Tom Barry (16 page)

Darkness fell on the bleak, open countryside of Kilmichael as Barry, conscious of his responsibility to his men, decided the column should stay together in case of an attack. Again it began to rain heavily. The wind-driven sleet battered against the men's faces as he drove the tired column southwards. Soaked to the skin, burdened by heavy weapons – their own and those of the enemy – the men, who had hardly eaten anything for over 36 hours, continued on their weary journey. They trudged southwards and crossed the Bandon river and reached Granure, eleven miles south of Kilmichael, by 11 p.m.

With little food and without sleep, the column covered 36 miles in rough conditions, lay cramped for seven hours and ‘half-frozen on the damp ground without being able to risk enough movement to warm themselves', and fought a desperate ambush all within twenty-four hours.
[1]

It was still lashing rain as they entered the unoccupied Granure cottage, off-loaded their arms, ammunition and sat, wet, on the stone floor. The local Ballinacarriga Company provided tea, bread, butter and candles. Before they ate, with heads bowed in reflection, they crossed themselves and in sadness offered a silent prayer for their dead comrades. ‘I remember every move. Yes. Every move,' Pat O'Donovan measured each word. He paused as if living the sad memory. ‘Every. Single. Move.' Their link was broken, but yet forever tied.
[2]

Having placed straw on the floor, the column lay down in the same sodden clothes to rest for the night. ‘I looked on them and a thrill of pride ran through me as I thought no army in the world could ever have more uncomplaining men ... Their discipline was the finest. Compulsion or punishment was not required for this Volunteer army; they risked their lives and uncomplainingly suffered.'
[3]

Barry went outside, spoke to the scouts and the sentries. He returned and looked at the men who were all asleep. Then he settled on the straw in a corner. But his mind was so active he couldn't sleep. The November cold or wet didn't bother him. As he looked at the ceiling of the dimly lit kitchen he thought of his dead comrades and the mistake he had made. ‘Our dead! Two of them might be alive now had I warned them of the bogus surrender trick which is as old as war itself.'
[4]

‘Why did I not warn them?' He thought of the families who would have to be told!
[5]

Finally, he fell asleep only to be awakened a half-an-hour later when Charlie Hurley pressed his shoulder. Charlie had been in Clonakilty and heard extraordinary stories of Kilmichael. He walked the fifteen miles to get the real story. The pair tip-toed out, had a smoke and chatted for about an hour. Tom went over in detail the events of the previous days and nights. He had a few tasks for Charlie the following day, including the difficult one of visiting Liam Deasy to inform him of the death of his brother, Pat.
[6]
He discussed with Charlie the possibility of the capture and destruction of two military posts in Bandon. He told Charlie that there was a prospect of carrying out the barracks' raid, by bribing two Essex Regiment men, who had been arrested by a local company officer. They were dressed as civilians and said they wanted help to get back to England. The company officer discovered that they were spies. One of the men had a brother who was a sergeant in the barracks and Tom hoped to buy him because he felt he would have more inside knowledge. Tom had spoken to the two men separately on the Thursday night before the Kilmichael ambush. He made a proposition to the man who ‘was anxious to get out' his brother, the Essex sergeant. He would get him £3,000 and a safe passage from the country if he agreed with a plan.
[7]

An appointment was made with the sergeant to meet a senior IRA official (Tom) at 8.30 p.m. on 3 December outside of Bandon. Under supervision the spy wrote a letter and had it posted. Before being taken away, Tom warned him of the consequences of treachery, and ‘he undertook to keep the arrangement secret from the other deserter'. Both were kept under guard as prisoners.
[8]

Tom's discussion with Charlie helped. Now, he could rest while Charlie took command of the night watch with the local company. Back on the bed of straw, still in wet clothes, he lay, but a sharp pain in his chest made him uncomfortable. The thought of getting an inside track to Bandon military barracks, to supplies of Mills bombs, explosives, engineering equipment, thousands of rifles and ammunition to the formation of a formidable IRA striking force, kept his mind racing and his spirits buoyant. He slept uneasily.

The success of Kilmichael, the first major victory against the British forces, boosted the morale of the Volunteer movement, not alone in the West Cork Flying Column, but throughout the whole of Ireland, as it came at a time when the IRA was beginning to lose heart. ‘He inspired the struggle. Then they got going in other parts of the country.'
[9]

Its significance went ‘far beyond the capture of arms. It demolished permanently the then growing and carefully fostered fiction that the Auxiliaries were invincible. It was timely. The struggle had entered a grim and decisive phase. At the time there were 51 battalions of British troops in Ireland.' There was ‘a shifting of weight of occupation forces'. Munster ‘held 20,000 troops, 1,800 RIC 340 Auxiliaries and 370 Marines … The IRA appeared to have been driven underground and its activities reduced to minor, sporadic outbursts.'
[10]

Flor Crowley remembers that ‘for everybody living in West Cork, Kilmichael and the shooting of Canon Magner [see pp. 99, 100] were watersheds in their political lives. What little pro-British sympathies the ‘pension' and the Land Acts had been able to buy were shattered by the realisation that our own boys, our neighbours' sons and grandsons, had been able to wipe out the cream of the British army, had been able to conquer the men who had just conquered the Germans and the Turks.'
[11]

Michael Collins' success in breaking the British intelligence network on Bloody Sunday followed ‘by the success of Tom Barry in wiping out a unit of the “invincible” Auxiliaries at Kilmichael, convinced the British that they could not win at a cost they could afford to pay', according to Todd Andrews. He ‘had organised the most spectacularly successful flying column. His exploits became legendary. He became a folk hero in his life-time.'
[12]

The day's events became remembered not only in story but also in song. John F. Hourihane of the West Cork Brigade composed
The Boys of Kilmichael
shortly afterwards.

Forget not the Boys of Kilmichael,

Those gallant lads stalwart and true,

Who fought ‘neath the green flag of Erin

And conquered the red, white and blue ...

The sun to the west was sinking

'Twas the eve of a cold winter's day

The Tans whom we wearily waited,

Drove into the spot where we lay.

Then over the hills went the echo,

The sound of the rifle and gun.

And the flame of their lorries gave tidings

That the Boys of Kilmichael had won.

John Hourihane, whose brother, Dan, was one of ‘the boys of Kilmichael', was one of the ‘picked men ordered to stand duty at the cottage in Granure' the night of the ambush. He composed the verses shortly afterwards ‘in order to perpetuate and preserve the event. It got out of my hands before I could finish it, and it was only in later years that I completed it,' he wrote later to Tom Barry from Boston. ‘One night I was escorting Charlie Hurley along the Phale road when suddenly I thought of the pencilled verses in my pocket. I at once decided that I should get rid of them and so I placed them underneath a wooden gate leading to a friendly neighbour's house. Apparently, one of the households found them and before I could memorise them they were being sung throughout the neighbourhood. I often since thought that had we been surprised by the enemy with these lines in my pocket, and while my apprehension meant nothing, what would the arrest of Charlie at that time mean to the Third Cork Brigade!' John, who took a very active part in Barry's flying column, emigrated to Boston after ‘the troubles.'
[13]
(The author of this song has for all these years remained unknown.)

On the Monday when the Auxiliaries were on their way to Kilmichael to collect the bodies, they forced elderly postmaster Jim Coughlan to walk ‘behind the lorries'. They shot at Jim O'Mahony and Jer Hogan ‘who had a narrow escape' and later confined Jim Coughlan to Cork jail for three months. On Tuesday when troops returned ‘to comb the area' they shot dead Denny Sullivan, an innocent civilian, who had come to Cronin's Kilmichael Bar, for provisions.
[14]

The British establishment ordered that henceforth ‘Known Rebels' be ‘carried as hostages for the safe conduct of the occupants in all motor vehicles.'
[15]

The coffins of the Auxiliaries were solemnly paraded through Cork city on 2 December, on their way to England for burial. Brigadier-General Higginson's Seventeenth Infantry Brigade ‘issued a request that all business premises and shops be closed between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. as a mark of respect for the officers, Cadets and Constables of the Auxiliary division, RIC, killed in ambush near Kilmichael, 28 November 1920.' A large body of troops, RIC and Tans enforced the ‘request'.
[16]

On 10 December the British prime minister ‘told the House of commons that his government was ready to meet certain specified members of Dáil Éireann, illegal organisation though it was, for negotiations, and would give them safe conduct to London. Meanwhile, however, Mr Lloyd George added, the British government would intensify its campaign against Sinn Féin by proclaiming martial law over large parts of Ireland.'
[17]

Lord French's proclamation, which has been regarded as a propaganda edict, read in part:

Because of attacks on crown forces culminating in an ambush, massacre and mutilation with axes of sixteen cadets by a large body of men wearing trench-helmets and disguised in the uniform of British soldiers, and who are still at large, now I do declare Martial Law proclaimed in the County of Cork, East and West Riding, the City of Cork, Tipperary, North and South Riding, the City and County of Limerick.
[18]

Ewan Butler says that the most probable explanation for the falsified report on Kilmichael ‘is that the Auxiliaries, having suffered their first serious reverse at Irish hands, falsified ... partly in order to excuse their defeat and partly in order to ensure that the most condign measures were taken against their assailants.'
[19]

Further to this proclamation, General Sir Neville Macready, the commander-in-chief, issued his own proclamation stating that persons caught with illegal arms or explosives were liable to sentence of death. Public meetings were forbidden and every householder was required to affix to the inside of the front door a list of the occupants by age, sex and occupation.
[20]

The following proclamation was posted up in Macroom and printed in all the daily papers:

NEW POLICE ORDER IN MACROOM

December 1st, 1920

Whereas foul murders of servants of the crown have been carried out by disaffected persons, and whereas such persons immediately before the murders appeared to be peaceful and loyal people, but have produced pistols from their pockets, therefore it is 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.

By order.

AUXILIARY DIVISION, R.I.C. Macroom Castle
[21]

The declaration of regional Martial Law meant that the British establishment ‘now recognised the IRA as an army and not, as they had previously suggested, rebel murderers'.
[22]

Meanwhile the fight of Barry and his men had to continue; it was a fight for survival, a fight for success. For three days he manoeuvred his men in zigzag fashion across the countryside. Often they narrowly avoided a clash with the British. Troops scoured the country, from Dunmanway, Ballineen, Bandon, Crookstown and Macroom. The Volunteers had to be prepared to live rough, remain ‘on the run' and try to avoid capture.

Reprisals by burning, looting, pot-shots at civilians and beating were carried out in all the surrounding areas of Kilmichael and Macroom. Shops, homes, hay barns, outhouses were destroyed at Kilmichael, Johnstown and Inchageela. Several farmhouses for miles around Kilmichael were burned. In the Corn Mills and home of McDonnell's, Castlelack, a distance away, the Essex Regiment ‘made a shambles of the place' – furniture ‘smashed and set alight; business records and valuable books feeding the flames. Bathroom flooding had brought down the dining-room ceiling, ruining the room and its contents. In every direction damage was evident.'
[23]
Most of the local houses around Kilmichael and Shanacashel were burned, including O'Donoghue's, Kelly's and O'Mahony's – houses close to the ambush site.
[24]
According to Charlie Browne: ‘The force created some thorough scoundrels who used unsparingly the power handed out to them by an unscrupulous government.' Charlie's house was burned. Dan Corkery's house and business were bombed to the ground also Cornelius Kelleher's home as well as several others in Cork No. 1 Brigade area. Peter Hart wrote that, ‘Only a few half-hearted reprisals against houses and hay-sheds were carried out around Macroom, belying their [the Auxiliaries] reputation as terrorists'. However, many accounts show that the reprisals led to largescale looting and burnings of dwellings and outhouses. It spread over Cork No. 1 and Cork No. 3 brigade areas. The local school was closed for two weeks. ‘Many of the locals left home and went to stay with friends and relations as they knew the Auxiliaries would be back'.
[25]