Tom Barry

by Meda Ryan

  The men hadn’t slept or eaten for over 24 hours. ‘They had marched, waited and fought all night.’ They had to walk many miles before getting tea and bread and butter. Barry ordered scout guards to travel 300 yards ahead of the main body. First he ordered the men out on the road, and told them to walk 300 to 400 yards backwards, ‘to step backwards’. If ‘the military came along they would spot the footprints. Our commander was so wise, he thought of everything.’ He sent other Volunteers to secure three horses and carts. Others were to organise food along the way. Flankers went at an easy pace – all would have to be prepared to fight again at any stage. Through his field glasses Barry observed some British forces as the column retired, they appeared leaderless ‘arguing as to what to do next’. Barry helped them make up their minds. He ordered, ‘Fall in! Fire!’ His men responded. The enemy scattered.[36]

  ‘I remember well getting up on a cart carrying ammunition. I was so tired I fell into a dead sleep,’ says Nudge Callanan, ‘and I didn’t care if the whole damn thing blew up.’[37]

  Along the way they had further minor encounters with distant British military; they returned fire, but neither side pursued the action.

  Having put some distance between them and the enemy Barry and his men took a slower pace. As they marched along, his mind went back over the events of the night and the morning. He has said that a long chapter could be written about each of the 104 men – many of whom will remain unmentioned in history – and ‘whose behaviour surpassed even my high expectation of such a smashing body of West Cork fighters. It was a composite victory of 104 officers and men banded together as disciplined comrades. No genius of leadership or no prowess of any officer or man was responsible, for all shared in the effort that shocked the confidence of the British authorities in the power of their armed forces …The greatness of those men of the flying column had a double-edged effect on me. One knew they could be relied on to the last, but on the other hand, I grew to have such an affectionate regard for them that I worried continually in case I failed them through negligence or inefficiency. I dreaded to lose a single one of them through some fault of mine. Their confidence in me was even disturbing.’[38]

  In fact he bore this great love for the men he fought with until the day he died. Although he lost some friends through some petty disagreement, nevertheless if they were ever in trouble or needed anything, he would come to their assistance. Indeed, no matter which side of the Civil War the men who had fought with him took, he respected them and still called them ‘my men’.[39]

  Writing on the Crossbarry ambush, Liam Deasy noted that Tom Barry ‘proved himself an ideal column commander. At the camps organised by him he had trained the officers well, and in the many engagements in which he fought he had won the confidence and respect of everyone who served under him. He was a strict disciplinarian and a good strategist, but he was something greater still: he was a leader of unsurpassed bravery, who was in the thick of every fight, and so oblivious of personal risk that his men felt it an honour to be able to follow him.’[40]

  Travelling across ditches, fields and roads they reached Kilbornane by evening. Here they would eat. Barry stood on a ditch and watched the flying column pass. Though without food or rest, unshaven, caps with peaks turned back or in their pockets, with trench coats hung open and muddy leggings, they walked past with a spring in their step, rifles at the trail, or slung across their backs. ‘As they came in to pass where I stood, their shoulders jerked back so that no one would assume they were tiring’, Barry wrote. He knew these ‘tough men’ also as ‘light-hearted youths’ caught up in the fight ‘for freedom from the chains of oppression and British aggression’ would ‘normally have been happy working’ on their farms, shops or at school. Barry was proud that they never doubted his decisions. ‘I shall always cherish the fact that never once during all the Anglo-Irish struggle did any officer or man question any of my decisions or show to me anything but the greatest loyalty and comradeship.’[41]

  ‘Every one of us trusted Tom, we didn’t want anything to happen to him as we fought together in our goal for freedom,’ Denis Lordan recalled. Tom had no parents, brothers or sisters living in West Cork, and unlike most of the men, never had a shirt or a sock ‘sent from home’. But the men gave him theirs. On parade he was ‘Commandant’ but in billets he was ‘Tom’ one of ‘the boys’.[42]‘After I had been hurt and when long marches with the column was an effort’, Tom wrote, ‘during a halt some of the men would come with a saddled horse “Commandant, this horse is idle and you might as well ride him the rest of the way”.’ Because of their kindness and loyalty he would examine his conscience to see if he ‘had ordered some movement which might have been better left unexecuted’.[43]These ‘God-fearing men believed in one thing – the freedom of Ireland, and were prepared to follow Barry to the death … and were prepared to give their all with him.’[44]

  Darkness had already set in as the column reached O’Sullivan’s of Gurranreagh, in the parish of Kilmichael, outside the Third West Cork Brigade area. They ‘were not respecters of borders and had crossed on many occasions’, and had fought Toureen and Kilmichael in Cork No. 1 area.

  As the weary men moved into billets, news reached them that the shots they had heard from Crossbarry in the morning were those that killed Tom’s friend, Charlie Hurley. Tom says Charlie foretold his own death. ‘One day, as I was chaffing him, he turned to me and said quite gravely, “When I am killed by them I shall be alone. I shall die fighting them, but none of you will be with me.” And so it was.’[45]

  A few days before the Crossbarry ambush Charlie had given ‘a silver ring’ to Flor Begley and asked him to get a wedding ring of the same size ‘with three stones in it’. At the billet the night before they left for the march to Crossbarry, Flor said to Charlie, ‘I hadn’t a chance to get that ring for you yet – you’d never know what would happen to me tomorrow, so here you’d better take it!’ The ring that Charlie wanted was for his bride-to-be Leslie Price, Cumann na mBan organiser. Flor thought about getting the silver ring again to return it to Leslie at the funeral and to then tell her the story, but he decided against it.[46]

  The evening after Crossbarry ambush, Tom, Liam Deasy and a column of men set out for Clogagh. ‘We marched and marched all Saturday and Sunday nights, although already weary and tired after the long fight at Crossbarry on Saturday morning until 2 a.m. on Monday when we arrived at Clogagh village.’ Cumann na mBan members had smuggled Charlie Hurley’s body from the Bandon Workhouse morgue, where British soldiers had taken it. Leslie Price, Charlie’s fiancée and Bridie Crowley with colleagues drove with it through the night in a pony and trap. Seán MacCárthaigh drove Brigid O’Mahony ‘with some of his brain matter [from the fatal scene] to be buried with his remains.’ The two scouts whom Barry sent to the local priest, returned.

  ‘He won’t come, it doesn’t suit him to come out,’ they said.

  ‘It doesn’t suit him to come out,’ said Barry exasperated. ‘I’ll get him down.’

  Barry raced across the boreen to the presbytery, heaved in the door and rushed up the stairs. In the bedroom he told the startled priest ‘in blue pyjamas’ to ‘Get down to the graveyard and say the prayers over Charlie Hurley.’

  Up to a 100 rifle-men formed a guard of honour as the priest performed the ceremony. From the church the men with rifles reversed ‘slow-marched to the graveyard, with Charlie’s body in their midst. I have seen many pathetic scenes in a not uneventful life, but the memory of that night’s burial remains foremost. Perhaps it may be that because Charlie was my great comrade and I loved him greatly, the scene was seared into my memory. It is still fresh and clear – the dirge of the war pipes played by Flor Begley, the slow march of the brigade flying column, the small group of only six other mourners, the rain-soaked sky and earth and the wintry moon that shone as we followed him to his grave.’ Begley’s war-pipes caoined a lament. The priest spoke the prayers. Barry ordered his men to ‘Present arms’. They fired three
volleys and the Last Post cut the air. Then Tom Barry spoke a final tribute to his friend, comrade-in-arms and gallant hero. Those who were present have called this ‘a sad memorable occasion’ – the laying to rest of their brigade commandant.

  Tom Barry crossed the graveyard and spoke to Leslie Price, the girl Charlie had asked him ‘to take care of’. A strip cut from the end-length of the tricolour, which draped the coffin, was rolled up ribbon-like and in a touching gesture, Tom ceremoniously handed it to Leslie.[47]

  Almost 60 years later in a hospital bed she recalled Tom’s kindness as they both shed some tears at the graveside that night – both had lost a true friend.

  Weighed down with their thoughts the column set out again at 3.30 a.m. and marched to cross the dangerous Clonakilty-Bandon main road before dawn broke. Around 7.30 a.m. they reached Ahiohill eight miles away, having had an almost continuous march of 32 miles without food or sleep. The column retired to billets, exhausted.

  Notes

  [1] Denis O’Mahony, author interview 5/4/1974.

  [2] Tom Barry, author interviews; Flor Begley, brigade acting adj.; also Barry, Guerilla Days, p. 12; McCarthy, the engineer, did not join until after 23 March 1921.

  [3]Flor Begley Report, Florence O’Donoghue Papers. MS 31,301, NLI; see also Dick Russell to Florrie O’Donoghue [no month] 27 Tues. 1962, FO’D Papers, MS. 31,300, NLI; Crossbarry Remembered, AA1947, 30/3/1980, RTÉ Sound Archives, several participants in the ambush contributed to the discussion.

  [4]Dr Nudge Callanan, author interview 14/10/1980.

  [5]Section commanders: Seán Hales, John Lordan, Mick Crowley, Denis Lordan, Tom Kelleher, Peter Kearney and Christy O’Connell.

  [6]Tom Barry to Nollaig Ó Gadhra, RTÉ Sound Archives; Barry, Guerilla Days, p. 123; Barry had sent scouts to Kinsale and they returned with the news the Cumann na mBan girls also conveyed personally. In the Deasy, p. 293, there is mention of the enemy observing a ‘peace day’. Barry in The Reality, p. 28, writes: ‘Good Lord, why did we not go in to meet them half-way, and have a real St Patrick’s Day celebration!’

  [7]The foregoing is compiled from Tom Barry to Kate O’Callaghan, RTÉ Sound Archives. (In this recording Barry put in a stipulation that the recording would be transmitted on its own, as he did not want any distortion); Tom Barry to Donncha Ó Dulaing, early 1970s, RTÉ Sound Archives; ‘Crossbarry Remembered’, participants contributed to discussion, RTÉ Sound Archives; Tom Barry, Lecture to Irish army officers, Eamonn Moriarty tape recording; Seán MacCárthaigh, ‘Recollections’ to Tom Barry, 16/8/1948, TB private papers; Flor Begley, Florence O’Donoghue Papers, Ms 31, 301 (5), NLI; Seán MacCárthaigh to Liam Deasy 18/7/63, quoted Diarmuid Begley, The Road to Crossbarry, 78; Percival Papers, 4/1 typewritten report 25,26, IWM. The incident of lorries ‘setting out’, etc., is described as ‘an exciting episode’ in the Percival records; see WO 35 161 Private British army inquiries into the death of Charlie Hurley and three ‘unidentified’ deceased, Public Records Office, Surrey.

  [8]Tom Kelleher, The Kerryman, December 1937; Kelleher, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, p. 158.

  [9]Barry, The Reality of the Anglo-Irish War, p. 30.

  [10]Kate O’Callaghan, n.d. RTÉ Sound Archives; Barry, The Reality, p. 29; Barry is critical of Deasy account, pp. 232–249, which does not tally with Tom Kelleher’s account The Kerryman, December 1937, nor Kelleher, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, p. 157–160; see also Eyewitness, An Cosantóir 3/1/41 and 10/1/41; Looking West, Memories of Crossbarry, earlier recording – compilation transmitted 28/5/1986, Jim Fahy presenter – many contributors, RTÉ Sound Archives.

  [11]Typewritten document, pp. 25, 26, Percival Papers 4/1, IWM; also Report on battle of Cross Barry, 19 March in The Irish Rebellion, Strickland Papers IWM.

  [12]The ‘informant’s’ name is given in a letter from Seán MacCárthaigh to Tom Barry, 16/8/1948, TB private papers. Later, following an IRA court-martial, Barry allowed this man’s death sentence to be ‘commuted to exile for life it being Truce times’, Flor Begley, 15/3/60, FO’D Papers, Ms 31, 301, NLI.

  [13]Flor Begley, ‘They held up and made prisoners of 6 or 7 lads’, P17b/111 O’Malley Papers, UCDA; Flor Begley, MS 31,301 (5) FO’D Papers NLI.

  [14]Butler, p. 127.

  [15] Tom Barry’s notes, T. B. private papers; Barry, Guerilla Days, pp. 126, 127; Eyewitness, An Cosantóir, 1/10/1941; Tom Kelleher, The Kerryman, December 1937; Kelleher in Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, p. 159; Nollaig Ó Gadhra, 1969, RTÉ Sound Recording; Compilation, Looking West, interviews by Jim Fahy, RTÉ Sound Archives.

  [16]Tom Barry to Nollaig Ó Gadhra, RTÉ Sound Archives, 1969; Tom said later: ‘Somehow one knew that it was his fate to die in such a way.’ Tom Barry, ‘Charlie Hurley Remembered’, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, pp. 161, 162.

  [17]Tom Kelleher, The Kerryman, December, 1937; Liam Deasy states that the bagpipes ‘must have caused as much bewilderment to the enemy as stimulation to us’, P7A/D/45, Mulcahy Papers, UCDA.

  [18]Tom Kelleher, The Kerryman, December 1937, Kelleher, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, pp. 158,159; Flor Begley Report 15/3/60, FO’D Papers, MS 31,301 (5) NLI; Diarmuid Begley, The Road to Crossbarry, pp. 86–92.

  [19]Barry, Guerilla Warfare, unpublished document, TB private papers. ‘In the course of a study of guerilla operations extending over 20 years no other fight broke through a cordon which affords a more inspiring example’ than that action at Crossbarry ambush.

  [20]Report 6th Division, Strickland Papers, V11, 70, IWM. The report states: ‘How far it [carrying hostages] prevented ambushes it is difficult to say – as a matter of fact, there were hardly any cases of convoys accompanied by a “mascot” being attacked’.

  [21]Bill Powell, author interview 15/3/1975; Dómhnall MacGiolla Phoil to author 20/11/2001.

  [22]Tom Kelleher, The Kerryman, December 1937; also Kelleher, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, p. 160.

  [23]The foregoing is obtained from Tom Kelleher author interview 6/4/1974; Tom Barry manuscript, TB private papers; Tom Barry, Irish Press, 7, 8, 9 June, 1949; Tom Kelleher, The Kerryman, December 1937, Kelleher, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, pp. 159,160; Eyewitness, An Cosantóir, 3 and 10/1/41; Begley, pp. 79–92; Flor Begley Report, Florence O’Donoghue Papers Ms 31,301; Barry Guerilla Days, pp. 128–131; Tom Barry told Nollaig Ó Gadhra, ‘I put my hand on Kelleher’s shoulder, and told him he had done enough …’ 1969, RTÉ Sound Archives; Looking West, Jim Fahy interviews, RTÉ Sound Archives; Crossbarry Remembered, Kate O’Callaghan interview, n.d. RTÉ Sound Archives; Barry The Reality, pp. 31–38.

  [24]Eyewitness, An Cosantóir, 10/1/1941.

  [25]Seán Feehan to author April 1981.

  [26]Pax O’Faolain in in Uinseann MacEoin, Survivors, p. 149.

  [27]Butler, p. 134.

  [28]Tom Barry to Donncha Ó Dulaing, early 1970s, RTÉ Sound Archives.

  [29]Strickland Papers, IWM. Report on battle of Cross Barry, 19 March 1921.

  [30]Eyewitness, An Cosantóir, 10 January, 1941.

  [31]Tom Barry to Kate O’Callaghan, n.d. RTÉ Sound Archives.

  [32]Crossbarry Remembered, n.d. RTÉ Sound Archives.

  [33]Lieut Col Eamonn Moriarty, to Irish army officers, Recording on Location – Crossbarry, courtesy of Eamonn Moriarty.

  [34]This, it is believed is Jack Hourihane’s composition (see Appendix VII). In the Tom Barry Papers there is another song entitled, ‘Crossbarry Abu’ written by Pat O’Mahony, of the Third West Cork Brigade.

  [35]Tom Barry, unpublished document, TB private papers.

  [36]Participants in Crossbarry Remembered, recording some time earlier, transmitted 28/5/1986, RTÉ Sound Recording; Looking West, Jim Fahy interviewed participants, RTÉ Sound Recording; Irish Army Officers’ Recording, 1966, courtesy of Eamonn Moriarty; Tom Barry to Kate O’Callaghan, n.d. RTÉ Sound Recording.

  [37]Dr Nudge Callanan, author interview 14/10/1980.

  [38]Tom Barry, manuscript, TB private papers.

  [39]Criostóir de Baróid, a
uthor interview 11/1/1981.

  [40]Liam Deasy, notes to author, 5/12/1972; see also Deasy, p. 249.

  [41]Tom Barry, Irish Press, 10 June 1949; also Tom Barry’s notes, TB private papers.

  [42]Denis Lordan, author interview 7/7/1974.

  [43]Tom Barry’s notes, TB private papers; see also Tom Barry, Irish Press, 10 June 1949; Barry, Guerilla Days, p. 134.

  [44]Denis Conroy to Donncha Ó Dulaing, – occasion of his death, 2/7/1980, RTÉ Sound Archives.

  [45]Barry, Guerilla Days, p. 36; Liam Deasy, Personal Narrative, P7A/D/45, MP, UCDA.

  [46]Flor Begley, E. O’Malley N. P176/107, UCDA.

  [47]Barry, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, p. 162; Seán MacCárthaigh to Tom Barry, 16/8/1948, TB private papers; Tom Barry, author interview; Leslie Price, author interview 22/4/1973; Brdie Crowley (Manning), author interview 24/7/1974; Bridget O’Mahony, author interview 3/2/1979; Liam Deasy, author interview 5/12/1972; Denis Lordan, author interview 7/7/1974; Mick McCarthy, in Uinseann MacEoin, The IRA, p. 638.

  9 - Formation of the First Southern Division

  The success at Crossbarry brought new hope to the IRA all over Ireland. Other areas looked towards the Rebel County for inspiration to continue. Barry, though only 23 years of age, was by now ‘one of the big generals of the struggle against the British.’[1] The morale of the Third West Cork Brigade was particularly high. Although one-third of the British forces in Ireland were concentrated in the Cork area, the British still found that it was not enough. Garrisons in West Cork were again strengthened. The papers of the following day carried conflicting reports but all admitted heavy losses for the British forces and that three lorries had been destroyed (according to the Cork Examiner), three more retreated to Innishannon and Crossbarry and reinforcements had met with similar misadventures from the attackers.[2]