1916

by Morgan Llywelyn

  There was no pretense of sleep now. British machine gun fire was raking the area from the quays to the Rotunda. The republicans were kept busy lubricating their overheated firearms with sardine oil. A bucket brigade was formed to keep inflammable material saturated with water.

  Sometime during the night the men began singing.

  BY dawn Friday the British were pumping artillery shells into Upper Sackville Street, demolishing the buildings opposite the post office. It was an act of wanton destruction. The O’Rahilly commented, “They just want to show us how little they think of us and our city.”7

  Ned still had his headache plus a nagging nausea that found no relief in vomiting. He tried to ignore both. When Pearse sent him to the infirmary to inquire about the condition of the commandant-general, he was thankful for the distraction.

  Síle told him, “Mr. Connolly had an uneasy night but he seems better now. We gave him a book.”

  “You did what?”

  “We found a detective novel hidden under one of the counters. Now you know what postal clerks do on a slow day.”

  James Connolly was lying in bed with his lower leg in splints. Pale from loss of blood, he was propped up on his folded blanket, reading. When he saw Ned he grinned. “A good book, rest, and an insurrection all at the same time! Why, this is revolution de luxe!”8

  A little while later he summoned Winifred Carney and dictated a stirring but almost totally fictional pronouncement that he had The O’Rahilly read out to the garrison. It was filled with glowing descriptions of victories that had never happened. Although the listeners knew better, they were touched by the effort he was making to keep their spirits high.

  The speech concluded: “Courage, boys, we are winning, and in the hour of our victory let us not forget the splendid women who have everywhere stood by us and cheered us on. Never had man or woman a grander cause, never was a cause more grandly served.”

  From outside came the crash of a burning building collapsing in Sackville Street.

  During a brief lull in the gunfire, the leaders decided to evacuate the women and the wounded. James Connolly, of course, refused to go.

  Síle told Ned, “I won’t do it, I won’t leave you.”

  “You can argue with me but you can’t argue with Seán MacDermott. Now that Mr. Connolly’s out of action he and Tom—”

  “I can argue with anybody! Winifred Carney is staying and I’m staying too. The other women feel the same way.”

  MacDermott appealed to Pearse. “Connolly has every right to stay, but if the women refuse to go, Pat, what can we do? They argue that since we wouldn’t let them be soldiers, they don’t have to take our orders.”

  “I’ll speak to them.”

  In the hot, dusty, pungent main hall of the post office, Pádraic Pearse addressed the thirty-four women who had shared the last four days. He expressed his intense admiration for their courage and made a point of shaking each by the hand. “We ask you to go now,” he told them, “because once this is over we will need you more than ever. It will give us strength, knowing you are waiting to help build the new Republic. We cannot do it without you.”

  In the end they could not resist him. All but four agreed to leave: Winifred Carney and two nurses, Julia Grenan and Elizabeth O’Farrell, who were also members of Cumann na mBan—and Síle Duffy.9

  Ned was at the point of despair. He knew without anyone having to tell him that the defenders of the post office were doomed. The British meant to pound them to a pulp. He had one argument left to offer.

  “I’m not asking for myself,” he told Síle, “but for Precious. You said Precious was ours and promised that if anything happened to me you would take care of her.”

  “Och, Ned, that’s not fair!”

  “I know how you feel about honesty, and you know how I feel about promises. I’m holding you to yours. Get out of here while you have the chance, sweetheart, and go to Precious. Keep her safe for me, for both of us.”

  He watched, helpless to do more, while the battle raged within Síle. At last her shoulders slumped and he knew he had won. “All right, Ned, I’ll go. But I ask a promise of you in return. Stay alive.”

  He forced a grin. “I’ll do my best.”

  And then she was gone. Gone, and the light gone with her.

  FROM the day he first saw Kilmainham Jail, Father Paul O’Shaughnessy had hated the place. It was built to be hated, he thought. Originally intended as a debtors’ prison to accommodate a hundred men and women at the most, it had contained ten times that number during the height of the Great Famine, in conditions that the priest could not imagine.

  Kilmainham’s principal function had become the housing of “political prisoners,” however; men whose crime was resistance to British rule. Seeped into its gray stones was the pain and passion and desperate thwarted longing of generations of rebels. They were kept apart from the ordinary miscreants housed in the county jail in order to avoid contaminating them with the dangerous seeds of nationalism.

  So Paul was told by Reverend Eugene MacCarthy, the prison chaplain. “We minister to these unfortunates as best we can,” Reverend MacCarthy explained. “They are not bad men, most of them; just misguided.”

  Kilmainham comprised an open, four-tiered area ringed with cells that could be seen at all times from a central position, and an older wing where cells lined murky corridors. Built according to Victorian penal principles, the newer part of the prison attempted to provide some degree of light and air.

  The old wing was a nightmare from another age. Its narrow, vaulted corridors were like catacombs beneath a dead city. Cramped stone cells were damp and frighteningly dark. Furnishings consisted of a thin mattress on the floor and a slop bucket in the corner.

  In an attempt to gain empathy with the prisoners, Paul went into an empty cell in the old wing and closed the solid oak door. The sense of isolation was stifling.

  It was like being in one’s own coffin.

  When insurrection broke out on Easter Monday, Kilmainham Jail was put on alert immediately. Army officers came and went; cells and supplies were inspected, but no new prisoners arrived. On Wednesday morning as Paul set out from Ringsend he was stopped in the street by two British soldiers who demanded to see his pass.

  “I’m a priest. I’m on my way to Kilmainham to assist the chaplain.”

  “We’ll have plenty of Catholics in Kilmainham soon,” one of the soldiers laughed.

  The other said more kindly, “Please turn around and go back, Father. You can visit the jail in few days, I promise you, and your services will be needed by then. We’re going to fill the jails with Sinn Féiners.”

  Reluctantly, Paul returned to the Cahill house. Thursday morning he tried again, only to find himself still restricted to Ringsend. The army had partitioned Dublin into segments and was insisting that civilians remain in their own districts.

  On Friday, with the flames of the inner city plainly visible, Paul made another attempt to reach Kilmainham. This time the soldiers at the barricade told him, “Cheer up, Father, the rebellion’s almost over.”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  THE air in the post office was unbreathable. Men were coughing and choking, their eyes streamed from the smoke that infiltrated every part of the building. Joe Plunkett suffered terribly until Ned thought to wring out a wet handkerchief and give it to him to breathe through.

  Plunkett managed to make a little joke. Holding up his wrist with its filigree bracelet, he said, “All this smoke is going to tarnish my bangle. Grace gave it to me; I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.” He broke off, fighting for breath. “We’re going to be married, you know. Just as soon as this is over. It’ll be the first marriage in the Republic of Ireland.”

  “I know,” said Ned. “I’m coming to the wedding.”

  SOME of Cumann na mBan accompanied the wounded to the hospital in Jervis Street. So did the British surgeon, Lieutenant Mahony, and Father Flanagan, the curate from the Pro-Cathedral, although Ma
hony subsequently returned to the G.P.O. to look after James Connolly.

  Other women were determined to try to reach their homes. Their men were fighting, their children were being cared for by relatives, but their homes held irreplaceable treasures accumulated over a lifetime. Grandmother’s delph plates on the dresser, their own wedding pictures in the bedroom. The children’s first drawings, lovingly brought home from school. Home was the world they had created in a larger world that was being destroyed. If necessary, they would make their last stand there.

  With only Eliza Goggins’s Luger for company, Síle Duffy set out for the orphanage in the North Circular Road.

  IN the G.P.O., Pádraic Pearse issued a final pronouncement in which he lavished praise on his fellow revolutionaries. He described James Connolly as “the guiding brain of our resistance.”1 With characteristic generosity, he even credited Eoin MacNeill with always having acted “in the best interests of Ireland.” He also gave an accurate assessment of the current situation and promised to hold out as long as the building lasted.

  Connolly had himself carried into the main hall on a stretcher so he could be at the heart of the action. Although he was holding his emotions under tight control, Pádraic Pearse looked grief-stricken. By contrast, Connolly was regaining his old verve. He was never so tough as when fighting against impossible odds.

  The day wore on. Men at the outer barricades were being forced to retreat to the post office as the British forces advanced slowly but inexorably, sweeping the streets with machine gun fire.

  Exhausted, Pearse took a sleeping draught and asked O’Kelly to wake him after an hour. But before the soporific could take effect a new fire broke out in the building and Joe Plunkett made a valiant effort to fight it himself. For the first and last time that week Pearse lost his temper. “Lie down in the name of God, Joe!” he roared, “and let healthy men do the work!”

  “THE roof’s burning!” yelled Michael Collins from the head of the stairs.

  The O’Rahilly led a party up to fight the flames and Pádraic Pearse ran after them, heedless of danger to himself. An incendiary shell had ignited part of the top storey. British snipers were pouring gunfire into the area. A bullet crashed against the wall inches from Pearse’s head as he helped the men who were battling the blaze.2 When they got it under control a new one broke out elsewhere.

  PEARSE, MacDermott, Clarke, Plunkett, and The O’Rahilly gathered around the stretcher where James Connolly lay.3 The ground floor was barricaded with sandbags; buckets of water stood ready to hand. Incredibly, they had held out until darkness fell, but they knew the post office was doomed.

  “Connolly’s quite ready to stay right here and fight it out to the bitter end,” Willie Pearse confided to Ned. “A gun battle to the death, no quarter asked or given.”

  “Is that what Mr. Pearse wants?”

  “Merciful hour, Ned! That’s the last thing he wants. He’s arguing now to move the garrison while we still have a chance. We can set up the government headquarters elsewhere; it isn’t the building that matters.” Suddenly both men flinched. There was a terrific crash overhead as the upper floors collapsed, followed by the thunder of ammunition stores exploding.

  THE O’Rahilly called the last men in from their snipers’ posts. The thirteen British soldiers who had been taken prisoner during the previous days were led to safety at the rear of the building and released. Through cracks in the collapsing walls of the G.P.O., those inside could see the smoldering ruins of Sackville Street. And still the artillery thundered.

  Pádraic Pearse calmly rationed out what was left of the food and, like a schoolmaster instructing his pupils, made sure each man filled his water bottle and took his haversack with him. Then he explained the plans the leaders had agreed upon for evacuating the garrison. “We shall leave by the Henry Street entrance, make a dash up Moore Street, and take up a position in the William & Woods factory in Parnell Street. From there we may be able to get through enemy lines to Commandant Daly in the Four Courts.”

  At the end of Moore Street was a British barricade, the only apparent obstacle between the republicans and the factory. But it was a crucial one—and well defended. The O’Rahilly organized a squad of a dozen men to storm the barricade and open the way for the rest. He did this as discreetly as possible, but by now Ned Halloran had become a past master at observing everything that went on.

  Ned went to Jack Plunkett. “Did you know The O’Rahilly’s taking an advance party to clear the way?”

  “Not without me he isn’t!” cried Jack.

  He and Ned went to The O’Rahilly and asked to be included. “You only have twelve,” Jack observed.4 “Would you not like another twelve?”

  “You stay with the others, both of you. Any more men would only draw fire.” The O’Rahilly turned and told his friend Desmond Fitzgerald, “Goodbye, Desmond. This is the end for certain. I never dreamed it would last so long.”5 Then suddenly he grinned. “But fancy missing this and then getting killed running for a tram or catching cold!”

  As The O’Rahilly was about to lead his men out the Henry Street exit his eye fell on Father Flanagan. Taking off his hat, he knelt in front of the priest. “I don’t suppose, Father, that we will ever meet in this world again,” he said soberly. “Please give me your blessing.”

  With tears in his eyes, the priest complied.

  Ned and Jack watched anxiously as the squad set off, then went back inside.

  PÁDRAIC Pearse and James Connolly remained in the post office, refusing to leave until the last man had gone. Only Ned, Willie Pearse, Winifred Carney, and two Fianna stretcher bearers were allowed to stay with them. As the others filed past, Pádraic Pearse said, “Go out and face the machine guns as if you were on parade.”6

  Leaving the G.P.O. for the last time, they began to sing a song they had sung many times:

  Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland;

  Some have come from a land beyond the wave;

  Sworn to be free, no more our ancient sireland

  Shall shelter the despot or the slave.

  Tonight we man the bearna beoghail

  In Erin’s cause, come woe or weal;

  ’Mid cannon’s roar and rifle’s peal

  We’ll chant a soldier’s song.7

  They had almost reached Moore Street when a man came running back to tell them The O’Rahilly had been shot down. A hail of bullets pursued him.

  Consternation swept through the company. Some ran one way, some another. Tom Clarke and Seán MacDermott tried to rally them; Joe Plunkett held up his saber and cried in a voice of surprising strength, “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be cowards, any of you! On! On!”

  Through a descending dusk lit by flames and gunfire, the garrison struggled to find a brief haven.

  THE time had come for the last defenders to leave the G.P.O. Connolly’s stretcher bearers lifted him and headed for the door. He grimaced with pain but said nothing. As they passed out of the building into the range of enemy snipers, the boy at the head of the stretcher bent forward to use his own body to shield James Connolly. “How old are you, lad?” Connolly asked hoarsely.

  “Fourteen, sir. Be easy now, we’ll have you safe soon.”

  PÁDRAIC Pearse made a hasty tour of inspection to be certain everyone was out while Ned and the others waited for him just outside. After an unbearable few minutes he appeared in the doorway alone, covered in soot, his face swollen and blistered from the heat. He gave a curt nod. To the sound of crashing beams they left the G.P.O. to its fate.

  The fire roared triumph.

  As if indifferent to the bullets, Pearse walked around to the front of the building. Ned followed him. From this angle they could see that the entire post office was now an inferno. But Pearse was not looking at the blaze. His eyes were lifted to the flag flying above it, whipped by the wind from the fire. The lettering was badly scorched, but the words IRISH REPUBLIC were still discernible.

  The two men saw the flagpole colla
pse. Slowly the green banner sank across the parapet and slumped toward the rubble in the street.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  IN the offices of the Independent, Henry Mooney stubbornly kept to his post. Other newspapermen did the same, though no one dared cross the Liffey for firsthand information on Friday. Nothing seemed to dampen the avid curiosity of some Dubliners, however, who wandered dangerously close to the battle raging in Sackville Street just to gawk.

  The reporters mostly contented themselves with smoking cigarettes, pacing the floor, going to the door to stare toward the flames of Sackville Street and then going back to their desks to stare at their folded hands.

  And wait.

  Friday night they slept on their desks.

  Saturday morning information began to trickle in. One by one, the rebel positions around the city had fallen. Some garrisons were still holding out, however. The Four Courts and Jacob’s Biscuit Factory remained in republican hands.

  Upon arriving in Dublin on Friday, General Sir John Maxwell had issued orders to quell the rebellion at once by whatever means necessary. A frontal attack on a republican position in North King Street turned into an exceptionally bloody battle that lasted until Saturday morning. In frustration at not being able to defeat an enemy for whom they had nothing but scorn, some of the British troops ran amok. They smashed their way into the tenements in the area and vented their anger on the inhabitants. Fifteen innocent men had been shot and bayoneted to death in front of their terrified families.

  “I’ll need someone to confirm this,” Henry’s editor said.

  “Why? You know we won’t print it.”

  A smoke-stained, filthy figure stood in the doorway of the Carlisle Building, looking around as if dazed. Henry Mooney jumped to his feet. “Ned, is it you?”