When Shadows Fall (40 page)

At approximately half past four, two vehicles came rolling into view.

Colonel Francis Crake of Northumberland was the District Inspector commanding the Auxiliary Division at Macroom. He knew this was bad country. Stubborn heather and stony soil and pools of the blackest bog water.

“And wide open,” he murmured.

“Sir?” asked the driver.

“Bad country out here, Evans, I was thinking. Was God not in a sour humour when he created this place?”

“I don’t know, sir. But a miserable spot if ’ee says so, sir.”

The two Crossley Tenders had no covers, and so the wind whipped cruelly through them. It had been a long day of patrolling and Crake relished the thought of the fireside and a juicy cut of steak once they returned to Macroom Castle.

“And what’s this blighter’s business? See him, Evans?”

Evans eased off on the accelerator. There was a lone figure on the road about three hundred yards ahead. As the Crossley rolled closer, Crake saw that he was in uniform. Not a uniform that he recognised, however.

“Pull up,” he ordered in curiosity. “I’ll have a word.”

Evans braked. The truck following them did likewise.

Crake leaned over the side and gestured to the man on the road. “You there. Come here.”

The figure stepped towards him. Crake’s nose twitched. “Damned odd garb, my man. Who are you?”

He received no answer. The man suddenly pulled something from his coat and tossed it over the truck’s windshield. It landed neatly on the seat between Crake and Evans and rolled onto the floor.

In that tiny, dreadful second, Crake recognised the object as a Mills bomb. He bellowed and leapt over the door, just before the grenade exploded. Evans was shredded in the blast and the idling truck shot forward as his foot jerked involuntarily on the accelerator. It went off the road and crashed into a boulder and the engine died.

Crake hit the gravel painfully. “Ambush,” he shrieked and grabbed at the truck’s railing to pull himself up. “Ambush, take cover!”

The roadsides lit up like a cannonade. The Auxiliaries poured out of the vehicles and scrambled for the rocks and heather as bullets tore up the scrub around them. They tried to return fire but were blind to the ambushers’ positions, and the gunfire quickly intensified. After a number of Auxiliaries were hit, the attackers burst from cover and advanced. The road was narrow and within seconds both sides were engaged hand-to-hand. Rifle butts were driven into stomachs, arms and heads were swiftly broken, and blood spattered across the sides of the Crossley.

Crake discharged round after round until his revolver was empty. There was a body next to him, a severed artery visible in its leg. He reloaded and glanced up the road to the second truck. If he could reach it, if they could only hold off the animals for long enough.

He ducked his head and began to run.

Adam was commanding the second section on a low ridge of rock. He watched as both trucks rolled into view, as Barry threw the Mills bomb into the first one, before the scene erupted into chaos and ricocheting bullets.

He roared an order to engage the second truck.

The action blazed furiously for several minutes, the surviving Auxiliaries managing to gather and return fire upon the IRA positions. One of them braved the assault and sprinted forward to get a better aim with his rifle. Adam spotted him, adjusted his sights, and squeezed the trigger. The man went down. Two more fell nearby. Back at Barry’s section the fighting was over. Adam could see dead Auxiliaries in the grass and on the road. Barry’s men were gathering up their clips and Lee-Enfields.

He heard a cry ring out, and a hand waved from behind the second Crossley. The shooting from the remaining Auxiliaries had stopped. Adam hesitated only briefly, then gestured to his men and yelled, “Cease firing. Cease firing!”

The noise died away. He craned his neck and now he could hear the unmistakable cries of “Surrender!”

“They’re done,” he panted. “No more fire. All right, lads? No more fire. Keep your positions until I say so.”

He rose to his feet, rifle aimed. Two of the other IRA men, Paddy O’Brien and young Pat Deasy, stood with him.

“The buggers have had enough.” Deasy rubbed his bloodshot eyes.

“Disarm them fast,” O’Brien urged, but Adam stilled them with his hand.

“Watch yourselves. Can anybody see how many are out there?” He shouted across, “Put your weapons down and stand into view, all of you. We won’t fire.”

Bodies began to shuffle behind the truck. Adam lowered his rifle and waded through the heather towards the road. O’Brien and Deasy followed. The rest of the section was coming out of cover, breathless and dazed.

The next shot was as loud as it was unexpected.

O’Brien’s head snapped back, blood spewing from his temple. He collapsed into the turf, and suddenly a hail of bullets was directed from the Auxiliary side to where Adam and Deasy stood like dazzled rabbits.

Both were hit.

“False surrender,” somebody roared.

The IRA volunteers raced back into cover, and the games recommenced with blistering gusto.

Adam hit the rocks and wheezed. The bullet had stuck his thigh. For a moment he pictured a pumping femoral, his leg turning black. They’d remove the leg for sure. Before gangrene killed him. He’d seen it in Brighton, men with stumps for limbs, dead eyes and dead minds.

“Fuck it,” he snapped, forcing control on himself, and checked again.

It was a glancing blow, a nasty gouge in the flesh but nothing serious. He spat grass out of his mouth and crawled through the heather.

Deasy was dead. A hole in his chest dribbled blood over his coat.

Pinned under the two-way exchange of gunfire, Adam couldn’t see the enemy’s position. He was forced to lie still, listening to the sound of bullets piercing stone, metal, flesh. There was movement farther back along the road. Tom Barry came on the scene. His men opened fire and the Auxiliaries were now taking the heat from two different angles. Gunfire echoed across the hills and valleys.

But both sides were running out of time.

Colonel Crake cursed as he reloaded. The false surrender hadn’t worked.

“We need to get back on the truck,” he snarled at the nearest soldier. “You, Lucas. Can you drive? We have to get out of here.”

The white-faced cadet stared at him. “We’ll never get away from them, sir.”

“Damn you, boy, of course we will. I’m going to try another surrender. You be ready to climb behind that wheel and get her going. These filthy rascals, damned if I don’t take one or two of them down along the way.”

He crept forward by the front axle of the Crossley. “Surrender,” he croaked. Then, louder, “Surrender! We surrender, you lot. Hold your fire. We’re coming out.”

There was a man coming closer now. A man with a head of unruly black hair. He gestured to the men nearby and then turned his eyes on Crake.

“I think I’ve seen enough of your surrenders.”

He took aim with his pistol. The noise of a dozen discharged guns almost tore Crake’s eardrums apart.

It was the last sound he ever heard.

I
RISH
T
IMES

A TERRIBLE tragedy is reported from Macroom, Co. Cork, where on Sunday evening a party of Auxiliary Police was ambushed by about 80 or 100 men. The attackers, according to a statement by Sir Hamar Greenwood in the House of Commons last night, were in khaki and wore trench helmets. The party was fired on from both sides, and there was also direct enfilading fire down the road. According to unofficial reports, many houses in the district and adjoining villages have been burned.

An official telegram received at Dublin Castle at five o’clock yesterday stated that seventeen members of the Auxiliary Force of the Royal Irish Constabulary went out on patrol duties at 3.15 p.m. on Sunday in motor lorries from Macroom, Co. Cork. They were ambushed by a body of armed men, and fifteen of them were killed outright, one man was wounded and is dying, and another man is missing.

It is reported that reprisals took place yesterday. Shops in the district were set on fire, and scarcely a house was left undamaged. People are clearing out of the locality in terror. Business was at a stand-still in Macroom, and all shops are being closed as a precautionary measure against reprisals. Large parties of Auxiliary Police arrived with rifles and revolvers and patrolled the town, and travellers who motored there were ordered by the military to leave.

Towards the close of a reply to Mr. [Joseph] Devlin on the adjournment of the House of Commons last night, Sir Hamar said the matter raised that evening (the carrying of arms in Ulster, particularly by the Ulster Volunteers) did not involve murder, and he passed on a telegram that he had received that evening—one of the most distressing telegrams he had ever read to the House. He reminded the House that the Auxiliary Division in Ireland was composed entirely of ex-officers, selected for conspicuous merit in the Great War.

“Tonight, in Macroom,” Sir Hamar continued, “there are fifteen officers lying side by side, dead, the victims of Irish assassins. I do not think the House would care to pursue questions about some odd patrol in Ulster, or the burning of some farm, in the face of this challenge to the authority of this House and of civilisation.”