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—Left! Left! Left, right, left!

An officer’s voice. We set off marching towards the Falls Road. I was trembling. It was pathetic. I was trembling and my teeth were chattering. I had dreamed of this epic moment so often. Dreamed of me, Tyrone Meehan, parading in uniform and in step. And here I was, afraid! Or cold. I could no longer tell. My hat was over my eyes and I didn’t dare push it back up. The Cumann na gCailíní girls were arriving from Leeson Street, with their green skirts and their hair tied up. Right arms, left arms, swinging in unison. We advanced along the centre of the avenue like an army of children.

Sheila was following us. She was carrying our civilian clothes in a bag. Every scout was followed at a distance by a mother, a sister or a friend. When our flags were raised, tears came to my eyes and I laughed with joy, feeling the shouts bubble up from my belly. The tricolour of our Republic was huge. It was the first time I had ever seen the green, white and orange floating freely under this sky. The Fianna’s standard was magnificent, fringed in gold, its sun splashed with sky-blue. A boy was carrying the national colours; a girl, the Fianna’s emblem.

We were taking over the street. We had snatched it from the English soldiers, we had taken it from the German bombers. It was Irish, this street, reconquered by kids dressed as soldiers. The people were waiting on the footpaths, in doorways. Around us, IRA men in civilian clothing were giving brief orders. When the flags moved forward, the nationalist population arrived from every direction. They were filled with emotion, concerned, simultaneously celebrating and worrying. A beautiful and dignified multitude. Women, hundreds of children, men, elderly people who fancied themselves officers, ordering the kids to form lines. A brass band was now leading the procession – a few flutes, three drums and accordions playing ‘God Save Ireland’ in time with our marching. I was on the side, between the street and the pavement, like the other Fianna. Our orders were to protect the crowd from Shankill Loyalists several streets away, and from British soldiers if they showed up. Older men were carrying hurleys in construction bags, studded sticks. Not weapons, they were just for defending, not for attacking.

When we arrived at the corner of Conway Street, we were ordered to disperse. An abrupt order. We were still a good way from the cemetery. Two men climbed on to a truck roof, arms raised, and roared at the crowd to leave the march.

—Back on the pavements! Immediately! Don’t go home alone! Join a group if you get split up!

—No more than five people together! shouted the other man.

I knew the elder of the two. He had taught us about the Great Famine.

I whistled with my arms outstretched to disperse the marchers.

—Pass the word along! Don’t run. Walk on the pavements!

Danny Finley scaled the truck.

—Fianna are to change here, immediately! And everyone get back to your
cumann
s!

Sheila came racing up to us. She upended the bag of clothes. We handed her our uniforms. Shirts, jackets, shorts. I was standing in my underpants on the street. I didn’t give a damn. She stuffed the rebel green into her satchel, crushing our hats. Around us, people were scattering and whispering. The street wasn’t frightened, it was worried. What had happened? Why stop the march in the middle of the commemoration? A young woman came briskly up to Sheila. She took her burden from her hands with neither a word nor a glance, then hid it beneath her coat and clung on to a man’s arm. They crossed the avenue. She walked with difficulty, one hand on her stomach like a mother-to-be while he appeared to reassure her. I didn’t know that woman, or that man, but I knew that our bag would be at our headquarters this evening, having got there circuitously, passed from strangers’ hands to other strangers’ hands.

Since my arrival in Belfast, those images would reassure me. They were simple, and beautiful. Like those doors that would open and aid our escape. That late-night cup of tea handed to us by a woman who’d stumbled on us sneaking through her garden. That mimed confession taken by a priest when the police had followed me into his church. That black sweater thrown over my shoulders by a neighbour while I was keeping watch on a November street.

—My son no longer needs it where he’s gone.

—
Go raibh maith agat
.

The man smiled at my thanking him in Irish. He looked at me more closely.

—Well now! A reinforcement from the Free State!

And then he laughed, tying the knitted woollen sleeves over my chest.

An English reconnaissance plane was flying overhead. The children gave it the finger, hoping it would crash into the barricade of tethered balloons that towered over the city. The Falls Road had returned to its usual sparse traffic. The footpaths were packed with families. In a few minutes there were no more Fianna, rebels or demonstrators to be seen. Only the residents hurrying home for their tea.

Tom Williams had just been captured by the British, along with five men from C Company. The 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade had just lost one of its leaders. We had assembled at headquarters around the deserted boxing ring. As a precaution, Danny had only lit a night light. News was flooding in from all over, spreading through the neighbourhood. Every new thing we heard was worse than what we already knew.

In order to safeguard our march, Tom and his soldiers had opened fire on a police patrol on Kashmir Road. Tom was wounded. He had given the order to retreat, but the police had chased after them like hunting dogs. In Cawnpore Street, our men took advantage of open doors. One policeman forced his way into a house. His name was Patrick Murphy and he was a Catholic. He lived on the Falls Road and had nine children. Everyone knew him. He was shot down in the middle of the living room.

—He was a dirty fucking peeler! shouted Danny Finley.

But all the same, he was a Catholic.

—A fucking traitor! Danny growled.

We nodded our heads, but our Fianna hearts were conflicted. The IRA had just assassinated one of our own. Or near enough. A Catholic who was feeding his family as best he could.

—By shooting us in the back, is that it?

Sure enough. But all the same. He was of our flesh. The British skin was an animal hide. Their blood wasn’t the same colour as ours. It was soldier blood. Thicker, darker, dirtier. By shooting at Murphy, we had just opened our own veins.

Danny shook me by the shoulders. He asked me to look him in the eye. Better than that! Directly in the eye! And what could I see there? A murderer of Irishmen? No! Of course not! I had to pull myself together, and to learn. I had to go back to the beginning again. This wasn’t a war between Catholics and Protestants! Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism, was a Protestant. Well then, what was the difference? A Protestant could join the IRA, a Catholic could dress up as a king’s soldier. Well then, who was our enemy? The Protestant IRA man or the Catholic wearing the British uniform? Which one did we have to fight?

—Do you understand that, Tyrone Meehan? You’re fighting for the Irish Republic, not for Rome! You left those priests of yours on the other side of the border. So stop mixing everything up, please!

There were about twenty of us scouts in the room. Danny looked from one to the other to see if everything he’d said had been understood.

—There are fewer Catholics in the RUC than there are fingers on one hand. Those who join up know the risks involved. Murphy will serve as an example.

Then he straightened up, legs apart and hands behind his back. And he assumed his voice of command.

—Na Fianna Éireann, stand at attention!

We straightened up, arms rigid at our sides and chins raised.

—Na Fianna Éireann, on your knees!

We knelt in a single motion, solemn and dignified. All of us together on the cement.

He knelt in turn and closed his eyes.

—In the name of the Father, and of the Son ...

And then we prayed aloud for the grey soul of Patrick Murphy.

The six IRA combatants involved in the incident were sentenced to death, but only Thomas Williams was executed. Before the judges, my friend claimed responsibility for the operation and for the fatal shots. Although he had been wounded and was choking, prostrated by an asthma attack, and although he had dropped his weapon, he assumed all responsibility. The Irish government appealed for clemency. The Vatican waited in vain for an act of mercy. Tom was hanged at nineteen years of age on 2 September 1942, in the courtyard of Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast. Buried like a dog inside the compound itself, on prison ground, without a cross, without a plaque, without anything personal. The British deprived us of his body.

—I met the bravest of the brave this morning. Tom Williams walked to that scaffold without a tremor in his body. The only people who were shaking were us and the hangman, Father Alexis had recounted to the inmates gathered in the prison chapel.

—Don’t pray for Tom Williams, the chaplain added, pray to him, for at this moment Tom is a saint in heaven.

So Tom guided us.

All over the city, groups attacked the police and the RUC with bricks. A police station was burned down. At Crossmaglen, thirty IRA
óglaigh
attacked the British army base to kidnap an officer and hang him. The operation failed, but a policeman was killed. Two others were shot in County Tyrone. A fourth died in Belfast while pursuing some men who were planting bombs. We were lost, maddened with rage, drunk on vengeance. On the front page of the
Belfast Telegraph
an outraged journalist wrote of how two Republicans had challenged some American soldiers by giving them the Nazi salute.

Father Alexis also told of how Tom was whistling on his way to meet death. He was whistling ‘God Save Ireland’, our old national hymn. The one we would sing at home, in the pubs, during marches, in stadia. The one we would hum softly when we passed British patrols. The one we would bellow until we were out of breath, our hands full of stones.

‘God Save Ireland!’ said the heroes!

‘God Save Ireland!’ said they all.

Whether on the scaffold high

Or the battlefield we die,

Oh, what matter when for Erin dear we fall!

My brother Seánie was interned in October 1942. No evidence, no trial, no sentence. They were isolating headstrong men. On 3 January 1943, it was my turn, and Danny Finley’s. For a week I had pains in my arms – the left one from being gripped by the policeman, the right from my mother clinging on to me. Hostility, love, two black stains bruising my flesh in equal measure.