1916

by Morgan Llywelyn

  At the sound of the guns he tensed. “What are they firing at, can you tell? Do you think they’re anywhere near the North Circular Road?”

  “There aren’t any strategic targets in that direction,” Plunkett replied. “I imagine they’re trying to destroy the buildings between us and them so they can get at us.”

  A chill ran through Ned. Precious might be safe at the orphanage, but he had brought Síle into the very heart of danger.

  WITH censorship in full operation the newspapers all but closed down. Henry Mooney spent Tuesday in a state of simmering frustration. Unlike the army, the government officially chose to pretend the Rising was not happening. Yet it could not be ignored; it was blooming all around them like a dark flower.

  Late in the day one of the reporters at the Independent learned from an informant that Francis Sheehy-Skeffington had been arrested and taken to Portobello Barracks. Henry was baffled. “That harmless little man? What could he possibly be guilty of?”

  “It seems he was trying to organize bands of citizens to stop the looting. He was in Rathmines when some British soldiers came along and arrested him. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the informant said.

  The story made no sense, but its aftermath would make even less.

  That evening when Henry returned to Middle Gardiner Street he was relieved to find Louise Kearney alive and well, though badly frightened. “Go away until it’s over,” he advised her. “You have friends who live in Balbriggan; go to them.”

  Her eyes flashed indignantly. “What, and leave my property! Soldiers or Volunteers it’s all the same to me, none of them bowsies is going to take over my house.”

  SÍLE spent Tuesday night in an improvised dormitory on the first floor with the other women. On the ground floor, the men kept watch for the anticipated British attack. Few were able to sleep. Joe Plunkett finally lost the battle to stay awake, but his wracking cough did not rest with him. The sound haunted the G.P.O. like a death rattle entombed in marble.

  WEDNESDAY morning Henry Mooney arose early and hurried downstairs for a quick cup of tea before he went to the newspaper office.

  “There’s no milk for the porridge,” Louise Kearney complained. “No milk, no newspapers, no anything. Everything’s upside down. Oh, Henry, why are they doing this to us!”

  He stepped from the house into brilliant sunshine. Gunfire had become the norm—he hardly heard it anymore—but he could not ignore the sound of distant artillery. Not so distant as he would like, coming closer.

  Knots of people stood on street corners nervously exchanging rumors. The knots broke up; re-formed. “Two eighteen-pounders opened fire on Liberty Hall a while ago,” a man told Henry. “The soldiers have them set up in Tara Street and are firing across the river. They haven’t hit the Hall yet, but all the windows in the neighborhood are smashed.”

  “There’s soldiers everywhere,” a woman complained, “and they all have guns. I don’t know how I’m going to get any food for my family. I’m afraid to walk down the street.”

  “Don’t bother,” another woman advised. “The shops are out of everything anyway.”

  “Jaysus, this is a right pain in the arse!”

  After considerable deliberation, Henry decided to chance O’Connell Bridge. There were republicans entrenched on the north end and British soldiers patrolling the south, but he held his hands above his head and both sides let him pass.

  From outside, the Carlisle Building looked closed. A skeleton staff was on duty in the newspaper offices, however. “Might as well take off your hat and sit down, Henry,” his editor advised him. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “Has Ned Halloran come in yet?”

  “The copyboy? Haven’t seen him in days. He’ll be fired if he ever does come back; we can’t have people taking off with no…I say, where are you going?”

  “Out. There’s a revolution, in case you didn’t know, and I’m a reporter. I can cover it better out there than in here.”

  “But we can’t—”

  As he emerged from the Carlisle Building Henry paused to jot down in his notebook, “No traffic on the Liffey today.” How strange, he thought, to see the river idle. The gunfire was daunting to the south and west, so he began walking east, curious to see what effect the insurrection was having on the docks.

  He was almost opposite the Custom House when a single vessel came up the Liffey, a gray fisheries’ patrol boat with the name Helga painted on its bow. Henry stopped to speculate on its purpose on a day when no one else dared the river. As he watched, it tied up on the south quays not far from where he stood.

  Then the crew whipped the cover off a large gun mounted on the deck and opened fire on Liberty Hall.

  The gunners were nervous; the first shell hit the Loop Line railway bridge instead. The metallic clatter was almost as loud as the explosion itself.

  The crew adjusted their sights and fired again.

  This time the shell sped unerringly across the river to explode on the roof of Liberty Hall. With a tremendous crash the roof collapsed inward.

  A man burst from the building and loped awkwardly down the quay with his elbows flapping. British snipers opened fire on him. “Run you poor bastard, run for your life!” Henry shouted. To his relief the man dodged into an alley and disappeared.

  Suddenly a bullet whined over Henry’s head and he crouched instinctively. He wanted to protest “I’m just a reporter!” but no one was listening.

  The crew of the Helga had been told Liberty Hall was filled with rebels. They were taken aback to have flushed only one man. They continued to fire over the railway bridge, frequently hitting their target but also demolishing a number of buildings nearby. After an hour of thunderous noise they cast off and sailed back up the Liffey.

  Behind them the shell of Liberty Hall stood abandoned in the sun.

  JAMES Connolly had listened to the bombardment with white-lipped anger. He had been proved wrong; the “capitalists” had no hesitation about destroying property. But it was worse than that. The destruction of Liberty Hall was like an attack on his family; in a way, that building represented to the labor leader what Saint Enda’s represented to Pádraic Pearse.

  Yet he reassured his men by saying “Don’t be alarmed. When the British government is using artillery in the city of Dublin it means they’re in a hurry to finish the job. Probably the Germans are coming to help us.”1

  News came down from the telegraphy office: Maxwell and his British troops had landed at Kingstown. The advance force alone consisted of two full battalions. Connolly dispatched warnings to the outpost garrisons.

  IT was almost noon when two men arrived with an urgent request from Seán Heuston for more reinforcements. “We sent some of the Volunteers from Swords down there yesterday,” Seán MacDermott said.2 “What’s happened to them?”

  “Dead or wounded,” was the reply. “There are only fifteen men still holding the Mendicity Institute and the British have them surrounded. They’re raking the building with machine gun fire.”

  Connolly, now visibly upset, agreed to send a relief party. Upon examining the roster he found that every able-bodied man was already deployed. Eventually he seconded a few sentries, including the ever-eager Jack Plunkett, but as they assembled near the entrance they were a pitifully small band.

  Ned told Síle, “I can’t stand this. Seán Heuston is my friend.” He was striding toward Connolly to volunteer when a Fianna messenger, flushed and near exhaustion, announced that the garrison had fallen. “Captain Heuston and his men have retreated across the river to the Four Courts. Toward the end the British were lobbing grenades in through the broken windows and Heuston’s men were catching them and hurling them back!”3

  In the G.P.O., men knelt to pray.

  STRETCHER bearers returning from quayside reported that the Helga had found a new target. “It sounds as if they’re shelling the rear of Boland’s Mills.”

  James Connolly erupted. “Does anyone
know what the bleedin’ hell’s going on with the friggin’ Third Battalion?” he roared.

  No one did.

  With the tightening of the British cordon, news from the outpost garrisons was almost nonexistent. The telegraph was only useful for intercepting British messages. There had been no report from de Valera in a long time. If he was driven out of Boland’s Mills the way would be open for British troops landing at Kingstown to march straight into the city.

  Connolly summoned a hurried conference.

  “You could take some of the Kimmage lads off sniper duty and send them down there,” Michael Collins suggested.

  The O’Rahilly scowled. “Wait a minute; I need every one of them just where he is.”

  “I won’t commit any men until I know what the situation is,” Connolly said flatly.

  Seán MacDermott surveyed the post office. “There’s no way of communicating with de Valera for a while; all our dispatch carriers are out.”

  “What about Ned Halloran?” asked Tom Clarke. “Pat doesn’t give him very much to do, and he’s been across the city under fire already. He knows how to handle himself out there.”

  Connolly nodded. “Good idea.” He waved Ned over. “If Pearse will give you leave, I have an assignment for you.”

  “I’ll ask him immediately.”

  Collins volunteered, “I saw him upstairs with his brother. He’s going around the building trying to raise morale with poetic phrases when what we really need is a good…”

  Ned was running for the stairs.

  Although Michael Collins found Pearse’s oratory inappropriate under the circumstances,4 for many in the G.P.O. his words were a source of strength. He was no warrior and did not try to be; in military matters he invariably deferred to the commandant-general. But he could inspire men when their hearts were faltering, and that was no small gift.

  Ned caught up with the brothers on the top floor. As he explained, Pádraic Pearse listened with bowed head and folded arms. “The young woman you introduced to me, your fiancée—is she willing for you to go?”

  “She understands.”

  “And if you do not come back?”

  Ned met Pearse’s eyes. “She will understand that, too.”

  “Ah.” Pearse gazed at the floor for a moment. When he spoke his voice was very soft. “She is a good woman, your Síle.”

  Those visionary’s eyes did see through her after all, Ned thought. They saw all the way to the spirit.

  THIS time Ned took his rifle. Síle walked as far as the door with him. They did not say anything to each other. The moment was more intense for being silent. Just as he started to go, she laid the palm of her hand over his heart.

  INTENSE sunshine was turning the day sultry. Sweating, Ned made his way by a circuitous route that avoided the main streets. The worst moment was crossing the Liffey. Fortunately, a crowd had gathered to stare at the demolished Liberty Hall, and no one paid any attention to a man walking alone across the Swivel Bridge.

  On the south quay he saw someone he recognized as a member of the Third Battalion and called out to him, “What word from Boland’s Mills?”

  The other man strode toward him. He was disheveled and grimy, and there was a long tear in the sleeve of the suitcoat he wore. But he had a Sam Browne belt and a yellow armlet.

  “A gunboat came along the river to shell us,” he told Ned, “but Dev raised our flag over an empty building and they turned their guns on that instead.”

  “Dev?”

  “De Valera; we don’t call him Dev to his face, of course. Not him! He likes everything just so; very precise man. Knows to the inch where we all are. Anyway, our garrison was damaged a bit but not too badly. We have a signaler up on the roof sending out all sorts of phony semaphores about German troops and airplanes; that should scare them off. I’m on my way to report to headquarters now.”

  “That’s all the news you have?”

  “Hardly! At nine this morning a scout brought word that British troops have landed at Kingstown. They’re almost here by now. They’ve split into three groups, so I guess a lot of them will get through, but Dev’s had men in position since Monday, waiting for them. There’s a concentration of our best marksmen at Mount Street Bridge. If any soldiers come up Northumberland Road they’re not going to get past that bridge!”

  Ned could have taken the news to Connolly himself, could have let the other man go back to Boland’s Mills while he returned to the dubious safety of headquarters. He would never know why he did not, unless it was the memory of Síle’s face as she put her hand over his heart.

  She was proud of him. The way Mary Cosgrave would have been proud of him if he wore a British uniform.

  The thought was unsettling.

  “Go on to headquarters as fast as you can,” Ned advised the other man, “and tell them what you’ve told me. And for God’s sake put that armlet in your pocket, will you? There’s no point in drawing fire if you’re just carrying dispatches. Do you need reinforcements?”

  “Do we! There’s thousands of British soldiers on the way. If you could see how few men we really…Hold on, where are you going?”

  “Mount Street Bridge,” Ned called over his shoulder. He did not wait to see whether the man removed the yellow armlet.

  MOUNT Street Bridge spanned the Grand Canal. A total of thirteen men under the command of Michael Malone, de Valera’s aide-de-camp, had taken up positions in Clanwilliam House, a substantial three-storey residence overlooking the bridge from the city side, and in the Haddington Road Parochial Hall and a house at 25 Northumberland Road, on the far side of the canal.5

  They had given their word to the departing occupants not to do any more damage than necessary. No furniture had been taken out to build barricades and the scene looked deceptively peaceful.

  Ned ran up the steps of Clanwilliam House and pounded on the door. A young man in a Volunteers’ tunic opened the door at once, then peered past him with a look of profound disappointment. “Are you alone? We were hoping for reinforcements.”

  “I’ve just come from headquarters,” Ned replied, “and if you need—”

  “They’re coming!” shouted a voice from upstairs.

  Ned was seized by the arm and dragged into the drawing room. “Look what they sent us from headquarters!”

  “All donations gratefully accepted,” remarked a sandy-haired man who was carefully positioning his rifle on a windowsill facing the bridge.

  THE British army came marching down Northumberland Road. In this particular column there were only a few hundred, but to Ned they looked like all the soldiers in the world.

  “Do you know how to shoot that rifle or is it just an ornament?” the sandy-haired man asked him.

  “I can shoot.”

  “Then get over here by me.”

  Ned crouched down by the window and sighted along his rifle barrel. His heart was thundering in his chest. This was what war came down to, kill or be killed. Isn’t that what Tom Clarke had said?

  The head of the column reached number 25. Gunfire exploded. The advance guard halted abruptly, taken by surprise, and a few of them dived for cover.

  “Now us,” said the sandy-haired man beside Ned. A volley of shots rang out from both Clanwilliam House and the Parochial Hall.

  The column fell back in disarray.

  After a moment’s hesitation the British officers drew their swords and shouted confused orders. Soldiers rushed at number 25 with fixed bayonets, then reversed their rifles when they reached the door and hammered on the wood with their gun butts. Firing down from upstairs windows, the men in number 25—there appeared to be only two of them—drove their attackers back with a display of deadly accurate revolver fire. There was a cacophony of officers bellowing, men yelling, angry curses, screams of pain, more gunfire.

  The officers tried to lead the column past the house, but the men inside were such good marksmen it was impossible. One soldier after another fell and lay in the road, dead or dying.


  In Clanwilliam House, Ned had fired his first shot almost before he realized it. The old Howth Mauser had a vicious recoil, and the shot went wide. “Steady on,” he muttered to himself. He held his breath, sighted carefully, and fired again.

  This time his aim was true. He watched a soldier stagger and go down on one knee. The man made feeble, waving gestures with his hands and blood gushed from his mouth. He fell over and did not move.

  I’ve killed a man, Ned thought. I should feel something. But there was no time to feel. Only to shoot.

  The soldiers kept coming.

  British snipers managed to get into the belfry of the Haddington Road Church and opened attack on the republican positions. Bullets whistled through the open windows of Clanwilliam House. “Keep your head down!” someone shouted.

  Bullets were pouring into the drawing room, splintering paneling and gouging holes in plaster. “Keep down I said!” the voice cried again.

  The air was alive with a swarm of hornets that hummed and stung and left a moment’s white-hot pain in their wake.

  The army began lobbing grenades through the windows and into the basement of number 25. Smoke billowed from the house, but the men inside kept shooting.

  The republicans set up a deadly crossfire that turned Mount Street Bridge into a bloody nightmare.

  The noise was deafening. Ned’s head began throbbing intolerably. Every time he fired the Mauser he felt as if he had been hit on the skull by his own rifle.

  There was a terrible explosion from number 25. Cartridges stored in a bedroom had fallen victim to a grenade tossed in a rear window. But the men inside somehow survived, somehow kept firing with the full fury of the British army turned against them.

  The republicans in Clanwilliam House redoubled their efforts. The focus of the attack shifted to them. The sandy-haired man shouted encouragement to the others as he fired round after round from his window. Successive waves of soldiers rushed the bridge, led by officers brandishing swords and cheering their men on. They would have been a gallant sight had they not been the enemy, Ned thought.