Tom Barry (40 page)

Barry never agreed with shooting for the sake of shooting, believing that the only way to fight a war was in a warlike fashion. In the early part of the War of Independence he ordered his men not to shoot any of the British forces while off duty. However, he revised his opinion in the early part of 1921, for the Essex Regiment only, because of Percival's callous and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Due to the low tactics to which Percival and his men had stooped, he ordered that they (Essex) should be shot at sight following written and verbal warnings, which went unheeded. He stressed it didn't apply to any other regiment.

Now, during the Civil War he asked his men not to shoot an unarmed soldier. ‘We'll get them in a fight,' he said. He also disagreed with Liam Lynch's policy of burning barracks. If left intact, buildings could, he argued, be used to hold prisoners and perhaps hostages since the people were no longer willing to give their houses as they had done during the War of Independence.
[23]

In Dublin at a Cumann na mBan meeting Tom's wife, Leslie who was ‘violently Anti T [Treaty]' was convinced that unless the organisers ‘withdrew' and ‘stopped discussion the organisation [Cumann na mBan] was gone'. She agreed with her husband that the fight had to continue.
[24]

Chief-of-staff, Liam Lynch and Tom Barry, operations officer, organised a selection of men to prepare for a northern offensive. Jack Fitzgerald, Seán Lehane, Charlie Daly and Stephen O'Neill left from Bandon and picked up ‘stuff' in Moore Park outside Fermoy. To accompany Tom Lane, ‘Dick Willis was picked as a Thompson gunman'. They were up in Donegal as a part of a division preparing to attack Derry. Tom Barry hoped at the time that this would bring the Free State government into the decision to join in a united attack against Britain.
[25]
He believed that his part in the Civil War was to help Republicans win control, so that the army then united could fight for the common cause of Ireland.

Meanwhile, Brigadier Lacy and a group from Tipperary sent word to Tom to come to their area and to bring some of his best men with him, as most of this area was in the hands of the pro-Treaty forces. Following the deaths of his friends on 7 and 8 December, Barry, with Brigadier Lacy, Bill Quirke, Michael Sheehan, Michael Sadlier and Sparkey Breen, organised about a 100 men for an attack on Carrick-on-Suir.
[26]

Barry familiarised himself with the surroundings and then spent over a week training the men under his command. He prepared a detailed plan with sections, section commanders and positions. It was a bitterly cold, frosty night as they prepared for the attack. As in former engagements he led the attack and was the first man to stand out, with a Mills bomb in one hand and a revolver in the other.

It has been described as a ‘spectacular attack' when they took the town having lured the Free State troops into action. They captured 115 rifles, two machine-guns and a large quantity of stores and clothing. They took Captain Balfe, OC of the pro-Treaty forces prisoner, but freed him after two days. All other 110 prisoners, ‘officers and soldiers' were released ‘unharmed after a few hours' despite the execution of seven more Republicans on the same day. The situation was farcical: Republicans continued to release prisoners while the state continued to execute Republicans in custody.
[27]

On13 December Barry and his men marched on Thomastown, put up a hard fight and took it. Within four days Barry' column had forced the surrender of Callan, Mullinavat, as well as Thomastown.

In Callan the commanding officer of the pro-Treaty forces, Ned Sommers, felt disillusioned, believed he had been lured into the Free State army under false pretences, and so switched sides. The move cost him his life some months later when he tried to shoot his way out to avoid being captured.

On the way back from Kilkenny to Tipperary, the Republicans had to cross a marsh; Jack Hennessy remembered the bitter rain beating through them as they marched across north Tipperary. They were cold, wet and hungry yet Barry was determined, he planned to strike in the northern direction through Tipperary to Templemore, then eastwards to the Curragh, from where Dublin, the capital would be within sight. However, he had to lie low for a few days because of ‘enemy activity'.
[28]

By 19 December Barry believed that if he could muster the strength of all Republicans, victory would be theirs. Now as director of operations he had secured, for the first time ever, a typist. From field headquarters he set out his views in a long document for all OCs. He wanted to know the ‘strength of activities' in each area, the ‘number of arms and ammunition dumped' and ‘a survey of towns' that could be attacked. He wrote, that with ‘a properly organised scheme of attacks on enemy's communication lines we can make his position hopeless in towns, but this cannot be done effectively until a study of the area is made'. He was determined that this war should be on a more organised footing as ‘opportunities' were ‘not being availed of owing to lack of direction and control of our armed forces. This must cease and officers in charge of divisional operations will be responsible that the activities and energies of our forces will be directed and controlled in an efficient manner in their areas. ‘
[29]

The winter and the war dragged on. During these frosty nights they huddled at the side of a ditch or in a hay barn, a stall or a shed being warmed by the breath of the cows. Barry, with some other leaders, led the men on to Templemore where there was an amount of ammunition worth capturing. ‘We had to fight all day,' Jack Hennessy, who was wounded and brought to safety, said, ‘Two rifles and captured Free State topcoats were used as a stretcher.'
[30]

Could the men sustain this brilliant sweep? Men who were by now in the days of December and January at a low ebb due to lack of sleep, insufficient food and hard slogging through the frost and the rain? Yet the word of Tom Barry and his men's arrival was enough; he marched through villages and towns where Free State forces hardly stood to fight. ‘They practically handed the places over to him.'
[31]
His reputation as the daring, elusive commander, the man who could neither be caught nor killed, had made him a legendary figure and a man to be feared. He led and drove his men depending on the circumstances. ‘Single minded and authoritative. He was quick to pick things up and quick to size things up!'
[32]

With troops he marched on Limerick, took over hotels, surrounded pro-Treaty forces on a Sunday morning as they were on parade. He told them he was Tom Barry, then said, ‘Drop your guns!' And they did.

He marched on to the Curragh and took 800 rifles from the civic guard. It began to look as if they were on ‘the comeback militarily'. De Valera said to him, ‘It's a pity you weren't out earlier, Tom. You'd have made a better job of the line fighting.'

‘Hang it all, if I had my way there would be no line fighting. It would be fought out in Dublin in three days and we'd have shifted them.'

Barry maintained that when the Four Courts was attacked, anti-Treaty troops should have been brought in from the south and west and taken them [pro-Treaty forces] on in Dublin city. ‘Dublin might have been left in a shambles, but at least it would have been over.'
[33]

Meanwhile, the increasing strength of the Free State government forces in some areas accelerated the daily capture of Republicans. There was also the added threat of execution for those caught carrying arms. By the end of January 55 executions of prisoners had been carried out. In all, the total number of executions was to rise to 77 in the course of the war, as the policy of the Free State government was the ultimate destruction of Republicans.
[34]

Ernest Blythe said that for his part they would have gone on executing anti-Treatyites, ‘until we had got the last man, if they didn't give in'.
[35]

Undaunted, Barry wrote to the adjutant general as he wanted the overall position to be assessed ‘from a proper angle and not from paper reports'. With this in mind he intended sending ‘a special messenger to CS requesting him to come down' from GHQ. Aided by ‘six officers' he wanted to front a further column ‘over the Third Southern area.'
[36]

The futility of the fight had taken a heavy toll on the enthusiasm of the guerrilla fighters. Ruthless tactics of the Free State on the prison population were found to influence the Republicans on the ground. Liam Deasy, another officer of the executive, commanding Lynch's Southern Command and formerly of the Third West Cork Brigade, was captured in Clonmel on 18 January 1923, tried by court-martial and sentenced to death. Deasy was ready for death when at 4 a.m. a message came through from Mulcahy to send him to Dublin. De Valera described this as ‘the biggest blow'.
[37]

Deasy maintained that he had been endeavouring to try to end the war without actually surrendering the Republic. Now in prison he was in a difficult position. How much pressure was forced on him is unknown. In any case he signed a document which urged ‘unconditional surrender of arms and men as required by General Mulcahy. In pursuance of this undertaking I am asked to appeal for a similar undertaking of acceptance from the following …‘A total of fifteen names are listed, including Eamon de Valera, Tom Barry, Liam Lynch and Frank Aiken. He maintained that his ‘execution would not be suspended' unless he signed the prepared statement. He was given time to consider and ‘in the best interests of the country' he said, he agreed to sign.
[38]

Lynch answered the communiqué with a brusque refusal; he sent a message to all ranks urging them not to ‘surrender the strong position you have so dearly won. The war will go on until the independence or our country is recognised by enemies, foreign and domestic.'
[39]
In a letter to Fr Tom Duggan, Cork, Lynch ‘painfully noted' Liam Deasy's ‘communication'. He found ‘the enemy' proposals were ‘that of mad men … Unless the enemy has completely lost his Irish outlook he would not ask such terms … Even if our last leader or
v
olunteer is to be wiped out we will not accept being British subjects'. The ‘enemy in his non-Irish methods seems to forget that it was practically our forces alone who drove the common enemy to discuss peace terms with us,' Lynch wrote. He was angry at the ‘savage' war and ‘unchecked policy' of daily executions, with the ‘energies' of neutral people concentrated on the anti-Treaty ‘forces'.
[40]

Though the Liam Deasy document was sent out on 29 January 1923, it was not published until 9 February. Barry maintained that Deasy's ‘Manifesto crippled' the Republicans, it ‘put the tin hat on us' as ‘we were at our very highest level of success'. Ernie O'Malley, who was totally against any compromise, was with Deasy in Mountjoy Jail; he found it difficult ‘to contain' himself.
[41]
To clarify his position Deasy wrote a six-page letter to Liam Lynch stating that his views were ‘not altered as a result of imprisonment' as ‘previous to my arrest I had decided to advocate a termination of the present hostilities'. When Barry was handed a copy of ‘Deasy's apologia' by ‘a senior brigade officer's widow' in the 1970s, he believed that ‘it probably never reached Lynch.'

Barry wrote:

For the record I must state: (1) I met Liam Deasy in the Glen of Aherlow a few days before his arrest and he never uttered one word that hostilities should cease. (2) At the first meeting of the executive after his arrest … the question was raised as to whether any of the members had heard Deasy mention or knew of any officer to whom Deasy suggested hostilities should be ended. The answer was, No.
[42]

The holding of an executive meeting now became a priority for Tom Barry. On 9 February accompanied by Tom Crofts, he went to Dublin to impress on Liam Lynch the gravity of the situation. Lynch was reluctant to hold a meeting. Back in Ballyvourney next day Barry and Crofts drafted a strong request to Lynch for an executive meeting.
[43]

As far as Barry was concerned he would like to get the views of other members; also for him timing was important – there was a time to fight and a time to stop. Fight from a position of strength. When there was a hope of winning – then fight. He had never wanted the Civil War. It was too painful, more painful then he had ever thought possible. Deasy's ‘procedure had a bad effect', Charlie Browne recalled. ‘We got a letter from Barry repudiating Deasy, and a letter from Liam Lynch, which was an order to be read to all ranks.' The men ‘looked forward to an honourable settlement.'
[44]

After Seán Lehane had seen Liam Deasy in jail he told Jack Fitzgerald of Deasy's position. ‘Why didn't he die as well as the rest?' Jack asked.

‘Dead men are no use to us now,' Seán responded.
[45]

Notes