Uncommon Valour (3 page)

From his position behind the wall in McCaffrey's Estate (4), Volunteer Section Commander John Joyce took aim and squeezed the trigger of his rifle. His target was the figure of a sergeant who was directing his men to cover. He fired and missed. The sergeant stood his ground. Joyce reloaded and fired again, but the bullet struck a brick wall above the sergeant's head. The sergeant used the butt of his rifle to break open a door into a tan-yard and the men fell through the entrance into relative safety. As Lieutenant Malone rushed towards the open door, the soldier in front of him was hit and fell to the ground. Malone grabbed at the man's collar and attempted to pull him through the doorway, but while doing so he was himself hit. Malone staggered through the doorway and into the yard. He shouted orders to his men while reloading his revolver. He heard a voice stating, ‘the officer is hit', before he collapsed.
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When he regained consciousness, two women were bandaging his wound. Lieutenant Malone surveyed the yard and saw Private Moulton with his jaw shattered. His men looked shaken, but had taken up positions at the windows and door, and were returning a steady rate of fire.

In the return of fire by the British, Volunteer John Owens was mortally wounded. He came from the Coombe area of Dublin city. He worked as an artificial limb maker and was twenty-four years old. Two other Volunteers were also wounded in this exchange of fire.

As suddenly as the skirmish began it came to a stop. There was an uneasy lull in the fighting for almost fifteen minutes as British troops manoeuvred into position in preparation for an attack.

At the junction of Old Kilmainham and O'Connell Road, Lieutenant Colonel R.L. Owens witnessed the assault on his men. He immediately called up the remainder of the battalion from Richmond barracks, planning to attack the South Dublin Union in force. Assisted by his adjutant, Captain Roche Kelly, Lieutenant Colonel Owens sent a company to the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, the residence of the commander-in-chief of the British armed forces in Ireland. The south range of this three-storey building dominated the grounds of the South Dublin Union. His men ran up the oak staircases and took up firing positions in the many dormer windows that overlooked McCaffrey's Estate. A Lewis machine-gun was deployed on the roof in order to lay down covering fire in the forthcoming attack. The automatic machine-gun was fed from a drum magazine that held forty-seven rounds. Operated by a two-man team, the cyclic rate of fire could be 550 rounds per minute. Using this weapon the British army had evolved a ‘rushing tactic' – covered by the Lewis gun – a section or platoon could move forward a short distance and then provide covering fire for the original unit. This tactic was continuously used during the battle for the South Dublin Union.

Lieutenant Colonel Owens directed Major E.F. Milner to take two companies and make a flank attack by way of the Rialto entrance (1) and the Grand Canal. Two experienced officers, Captain Alfred Ernest Warmington and Lieutenant Alan Livingston Ramsay, both of the Royal Irish Rifles, assisted him. Captain Warmington was the son of Alfred Warmington, the manager of the Munster and Leinster Bank in Naas, County Kildare. A veteran of the Boer War in South Africa, he had also served in France during the early months of the Great War. Lieutenant Ramsay was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Irish Rifles on 15 August 1914. His family conducted a successful nursery business from their home in Ballsbridge supplying plants and flowers throughout the city. At twenty-six years of age, Ramsay was a veteran of the Western Front and had been wounded in action there.

Their detachment proceeded down O'Connell Road and onto the South Circular Road. The Volunteers' position at the Rialto gate of the Union could be seen ahead. In order to cover the attack, Major Milner deployed a number of men into positions on the upper floors of the houses that stood opposite the Rialto gate (1). He also directed fifteen men to take up firing positions at the windows in the Rialto buildings on the other side of the canal as these structures overlooked the southern area of the Union. The remainder of his men took up positions on the road opposite the Rialto gate and prepared for the order to storm the Union. Word went down the line and the men moved rapidly into their firing positions without making any noise.

At 12.55 p.m. the assault began. The uneasy silence was shattered as British troops opened fire. The Lewis machine-gun located in the Royal Hospital enfiladed the Volunteers located in McCaffrey's Estate. The crash of rifle fire and the staccato rattle of the machine-gun warned Volunteer Lieutenant William O'Brien of how vulnerable his position in McCaffrey's Estate was. Realising the danger, O'Brien ordered his men to retreat. He shouted ‘spread out, spread out' as they ran back towards the hospital buildings across the open field, devoid of any cover. The only way to return to the command area or the nearest auxiliary hospital building, the Catholic Women's Hospital (11) was to move rapidly and try to use the dips and slight ridges in the field as cover. As the Volunteers withdrew from their position, John Joyce could hear men cry out as they were hit. Richard O'Reilly was shot and killed as he crossed the field. Each Volunteer ran in short rushes from one point to another, hoping the bullets would miss. Occasionally they turned and fired wildly at an unseen enemy. As Joyce crawled forward looking for cover, the dirt ahead of him jumped, spat and then exploded in geysers of earth as bullets kicked up the soil. After almost an hour and a half of crawling through the field, Joyce and the surviving Volunteers reached the relative safety of the Women's Hospital. They were also near the convent that lay just fifty yards from Hospital 2–3 (5).

The Volunteers at the Rialto gate (1) heard the noise of rapid gunfire in the distance. Suddenly a barrage of covering fire was laid down on their corrugated hut. Within seconds the hut resembled a sieve, as the bullets entered and ricocheted around the inside of the building. The patients in dormitory 6 cowered on the ground as the bullets ripped through the structure. The ward-master's coat was pierced as he tried to protect the patients. Volunteer John Traynor was mortally wounded and fell to the floor. Traynor had been employed as a messenger boy in the nearby Guinness Brewery and, at seventeen years of age, he was the crack shot of the company. The others moved to his side and for a brief moment, prayed for the repose of his soul.

Captain Irvine sent a messenger to Ceannt at headquarters requesting further orders. The messenger returned to Irvine with a written dispatch that stated he should retire his force further into the Union grounds. This order was impractical as the British assault was growing more intense and Irvine sent the Volunteer messenger back to Ceannt to relay this message to him. The messenger succeeded in reaching Ceannt, but as the fighting then intensified he was unable to return to Irvine. The unit at Rialto was now cut off from the central command in the Union.

In the meantime, Captain Warmington ordered fifty men to use the wall of the Union as cover and move towards the rear of the site, along the route of the Royal Canal, and attempt to gain entry to the grounds via the rear entrance (7). They moved across the road on the double and set off.

The covering rifle fire enabled Lieutenant Ramsay to lead the first assault on the Rialto gate. The gate was heavily barricaded and locked. Ramsay abandoned the idea of forcing open the main gate and his unit moved under the wall of the Union for cover. Here they located a small wooden door that they quickly broke down. As Lieutenant Ramsay charged through the doorway a volley of shots from the Volunteers met him. Ramsay was shot through the head and fell on the roadway near the chapel (2). His men withdrew back out through the gate onto the street. A brief truce followed and the Volunteers permitted a stretcher party to collect the body of the fallen officer.

On receiving the news about the young lieutenant's death, Captain Warmington was consumed with rage. He ordered his men to line up and he himself led another charge through the narrow entrance. He was shot dead as he entered the doorway and under intense fire his men broke off their attack and retreated. A second ceasefire was called and another stretcher party collected Warmington's corpse. His body was laid on the pavement beside that of Lieutenant Ramsay. The fight then continued.

In the corrugated hut at the Rialto gate the situation was becoming desperate. The British covering fire from the Rialto buildings and the houses opposite the gate was intense and the din was ear-shattering and unnerving. Captain Irvine realised his section was isolated and the position untenable, and in a last desperate attempt to get orders, he decided to send Paddy Morrissey to Volunteer headquarters at the Nurses' Home. As Morrissey left the hut, their post came under heavy fire. Within minutes he crawled back through the door, blood pouring from a wound in his leg. The Volunteers attempted to return fire, but were under attack from all sides. The superior firepower of the British army had enabled them to move closer. The metal corrugated hut became a hothouse of explosions, smoke, vibrations and the bitter smell of burning gunpowder. The Volunteers now realised they were surrounded. James Burke and Willie Corrigan fired desperately as the khaki-clad enemy moved into range. Corrigan received a wound to the eye as bullets shattered the glass windows of the hut. Both men were covered in blood, but continued to fight on furiously. Soon, with their weapons overheating, the Volunteers had to take turns stopping fire to allow their rifles to cool.
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The door of the hut was well barricaded. Members of the Royal Irish Regiment prepared to make an assault on the door using a large, iron lawnmower as a makeshift battering ram. Three British soldiers charged the door with the makeshift device and as it crashed open, soldiers poured in through the breach shouting: ‘Put up your hands and surrender.' Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, the Volunteers reluctantly surrendered and were led out of the Union at gunpoint. Captain George Irvine, Jimmy Morrissey, Willie Corrigan, Seán Dowling and James Burke were taken to Kilmainham police station. Paddy Morrissey, whose leg had been shattered, was escorted to hospital.

With the fall of the Rialto gate, the British crown forces had secured an access point into the Union grounds. However, they still had to cross open terrain in order to attack Ceannt's other positions within the complex. Commandant Ceannt and his men would ensure that every inch of the South Dublin Union would be contested, a tactic that resulted in no quarter being given by either side.

Chapter 3

Easter Monday, 24 April 1916
Afternoon

A squad of British troops was moving up along the southern wall of the Union, parallel to the canal. They planned to gain access to the Union grounds via the rear entrance (7) and sweep northwards towards the front entrance, clearing buildings of insurgents as they advanced. However, as they attempted to force open the southern gate, they came under a barrage of fire from the Volunteers in the Marrowbone Lane Distillery.

From his position on the top floor of the distillery, Volunteer Robert Holland was able to dominate the surrounding area for miles. He fired rapidly into the ranks of the soldiers who had taken up position at the Union's southern gate. The large number of soldiers had made an easy target for Holland. Armed with a Howth Mauser rifle and a Lee Enfield rifle, he fired continuously into the ranks of the British soldiers. Josie O'Keeffe, a member of Cumann na mBan, the women's organisation which worked closely with the Irish Volunteers, loaded the weapons and handed them to Holland, who used them with deadly accuracy.
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Caught in the open, the troops took cover along the bank of the canal and returned fire. Heavy casualties were inflicted on the attacking force and their dead and wounded littered the canal bank. A number of soldiers, pinned down by the accurate fire, attempted to scale the nine-foot wall that surrounded the Union. One soldier who managed to climb the wall, took up position behind a telegraph pole. As he raised his rifle to fire he was hit. His body fell from the wall and bounced off the canal bank before splashing into the water. An officer sitting on the wall, revolver in hand, was shot through the head and died instantly.

Within the grounds of the Union, the six Volunteers positioned within the inner wall at the canal entrance (7) found themselves under intense fire from the British troops positioned in the upper rooms of the Rialto buildings.

After several attempts, and despite their losses, the British troops forced open the back gate and entered the Union grounds. At 2.30 p.m. approximately fifty British troops fanned out and moved towards the main gate to where Ceannt had established his headquarters. The advancing troops were joined by those who had stormed the Rialto entrance. However, Hospital 2–3 stood in their way (5).

The Volunteers who held the southern wall were in danger of being outflanked. Unable to hold their position, they retreated towards Hospital 2–3. In their desperate attempt to withdraw, eighteen-year-old Brendan Donelan was hit and mortally wounded. A native of Loughrea he had been employed in the drapery trade. He lay in the open, bleeding to death. Volunteer James Quinn was also shot and killed, leaving a wife and young family. A painter by trade, he was a member of the Colmcille Hurling Club and was often heard to say that he would exchange his camán for nothing but a rifle.

The advancing British soldiers quickly lost their way among the labyrinth of buildings and were delayed by the confusing intersecting alleyways and avenues. Passing beneath the occupied windows, the unsuspecting soldiers were fired upon by the Volunteers, who then quickly withdrew and reformed in another area to repeat this type of attack.

From the second floor of Hospital 2–3 (5), bursts of rapid rifle fire erupted, catching the advancing British troops in open ground. The British soldiers took cover and returned fire, aiming at the puffs of black smoke emitting from the windows. Running in short rushes, some soldiers succeeded in reaching the wall of the building. Using a pass key they gained entrance to the hospital's inner courtyard.