by L. D Beyer
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Let sleeping dogs lie, Frank,” Liam had warned me.
But I couldn’t and two days later I found myself wishing I had.
“It’s the devil, you are!” Mrs. Sheehy screeched. In the courtyard outside her cottage, she dropped her pail and came at me, her arms swinging, hands slapping at my head. I put my arms up in defense as I backed away, the hens and rooster scattering behind me. This only seemed to further enrage her, and she came at me with a fury.
The commotion drew Tom’s sisters out of the cottage and while Angela, the older sister, held Mrs. Sheehy back, Colleen ran to the stables. Mrs. Sheehy began to wail.
“Leave now, while you still can.” Angela warned with a snarl.
But I didn’t, and a moment later I found myself surrounded by shovels and pitchforks, Tom’s father and brothers spread out around me. I had made a mistake. With the stone wall behind me, I was trapped. I wouldn’t be able to scramble over the wall before a shovel or pitchfork found me.
“So now that the war’s over, you came back, did you?” Mr. Sheehy growled as he held the pitchfork steady, pointed at my chest. “And for what purpose? To torment the family of a man you sent to his death?”
“I did come back, sir, to pay my respects and to tell you the truth about the night Tom died.”
Before Mr. Sheehy could respond, Pete let out a growl.
“You killed my brother!” he shouted. A year younger than Tom but a head taller than me, Pete’s eyes filled with rage. Suddenly, he lunged at me with his shovel. I stepped to the side, dodging the blade, and hit him once in the head. Pete dropped to the ground and his brother Barry rushed forward. It was only Mr. Sheehy’s bark that stopped him.
“No!” he shouted.
Barry stopped in his tracks. Mr. Sheehy didn’t want to see any more of his boys hurt. Small as I was, he had seen me take on lads much bigger than myself.
“There’ll be no killing here!” the father continued, more to mollify Barry than anything else.
Barry hesitated, his shovel held menacingly close to my face. Three years younger than Pete and four years younger than me, he was my size. I contemplated disarming him, but as close as he was, it was Mr. Sheehy’s pitchfork that had me worried.
“See to your brother,” Mr. Sheehy ordered.
I stared at Barry’s shovel, at the dirty blade that would surely cut me or bash my head given the chance, and then at his dark eyes. After a moment, he cautiously stepped back and, watching me the whole time, nudged Pete with his foot. As Pete struggled to his feet, Mr. Sheehy called over his shoulder to his youngest daughter.
“Colleen,” he ordered. “Go fetch Billy.”
I let out a nervous breath as I considered what to do. Billy lived seven miles away. If Colleen found him, it would take an hour and a half at least before Billy was there.
“Mr. Sheehy, sir,” I pleaded as Colleen ran to the side of the cottage. “The stories you heard about that night are not true.”
“We’ll see what the IRA has to say about that,” he answered as he jabbed at the air between us with his pitchfork. Pete rubbed at his cheek, now swollen red, and glowered at me, contemplating, I was sure, his revenge. While his father and brother watched me warily, he picked up his shovel. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Colleen climb on her bicycle. Legs pumping, her feet furious on the pedals, she disappeared down the lane.
They escorted me to the stables, Pete on one side, his shovel held cautiously, Barry on the other and Mr. Sheehy behind me, prodding me along with the fork. The stable, a small stone building with a thatched roof, was beyond the cottage, past the fowl-house and next to the cow-house. In addition to two horses, a rooster, and a dozen hens, the Sheehys, I remembered, had a cow and several goats. As we stepped through the gate, following the path to the barn, Mr. Sheehy poked me again.
“You can try and make your peace with Billy,” he said unnecessarily, “but the IRA doesn’t have much use for traitors.”
It was something I knew all too well.
___
It was just a year and a half ago, late summer, several months before I fled. We had planned to ambush the shipment to the quarry. Recognizing the risk that gelignite and blasting materials posed to them, the British provided escorts for all such shipments lest they fall into our hands. Commandeering and stealing what we needed was the only way we could arm ourselves. If it wasn’t guns, it was black powder and detonation cord, paraffin and rope, clothes and food, bicycles and boots—whatever it was, if we needed it we took it. For those who were Catholic and sympathetic to our cause, we issued receipts in the hopes that someday, a free Ireland would be able to repay them. For those that weren’t, they received no such commitment, even though the receipts probably weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.
We had lain in wait for most of a day, expecting the convoy between twelve and one, but that hour had come and gone. Our ambush site was a stretch of road with a sharp turn where the convoy would be forced to slow down. Dan, Sean, Liam, and I were positioned behind a wall before the turn; Billy, Padraig, Roddy and Tom were similarly positioned around the bend. The plan was for our group, led by Dan, to let the lead lorry pass. Once they made the turn, Billy’s group would engage them while we engaged the rear lorry. The blasting supplies, normally on a horse-drawn cart, would be caught in the middle. Once we disposed of the British, the gelignite would be ours for the taking.
It was just after five in the evening when we received word from one of our scouts that the convoy had been spotted. This was relayed up the road to Billy’s team. We hunkered down behind the wall, checked our weapons again, and fought the nervousness that always came before battle. Moments later, we heard the sound of the lead lorry. Dan peeked over the wall but even though the noise of the motor continued to grow, he couldn’t see the convoy.
Suddenly, there was the crack of a rifle, and we heard a scream from around the bend. Instantly, we knew that we’d been outflanked. As more gunshots rang out, we scrambled over the wall into the road and ran towards the bend. The lorry, which had been waiting just over the crest of a hill, out of our view, was now racing down the road toward us. Around the bend, we saw the rest of our group scrambling over the wall; all except Roddy. Shouting and waving, Billy directed us across the road, over the wall on the far side where we took up a defensive position. What had been planned as an offensive strike now had us running for our lives.
It was a fierce fight that lasted some thirty minutes. Luckily for us, Billy had grabbed the machine gun from Roddy as he lay dying, slumped over the wall. Between that, our rifles, and the Mills bomb Liam had thrown below the wheels of the lorry, we succeeded in keeping the British at bay. The soldiers from the disabled lorry had scrambled over the wall on the opposite side of the road, where we had been hiding only moments before, using the wall and the overturned truck as a screen.
Luckily no one else was hit, except Padraig, who caught a piece of chipped stone just below his eye. Seeing we were running low on ammunition, Billy ordered a retreat. Half of us ran back across the field and found defensive positions and provided cover fire for the rest. We alternated like that until we had successfully escaped. Only later did we learn that the British had two machine guns, one on the lorry and one in the hands of the flanking party. Fortunately for us, they both had jammed. Had it not been for that, more of us would have joined Roddy, dying before we had a chance to fire our own guns.
We met after the funeral, the seven of us remaining, and it was then that Billy shared with us what we all suspected. The British had known of our plans. Besides three people in brigade headquarters, only five other people knew of our mission, the scout we had positioned on the road leading to the ambush site who was to warn us of the convoy’s approach, another scout who was similarly positioned around the bend who was to warn Billy’s team if anyone approached from that side, and three men who were situated behind both of our teams and who were to protect our rear. The scouts and the men w
ho were providing cover behind us were from a different brigade. We knew them, but the animosity between the brigades had been growing and it was only a rare occasion that we worked together. Had we not been short of men, we wouldn’t have been forced to borrow from their ranks.
Two of the men protecting our rear, we learned later, died in the first volleys of gunfire. The third man, the only one unaccounted for, was a twenty-year-old volunteer named William Conroy.
We found Conroy three days later, hiding in the fowl-house at the farm of a cousin. As soon as he saw us, he broke down and admitted his betrayal. He had been picked up by a British patrol, part of a random roundup designed both to intimidate and to gather information. They threatened his family—a tactic they often used—and Conroy, believing he had no choice, told them of our plans. After the court martial, we led a handcuffed Conroy to a desolate field, and while the rest of the company took up security positions, Liam and I led him sixty paces farther behind a grouping of rocks.
Liam had been assigned the task. We positioned the prisoner so that any bullet that missed or passed through him would not deflect off the rocks back toward us. Conroy slumped forward, weighed down by the weight of his crime and his pending punishment. Liam took up his position, ten paces away. I watched my friend as he raised his arm; he had gone pale and his breaths came rapidly.
“Any last words?” I asked.
Conroy shook his head and let out a sob. Liam’s hand shook, and I could see the tears in his own eyes. A moment later he turned his head away and lowered his arm. Without hesitating, I took the revolver from my friend’s hands and, after a single shot, Conroy slumped back against the rocks. I stepped forward and, as he looked up at me, both fear and pain in his eyes and with blood seeping from his mouth and running down his chin, I shot him once again, this time directly in the heart. I stood over him for a moment, let out a breath, then handed the gun back to Liam. With tears in my own eyes, I knelt by a man I had known for the last two years, one I never would have thought would have done such a thing. I wiped my eyes, took the note from my pocket and pinned it to Conroy’s shirt.
Shot by the IRA, it read. Spies and informers beware.
Neither Liam nor I ever mentioned to the others what had happened.
___
I approached the stable, prodded along by Mr. Sheehy’s pitchfork. When I stepped inside, I was temporarily blinded, my eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. I lunged to the side, hoping the stable hadn’t changed since the days Tom and Liam and I had played together as boys. I blindly grabbed the horseshoe off the peg on the wall—thankful that it was still there—and swung it as Mr. Sheehy stepped inside. With a grunt, he doubled over and dropped to the ground. Pete, as hot tempered as I remembered, rushed in after him. Dropping the horseshoe, I used my fists again, catching him on his other cheek. He stumbled, and I hit him twice more before he collapsed to the ground with a thud. I waited a second for Barry and when he didn’t come, I grabbed the pitchfork and stepped out the door. Seeing me, he hesitated then made a wise decision and turned on his heel and ran.
When I was sure he was gone for good, I stepped back into the stable and checked Pete. He was unconscious but breathing, and I did not want to be around when he woke. Mr. Sheehy was lying on his back, still trying to catch his breath, the horseshoe having caught him just below the ribs.
I knelt beside him, resting my hand on his shoulder. His breath came in labored pants. Hopefully, I thought, I hadn’t broken any ribs, only knocked the air from his lungs. He looked up into my eyes, and I could see the shock in his.
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Eyes filled with pain and still trying to catch his breath, he stared up at me but said nothing.
“I didn’t have to come back,” I continued. “But I did. I owed it to Tom and to you to tell you what really happened that night.”
I never had a chance to explain. I heard shouts outside. How could Billy have made it here so quickly? I wondered. I didn’t wait to find out. Like I had a year before, I scrambled out the cattle door and fled across the fields.
CHAPTER NINE
Like my stepfather, Billy had fought for the British during what later came to be called the Great War. But unlike my stepfather, who had faced the German army’s artillery and their poison gas in the trenches in France, Billy had been sent to fight in Mesopotamia. He never told us what he had seen or what he had done, but when he came back he was a different person from the one we thought we knew. To the IRA, always short on experience and supplies, men like Billy, who ironically had trained and fought side-by-side with those who were now our sworn enemy, were a godsend. When our brigade was formed, Billy was made officer-in-charge of our company.
He had led us through drills and taught us to fight, not the conventional way but as guerrillas, using whatever we could get our hands on. We trained in small arms and rifles and learned the tactics for rural ambush as well as those for use in the city. We learned how to make bombs and grenades using whatever materials we could steal. We trained in sabotage and learned how to cut telegraph wires, block roads, and destroy bridges. Late in the evenings, we were trained in intelligence, signaling, and communications—the tools of warfare we needed to know. We trained with wooden rifles because real ones were hard to come by. We drilled on Sundays and Wednesday evenings, our farms and jobs keeping us busy during the week. What we lacked in experience we made up in discipline and a knowledge that our cause was just.
Our first task was to properly equip ourselves, which meant getting our hands on weapons. Initially, we took shotguns and muzzle-loading weapons from farmers we knew and from those we didn’t. Some of the muzzle-loading weapons were older than the farmers themselves, but any gun, we reasoned, was better than none. These we passed around so all of our men could become familiar with their workings. When we heard about someone who had weapons we needed, we paid them a visit. Our solicitations weren’t always met with cooperation. More than once we had to convince a reluctant farmer that we had a greater need for his gun than he did, and if that didn’t succeed, we took it anyway. The British eventually learned of our plans and began a similar program, confiscating guns before they fell into our hands. The game had begun.
Our first raid was against six Peelers who we knew favored a certain pub in the evenings. One night, we lay in wait and, when they left, long after midnight and with each having had a few pints too many, we sprang. With scarves tied around our faces, only our eyes showing, and armed with two shotguns, we surprised them and forced them into an alley. One of the men, a big fellow who we knew to be their sergeant, kept looking over his shoulder, and I knew what was to come. When the shout came from the street, a distraction he was waiting for, he lunged. Billy sensing what was about to happen was prepared, and clubbed him with his gun. There was a loud, sickening sound, the crack of the wooden butt against his head, and he fell like a sack of potatoes. Seeing their leader slumped on the ground, blood pouring from his head, the other five put up no resistance. Moments later, we made off with their revolvers.
Days later, we had our first taste of reprisals, the Peelers seeking their revenge as much for the humiliation of having their guns taken by a bunch of peasant farmers as anything else. They didn’t know our names yet or where we lived and so began their intimidation program. They sent out patrols to corner and question anyone whose loyalties were suspect. Being Irish, being Catholic and being a farmer or a tradesman was suspicious enough and, to the British soldiers, suspicion equaled guilt. In the beginning, it was rough treatment: the fist, the club, or the butt of a rifle. They took names and addresses, a young private scribbling furiously, while the sergeant demanded answers. Any hesitation was met with violence. Scare tactics was all it was, and most of it was directed at civilians. Nothing more than a few bloodied noses and a few broken bones, but all that changed one Sunday in April.
There was an RIC barracks about ten miles away. The seven constables were commande
d by a sergeant named Murphy who was Irish and Catholic as were many of the Peelers at that time. Unlike other barracks, Murphy’s men generally left us alone, more, we suspected, because Murphy’s loyalties lay with us and not with the Crown. Our intelligence indicated that they had just received a shipment of rifles—Lee-Enfields that were the standard of the British army. While we had no grudge with Murphy or any of his men, we were sorely in need of those rifles.
What seemed a simple plan quickly unraveled. Immediately before our attack, we cut the telegraph wires to prevent the Peelers from calling in reinforcements from surrounding barracks. As an extra measure of caution, we cut trenches in the roads just outside of town. This would delay any reinforcements if word of our attack somehow managed to reach them. Then we set fire to the building and, with our guns trained on the front door, waited for the Peelers to escape out the back at which point we would rush into the blaze and seize whatever we could. A dangerous plan certainly, but necessity drove us to such extremes.
However, rather than abandon their barracks, Murphy and his men put up a fight. Volley after volley of gunfire was exchanged but, strangely enough, no one was hit on either side. After an hour, our ammunition was running low, but by this time the fire had taken hold and the Peelers were finally forced to flee. Murphy continued to surprise us. Instead of retreating, he tried to encircle us, and a new battle broke out on the street. Ten minutes later, Murphy and another Peeler lay dead, but with our ammunition gone and the fire raging, it was us who were forced to retreat.
Although we failed to seize any rifles, we viewed the operation as a victory nonetheless. It was a brazen attack against the British and, with two Peelers dead and a barracks destroyed, it showed them we meant business. To the citizens of Ireland, who had been living for seven hundred years under the British, it demonstrated that even a group of poorly trained peasants could defeat the well-equipped forces of the Crown.