduced the three IRA intelligence men to all the British spies in Kidd’s, referring to them as his touts and giving them false names. As discussed in Chapter Three, Nelligan worked in Dublin Castle but was actually an IRA operative. Discussions in Kidd’s Back were all about Michael Collins and the Dublin IRA, and the British often dropped the names of touts that they were using, which was very useful information for the IRA to have.
Frank Thornton recalled in his witness statement a particular day in Kidd’s when one of the British turned to him, Tom Cullen and Frank Saurin and said in an exasperated tone, ‘Surely you fellows know these men — Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen and Frank Thornton — these are Collins’s three officers and if you can get these fellows we would locate Collins himself.’ Thornton realised then while the British may have known the names of the IRA GHQ Intelligence, they quite clearly did not know what they looked like.
‘FERNSIDE’ ESCAPE
Dan Breen and Seán Treacy often stayed with the Fleming family who lived above their grocery shop at 140 Drumcondra Road, ‘which was a noted place for all men on the run’.9 However, word came that Fleming’s was under constant watch, and that no one was to stay there for a while. Instead, the duo spent the night of 11 October with the family of Professor John Carolan, at ‘Fernside’, 37 Upper Drumcondra Road. Treacy and Breen let themselves in a little after the eleven o’clock curfew and quietly made their way to a bedroom at the top of the house, where they attempted to sleep.
At two in the morning, the glass in the front door was smashed and a raiding party led by George Osbert Stirling Smyth (brother of Gerald Brice Smyth) came rushing into the house. Smyth grabbed Professor Carolan on the landing and demanded to know who was in the house. The British fired a couple of shots into the room where Treacy and Breen were frantically trying to dress and make a plan for escape. The IRA men fired back through the door to hold the raiders off. Seeing that there were British outside in the rear too, Breen came out onto the landing firing wildly down the stairs at point blank range. He recalled, ‘One bullet grazed my forehead, another passed through the fleshy portion of my thigh, two hit me in the calves of my legs and one lodged in my right lung. But I still kept my stand and fired at the raiders until the gun was empty.’10 Two of the attackers were mortally wounded, Smyth and Captain A.P. White of the Surrey Yeomanry. Treacy and Breen made their escape through the bedroom window, crashing down on the conservatory roof. Both men lost each other in the rush to escape.
Treacy made his way to the home of Phil Ryan in Finglas, where his wounds were tended to. Ryan sent a messenger to Fleming’s to see if they could get word of Breen about whom Treacy was very concerned, fearing that he might even be dead. However, Fleming’s was under assault by the remainder of the raiding party still alive after the shooting at ‘Fernside’.
In their anger, the British trashed the Fleming home and shop, demanding to know where Breen and Treacy were. James Fleming defied the British who tried to plant a gun on him and he was arrested along with his brother, Michael. Kitty Fleming remembered that one of the British officers appeared to be distraught, saying that he had ‘lost five of our best men’. The raiders ransacked the shop and eventually left with their prisoners. Word came to Fleming’s that Professor Carolan was mortally wounded and wanted the Fleming sisters, Dot and Kitty, to come and see him in hospital. Carolan told them that the British had made him stand against a wall in the bedroom where he had sheltered Breen and Treacy, and had shot him in the neck. The Professor also made this statement to Joseph Penrose who was on the staff of the Freeman’s Journal.11
Meanwhile, Dan Breen, suffering some serious blood loss, ended up wading through the Tolka river in a delirious state until he came to the back of a row of houses on Botanic Avenue. Fred Holmes and his wife Kathleen took sympathy on Breen and gave him shelter. Kathleen even took a message to IRA Brigadier Dick McKee, via Phil Shanahan’s public house, and McKee arranged for Breen to be collected by car. Plans were made for Breen to be looked after at the Mater Hospital. However, the hospital was being raided by the British Army, so instead Breen was driven to a shed down a lane on Mountjoy Square. Joseph Lawless, the driver of the car, recalled the scene in the dark shed: ‘Dan in his delirium was all the time grieving over the loss of his best friend and gallant comrade Seán Treacy, and by this time further administrations of brandy were having little or no effect in keeping him quiet.’12 But Mick McDonnell of the Squad soon brought Treacy to see Breen. Lawless remembered that reunion between Treacy and Breen as an ‘emotional climax’. Breen later lamented: ‘Little did I think on that evening that never again on this earth would I set eyes on my faithful friend, one who was dearer to me than a brother.’13
SEÁN TREACY SHOT
On the evening of 12 October, Dan Breen was secretly brought to the Mater Hospital, where he was hidden by the staff who were also caring for Professor Carolan. Breen later said of Carolan that he was ‘generous, noble and patriotic’ and regretted that ‘he met such a sad death’ a few days later. Meanwhile, the British were still scouring Dublin for him and Treacy. They knew that at least one of them was injured, so on 14 October they carried out a series of raids on the Mater Hospital, Beaumont Convalescent Home, Jervis Street Hospital and even the Clarence Hotel. Armoured cars patrolled the streets around the Mater, and a strong force of British military, Tans and Auxiliaries searched the hospital for three hours. Michael Collins and the Squad made hurried preparations to rescue Breen if the British should find him. Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy were using Clancy’s drapery shop, The Republican Outfitters at 94 Talbot Street, as a point of contact to send and receive messages. The Brigadier and Vice-Brigadier had been ‘active at the Mater Hospital and in Talbot Street organising and directing the mobilisation of all the available Dublin men.’14
Seán Treacy, meanwhile, was rushing around the city, unconcerned for his own safety and all the time thinking about his wounded comrade, Dan Breen. Treacy collected a new coat and bike from Jim Kirwan’s pub on Parnell Street, courtesy of Denis Patrick Walsh. Walsh urged him to ‘lie low’ as the British had spies all around the streets looking out for him. Jim Kirwan, who had established his public house in March 1920, employed only IRA staff. The premises was used as an arms dump and Michael Collins held regular meetings of the GHQ of the IRA there. Kirwan also warned Treacy that the British were scouring the streets for him. Just as Treacy was leaving Kirwan’s, two lorry loads of British soldiers came slowly moving past the pub. Treacy drew his Parabellum, ready for a fight, but the British were raiding a house further down the road. Kirwan remembered Treacy saying, ‘They have been after me all day.’ Treacy then headed for a meeting with Dick McKee in the Republican Outfitters.
Seán Brunswick had been running messages between the Mater and Talbot Street all day. He noticed that the shop was under observation and reported to Peadar Clancy that a British intelligence officer called Francis Christian and other suspicious-looking individuals were loitering in the area. Brunswick recalled the men he had seen in the Republican Outfitters: George and Jack Plunkett, both veterans of the Rising, whose brother Joseph had been executed in 1916; Leo Henderson who had also fought in the GPO in the Rising; Joe Vize who was O/C IRA Scotland and was responsible for the importation of arms from Britain; and Brigadier Dick McKee and Vice-Brigadier Peadar Clancy.
Sometime after four o’clock, an armoured car and two lorries carrying British soldiers, Auxiliaries and plain clothes British intelligence men came sweeping at speed into Talbot Street from Sackville Street. Dick McKee, Leo Henderson and Joe Vize were chatting in the doorway of the Republican Outfitters. McKee said, ‘They are coming — Get Out!’ Seán Treacy was further from the door than the others. By the time he got outside, the British were at the shop. Treacy ran to grab a bicycle but took one that was too large for him and he stumbled as he tried to mount it. Francis Christian jumped from one of the trucks and grappled with Treacy who fired his pistol into the stomach of his attacker; Christian collapsed. Treacy fired at two more of the British, one of whom, Gilbert Albert Price, wrestled with him. The military in the lorries and the armoured vehicle unleashed a fusillade of gunfire at the struggling group, without much regard for their own men. Seán Treacy was shot in the head and died instantly, as did Price. After a few minutes, when the firing had ceased, Seán Brunswick cleverly pretended to be a medical student and attended to Treacy. He quickly retrieved ammunition, dispatches and a field message book from the dead man’s pockets.15
Notes
1. MacCarthy, John, WS 883, Appendix pg.1–2.
2. Toomey, The War of Independence in Limerick, pg.375.
3. Breen, Daniel, WS 1763, pg.93.
4. Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, Tralee: The Kerryman, 1947, pg.122.
5. Ibid., pg.124.
6. Ibid., pg.125.
7. The Liberator, 30 September 1920, pg.1.
8. Breen, My Fight for Irish Freedom, pg.149.
9. O’Brien, Edmond, WS 597, pg.40.
10. Breen, My Fight for Irish Freedom, pg.141.
11. Ryan, Desmond, Fight at Fernside, Dublin’s Fighting Story, Tralee: The Kerryman, 1948, pg.266–7.
12. Lawless, Joseph, WS 1043, pg.329.
13. Breen, My Fight for Irish Freedom, pg.147.
14. Ryan, Desmond, Seán Treacy and The Third Tipperary Brigade, Tralee: The Kerryman, 1945, pg.274.
15. Brunswick, Seán, WS 898, pg.6.