1916

by Morgan Llywelyn

  He held his breath, sighted, fired.

  Time ceased to have meaning. The light glinting on the canal changed as the afternoon wore on, and still the defenders of the bridge had not let the army pass. Every inch of ground was bitterly contested. There was a rhythm to battle, Ned discovered; fighting was not as random as it looked. A wave of energy hurled men forward and then subsided, and in its trough they gathered themselves and prepared to go again. The trick was to take advantage of the cresting wave.

  He was sweating profusely. The salt stung his eyes and he wiped them with his forearm, then glanced at the sandy-haired man beside him. He was slumped into the window recess with his face turned away. There was something boneless about him.

  “Are you hit?” Ned asked.

  Silence.

  He did not want to touch the body. He did not want to think about it at all.

  Hold your breath, sight, fire.

  No reinforcements arrived. The man he had sent to Connolly must not have got through, then. Ned breathed a prayer for him.

  There were more grenade explosions. The concussions sent white lights skittering painfully along Ned’s optic nerves. His head wanted to explode too, to open up and let the throbbing, tortured brain escape.

  A sea of khaki-clad figures was snaking its way along the bridge, finding cover wherever it could. Each of the three republican positions was isolated now, fighting on its own.

  Hold your breath, sight, fire.

  Someone shook his shoulder. “Did you say you’re from headquarters?”

  “I am.”

  “Then for God’s sake get back there and ask them to send us some help, will you? Or go to Boland’s Mills and tell Dev. He has damned few men himself but he can spare us some if he knows how bad it is here.”

  “I can’t leave you like this.”

  “If you don’t we’ll all die surely. We may die anyway, but it would be a comfort to think help might be coming. You can get out the back of the house if we create enough diversion in front. Go, man; it’s our last chance!”

  April 26, 1916

  ROYAL NAVY SHELLS DUBLIN

  April 26, 1916

  UNIONIST MPS DEMAND ALL REBELS BE SHOT

  Chapter Fifty-four

  HENRY Mooney sat slumped at his desk. He was defeated. Faced with the mounting violence of revolution he had retreated to the newspaper office, and now was staring at a stack of copy that held no meaning for him.

  Evening was coming. Soon it would be time to go home. If he still had a home. He looked up at the clock on the wall and discovered it had stopped.

  Of course it has, he thought with a mirthless chuckle. We’re frozen in time and the shooting will go on forever.

  “What’s so funny?” asked a fellow reporter, handing him yet another sheet of paper. “It can’t be this.”

  Henry glanced at the page. “Dear sweet Jesus!”

  That morning Captain J. C. Bowen-Colthurst, the army officer who had arrested Francis Sheehy-Skeffington the previous evening, had taken Skeffington and two others into the yard at Portobello Barracks and shot them in cold blood with neither trial nor hearing.1 The other two men were journalists who had no connection with the nationalist movement. Their arrests were as arbitrary as that of little Frank Skeffington, who passionately believed in pacificism and the equality of women.

  Henry was dumbfounded. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The man who brought me the information says Skeffington was a witness when Bowen-Colthurst shot an unarmed boy in Rathmines earlier.”

  “How does your informant know?”

  “He’s stationed at Portobello, actually. Says the captain’s quite insane, they’re all afraid of him down there. Colthurst’s killed several innocent men since the Rising began. Blew off one lad’s head while he was kneeling in the street signing the cross. My contact called to tell me about Skeffington, then scarpered away to find a pub that’s still open.”

  “What will happen to Colthurst?”

  “Probably nothing, Henry. He has a lot of influence in the Castle, he was aide-de-camp to Lord Aberdeen at one time.”

  “We can’t use this story, you know that.”

  The other man nodded. “I know. But maybe someday…” He left the thought unfinished.

  “I’d like to find that pub myself,” said Henry Mooney.

  RUNNING, walking, dodging, desperate, Ned Halloran left a neighborhood littered with the dead and dying. Mount Street Bridge was clogged with the victims of bungled orders whose officers had sent them into the republican crossfire like sacrificial victims. They crawled, they groaned, they died in the broiling sun, and still more waves were sent after them to die and fall across their bodies. It was incredible to think that so few were doing so much damage to so many. It could not last.

  We may die anyway, but it would be a comfort to think help might be coming.

  His head was pounding so savagely he could not think. He forgot about Boland’s Mills and de Valera. He had to return to Mr. Connolly; to Mr. Pearse; to Síle.

  Ned could no longer tell if anyone was shooting at him; his ears were continually ringing. Reality was tenuous. He turned a corner and everything looked normal; he clearly saw well-dressed men and women walking about on a balmy spring afternoon. He turned another corner and there were nothing but khaki uniforms and men lying on their bellies, aiming guns.

  Somehow he crossed the Liffey. He would never remember how or where.

  Later he came upon British soldiers lined up in front of a barricade in Talbot Street, smilingly having their photograph taken.2

  SÍLE was kept busy in the infirmary on the first floor of headquarters. A doctor, a medical student, and a captured British surgeon were in attendance.3 Stretcher bearers brought a stream of wounded men. The original stock of medical supplies was exhausted. Raiding parties replaced what they could from nearby chemists’ shops—and left signed promissory notes.

  Síle was sent to the ground floor to someone to request more morphia, if there was any to be found. The leaders were sitting together on stools and boxes, talking. She wanted to scream at them, “Where’s Ned? Find Ned for me, that’s all that matters!” But she knew it was not all that mattered.

  An exhausted figure came staggering into the G.P.O.

  Síle felt time stop for a moment.

  God, she thought. Just the one word. God. And then, Thank you.

  She ran to meet Ned.

  His eyes were glazed; he hardly seemed to see her. He had lost his rifle someplace, and his uniform was stained. “Where’s Mr. Connolly?” he said several times.

  “Over there with the others. Give me your hand and I’ll take you to him.”

  In a voice that shook with emotion Ned recounted the battle of Mount Street Bridge. “You have to send reinforcements, sir,” he told Connolly. “You have to send everything we’ve got.”

  Seán MacDermott gave a hollow laugh. “Everything we’ve got? Do you know how little that is, and how thin it’s spread already?”

  “But they have nothing! A dozen men have been holding out against hundreds of British soldiers all afternoon! Didn’t a messenger get through from them earlier, asking for help?”

  “No one’s come from there,” Connolly told him. “Looking at you, I would say it’s a miracle you did.”

  “What about the reinforcements?” Ned persisted. “I promised them.”

  “There’s no way right now, Halloran; there’s just no way. Maybe if they can hold out until tomorrow and we get more men coming in here…”

  Ned swallowed hard. “I see, sir.”

  Joe Plunkett said in a hoarse whisper, “If it would make you feel better to talk to a priest, Ned, Pat just told me he’s sent to the Pro-Cathedral for a curate. Someone to hear confessions and grant absolutions.”

  Ned slumped onto the floor with his back propped against one of the counters. Síle brought him tea. He could not drink. He could not see her face. He could only see the Mount Street Bridge.
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  Well after dark, a three-man squad who had been pinned down near Merrion Square reported the outcome of the battle as they had heard it from an ambulance driver. Over two hundred British soldiers had died at the bridge that afternoon. Eventually the defenders in the Parochial Hall had been forced to retreat and were captured. One of the two men who had held out so long and so valiantly in number 25 was thought to have escaped. The other was dead.

  Clanwilliam House had been bombed into a blazing ruin, incinerating everyone inside.

  THAT night Ned had a dream. Penned beneath the overturned bowl of a hard, unyielding sky, he crouched on the smoking earth.

  The extinguishing tide rose inexorably.

  SOMETIME later he awoke to hear Pádraic Pearse having a low-voiced conversation with Des Ryan.4 Pearse was sitting on a barrel, Ryan standing beside him. A sullen red glare seeped into the post office from fires now burning throughout the north side. With gunfire punctuating his words, Pearse asked, “It was the right thing to do, was it not?”

  Ryan was astonished at the question. “Yes!”

  “And if we fail it means the end of everything, Volunteers, the Republic, all?”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “Tonight there are countless brave men fighting for this city, Des. Countless women too, even carrying gelignite in spite of every danger. No matter what happens now, someday people will speak of Dublin as one of the splendid cities, as they speak of Paris.

  “When we are all wiped out at first they will blame us, condemn us. However, but for this protest, the war would eventually end and still nothing would have been done.” Pádraic Pearse drew a long, slow breath. “After a few years they will see the meaning of what we tried to do.”

  He arose, collected his brother, and the two of them went on one of their rounds, visiting with the men at their posts, inspiring them through the darkest hours of the night.

  THURSDAY morning dawned on an increasingly grim and devastated Dublin. The artillery was doing its work. The rubble was piling up.

  The British infantry was drawing steadily closer to the republican stronghold as the various outpost garrisons were no longer able to prevent them. Both artillery and machine gun fire were beginning to make their presence felt in the Sackville Street area. James Connolly led numerous sorties to reinforce old positions or establish new ones. However, he admitted to The O’Rahilly that the post office would not be able to hold out much longer.

  NED had passed from sleep into that amorphous state where nothing is quite real. He tried with all his might to imagine himself solidly in his own narrow bed at Saint Enda’s with the dawn chorus outside his window, and when that failed he wished himself into the room in Gardiner Street, and Henry humming as he shaved. Henry used cocoa butter shaving soap. Ned could almost smell it.

  Then he heard the guns. Artillery. Very close.

  He gave a violent start.

  “You were shattered when you came in,” said Willie Pearse, bending over him, “so we let you sleep. But I guess you’d better get up now. Mr. Connolly thinks they’ll be shelling us very soon.”

  Groggily, Ned got to his feet. Someone was pounding a drum somewhere. Perhaps inside his head.

  The defenders in the post office were strengthening their defenses yet again, while the women worked stoically beside them. Síle told him the secret. “We talked about it amongst ourselves last night. If we show fear it might infect the men and we don’t want to do that.”

  She needed a bath and her hair was stringy and matted, but he thought she looked beautiful. They all looked beautiful.

  AT precisely ten o’clock the British began shelling Lower Sackville Street. One building after another caught fire. Kelly’s Gun Shop, which had become known as “Kelly’s Fort,” was abandoned. The men retreated to the G.P.O., where George Plunkett criticized their decision. “You could have held out,” he kept saying.

  His older brother remonstrated with him. “Don’t blame them for being human, George.” As the situation worsened, Joe Plunkett was forcing himself to walk up and down the post office, waving his saber and encouraging the men with little jokes and a gently mocking smile. In his elegant uniform and gleaming jewelry, with death upon his face, he was a bizarre figure. But the men responded to his valiant spirit. He was digging deep into himself to give them all the strength he had, a gift bestowed through a superhuman triumph of will over weakness. In those desperate hours, Joe Plunkett was greatly loved.5

  AS he made the rounds of the republican positions that morning, James Connolly found a curious little squad gathered on the top floor of the Metropole Hotel. He subsequently reported to Pearse with a tone somewhere between anger and amusement, “There’s a dozen of your Saint Enda’s lads up there with our snipers, Pearse.6 They’re too young to be Volunteers, they’re not even Fianna, yet they say they want to join the fight. What am I to do with them? The streets are too dangerous to try to send them home.”

  “Since they are there, I suggest you provide them with weapons. They may have to defend not only their ideals but themselves.”

  The day grew hotter. Had there been no women in the G.P.O. the men might have stripped to the waist. As it was, they simply suffered. The fires burning throughout the center of the city were increasing too, beyond the ability of the fire brigades to cope.

  A thick cloud of black smoke hung over Dublin.

  FROM the first time the sounds of gunfire had reached the orphanage in the North Circular Road, the little girl called Ursula Jervis slept very little and was unable to eat. A new head matron had recently arrived at the orphanage. She assured the little girls, “Some men are hunting out in the fields, that’s all. There’s no need to be frightened.” Most of the children accepted what she said. They were accustomed to believing authority figures.

  But Precious had heard the unmistakable sound of rifles being fired in city streets before. Although she was terrified, she also was contemptuous of the woman for lying.

  No organism can sustain a high level of terror indefinitely, however. As time went on and the sound must be endured, Precious dug into the gritty corners of her soul for courage.

  Then on Thursday morning she looked out a window and saw an amorphous dark shape crouched over the city. Occasional red sparks gleamed like angry eyes. Terror returned in full measure.

  Precious ran to the back hallway, where she found the staff sorting through haphazard piles of foodstuffs, the evidence of frantic hoarding. Precious tugged at the matron’s sleeve. “Dublin’s on fire!” she cried.

  The woman pushed her away. “Not now, child, can’t you see I’m busy? I know about the fire; it’s just someone burning rubbish. I promise you there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Precious flicked her eyes from the matron’s face to the hoarded supplies and back again. Then she turned on her heel and trotted off.

  When she next looked out the window, the smoke cloud was larger than before.

  Precious quietly began to gather her few treasures. They consisted of the toys Ned had given her, including a bear that banged a drum when you pulled its string, and a tiny bisque baby doll from Síle. There was also one beloved picture book that Mrs. Pearse had given her the previous Christmas at Saint Enda’s. Methodically, the little girl stripped the pillowcase from the one flat pillow on her bed and carefully packed her treasures inside. Then she tied a knot in the top of the pillowcase. From that moment, she did not let the bundle out of her sight.

  “There are things you may want beyond mere subsistence,” Ned had once said, “so you’ll need to make plans.”

  Precious listened to everything Ned told her.

  TOWARD the middle of the afternoon the post office took its first direct hit from an artillery shell. There was no panic, but a pall of choking dust filled the building.

  Pádraic Pearse praised the republicans for their courage in the face of danger. They answered his words with a heartfelt cheer that made them all feel, briefly, better.

  James C
onnolly’s response to the attack was different. He led a squad to set up additional defenses in Liffey Street, an area already infiltrated with British snipers. On the way he stopped to help repair a damaged barricade and his left arm was grazed by a bullet. Without calling any attention to the injury he quietly returned to the infirmary in the G.P.O. to have it dressed, then rejoined his men in Liffey Street.

  When he was satisfied they were well dug, in he started back toward headquarters.

  In Middle Abbey Street a sniper’s bullet smashed James Connolly’s leg just above the ankle.

  He fell to the cobblestones and lay without moving. Eventually, in agony, Connolly began dragging himself toward the G.P.O. When he came within sight of the sentries Dick Humphries ran inside to summon stretcher bearers.

  Connolly was hoisted onto an iron-framed bed with casters that had been found rusting in the basement. No one could imagine why such a piece of furniture was in the post office. While the doctors examined him he lay sweating and swearing and demanding news of the battle. His leg was all but destroyed; an immediate operation was necessary to save it. The only anesthetic available was chloroform.

  Makeshift screens were put around the bed, and the British surgeon worked as devotedly on the rebel leader as on one of his own. Following the operation Connolly was given an injection of morphia, but he refused to be taken to the Jervis Street Infirmary.

  After dark a messenger arrived with news of a furious battle at the South Dublin Union. The fight had ended in a stalemate. The British could not overcome the defenders but they had the position surrounded.

  DUBLIN was a sea of flames.

  THE interior of the G.P.O. was hellish. Throughout Thursday night men continued to crowd into the building as they fell back before the British assault. They could not be redeployed; they were caught in a tightening noose. The atmosphere was stifling. Food was in short supply and the two toilets in the building, overwhelmed by numbers they were never meant to serve, stopped up.