England Expects (Empires Lost)

by Jackson, Charles S.

  “Sure it’ll be a pleasure, sir,” Kransky replied, deciding this time to show at least some deference to rank, now the Australian had passed his unofficial ‘test’. He could assess a lot in the first few seconds of meeting a person, and he could already see the man had a few problems judging by the condition of – and look in – his eyes (not to mention the whiff of alcohol on his breath at close range). Thorne also appeared to be under a lot more pressure than he was probably used to, but the man also gave every indication of being a straight-up kind of guy. On the face of it, he certainly seemed unlikely to be a hard-ass as far as regulations were concerned, and those were the types of men Kransky liked working with: men who cared about what was important rather than the pointless minutiae that many ranking military officers seemed preoccupied with. “Sure it’ll be a real pleasure,” he repeated, and actually meant it.

  Curragh Internment Camp

  County Kildare, Ireland

  Wednesday

  July 17, 1940

  Cold wooden barracks, damp earth, icy winds and barbed wire: if ever a single, short sentence could describe the Curragh Internment Camp, that would’ve been close in Eoin Kelly’s informed opinion. He was certainly in an excellent position to pass judgement, having been held now for six months, and Kelly had to admit there were tougher prisons on the face of it – Portlaoise, Arbour Hill or Mountjoy in Dublin, to name a few – but the worst part of the Curragh wasn’t necessarily the conditions.

  Kelly was a man in his mid-forties, of barely average height and sporting a shock of unruly red hair that refused to turn grey. His face was generally nondescript, other than a completely winning smile that perfectly complemented his affable and slightly roguish nature. His personality and powers of persuasion had been of great use to him both personally and professionally over the years, although ultimately even he had to admit they hadn’t been sufficient to prevent him ending up at The Curragh.

  Special Branch’s Broy Harriers had picked Kelly up on a frosty afternoon in December of 1936 as he walked along Dublin’s Cloniffe Road, minding his own business. At the time, he’d been working under Seán O’Brien, the newly-appointed Intelligence Officer for the Irish Republican Army Council, and had been sought by the Special Branch for some time as a result of his activities within the IRA. Although there’d been no real offence for which he could be officially charged, that was a minor detail that mattered little to the Special Branch of the day when dealing with the Republican Army. His apprehension alone had provided them with an appropriate charge in any case: illegal possession of a handgun.

  He’d been carrying an old Webley .450 revolver in his jacket pocket at the time of his arrest, and he was subsequently charged and found guilty under the 1925 Firearms Act. Kelly was sentenced to three years at Mountjoy in Dublin, and although the conditions were bad enough, there was again far worse to be found elsewhere. Stories of some prisoners’ treatment at Portlaoise Prison in County Laoighis, for example, were sobering indeed – men kept in solitary confinement for years on end, forbidden to speak and with no contact at all with the outside world. It was rumoured the guards even wore rubber-soled boots so as not to break the total silence in which the incarcerated men were kept… by comparison, Mountjoy didn’t seem so bad at all.

  Kelly had made sure he kept his nose clean in prison, and had served his time staying out of any trouble. Not surprisingly however, his good behaviour had nevertheless had counted for little in securing his actual release. His immediate transfer to The Curragh following the completion of his sentence hadn’t been any real shock, as the practice was common at the time under Eamonn de Valera’s Fianna Fáil Government. Nevertheless, it was still a cruel blow to a man’s spirit, and some of the men interned there had been detained indefinitely, without any formal sentence or charge, supposedly held and at the Irish Government’s leisure due to an ongoing ‘state of emergency’. The authorities knew how highly-placed Kelly had been within the Army Council, and that made it unlikely he’d be walking free any time soon.

  Kelly had spent most of that morning and afternoon so far doing exactly what he’d done most days since his internment at ‘Tintown’… nothing. The concentration camp had been expanded in a rush amid an unexpectedly huge influx of political detainees, brought on by the Emergency Powers Act of January 4, and the overloaded facilities were sparse and primitive to the point of almost non-existence. Most men there spent their days aimlessly wandering about or talking, and most tried to stay out of trouble: the threat of a visit to the ‘Glasshouse’, where troublesome internees were taken to have the error of their ways ‘explained’, was incentive enough to keep most on the ‘straight and narrow’.

  “Thought you’d be at one o’ the lectures, Eoin,” Tomás Glynn observed beside him, the usual hint of mischief in his light voice. “Difficult to decide which one to choose: Martin teaching Gaelic, or German with Seamus – German should come in handy, all right! Or, we could sit about and watch our two brilliant commanding officers argue as usual.” While Kelly was thin and wiry, Glynn was somewhat taller, five years younger, and somehow managed to remain moderately overweight despite the poor standard and amounts of food with which they were provided at the camp. Like many there at the Curragh, Glynn had ostensibly been sentenced by Military Tribunal for simply ‘refusing to answer questions’, but that in itself meant little – it was unlikely any of the men there would see freedom again until the government decided that the current ‘emergency’ had subsided.

  “Oh yes, that sounds far too hard to pass up, doesn’t it now!” Kelly shot back with even sarcasm. “I already speak Gaelic, as I’m sure you’ll notice, and I’m sure I don’t need to watch Mulligan and Grogan in their daily pissin’ contests either!” He gave a snort of derision. “I wouldn’t be thinkin’ there was much use in learning German either, if I was you – they’ve not proven to be much use to The Cause so far!”

  “They’d be mad not to help us – when the British Empire’s done with, it’ll give them some friends in the Republic.”

  “‘The Republic’…?” Kelly’s tone wasn’t as confident as he’d have liked. “I’d not be so damned confident that the English will fold up so easily, or that the Republic will follow as a matter o’ course either,” he snorted angrily. “The Germans have been next to bloody useless so far, anyway – two of their agents picked up within days of getting’ here, and the new fella hasn’t had much luck so far either, other than stayin’ one step ahead of the Garda.” He shook his head, frustrated by life, and the times in general. “It’s not like the old days, Tomás: even if the Germans do get their act straight… would they want to help us?”

  “What’re y’ talkin’ about, Eoin?” The man was genuinely stumped by Kelly’s statement as they stood in the lee of a barracks wall, sheltering from the wind.

  “Doin’ bank raids now…! For the love of God, Tomás, I know the money from America’s dried up because of the war, but we never had to stoop that low when I joined The Cause. Things have been goin’ straight to shite since the raid on the Magazine Fort, man! They’ve been rolling us up all over the country, and we’ve been losing supply dumps from here to Tralee and back to the point where the Council thinks they’ve got back more ammo from us than we actually took at the Fort! There’s more of us in Mountjoy and Portlaoise, and here at the Curragh now, than there are out on the streets just about, and they pick more of us up every bloody day!” Kelly suddenly felt very tired – tired in spirit as much as he was physically. He leaned across, placing a steadying hand against the side of the barracks wall as his other hand rubbed nervously across his own forehead. “Twomey and Killeen and so many others stuck behind bars, while the Councils fight with each other instead of the real enemies! Seriously, man… even if the Germans do find some money or arms to spare, d’you really think we’re going to impress them enough to help us as it stands at the moment?”

  “Give ‘em time, Eoin… and give us time too! Surely they’ll find something to spare for us t
o help with knocking off the British.”

  “It’s a lovely dream, Tomás, but I’d be much happier if there was something to suggest it’ll ever be anything more than that,” Kelly observed pointedly, some of his strength returning as he spied a common enemy in the distance. He nodded in the direction of the main gates, where a pair of Austin sedans had pulled up a hundred metres away. The ramshackle lines of wooden barracks surrounded by lines of barbed wire and not much else provided little to keep the mind interested, and any out of the ordinary event tended to attract the attention of everyone within range.

  “Looks like we’ve some visitors,” Glynn agreed as everyone nearby stopped to stare. They looked on as two of the men in the lead sedan climbed out and walked up to the gates, and even from that distance, Kelly recognised one of them.

  “Harriers,” he observed, meaning Ireland’s Special Branch officers. “Wonder who they’ve come to see.” He didn’t add that the man he’d recognised, Jim Crofton, was one of the Republicans’ own men ‘on the inside’. That was information he’d picked up while working under Seán O’Brien, and it was something that precious few were aware of. He certainly wasn’t going to start spreading it about within the camp – never telling when an informant might be listening, after all.

  “Probably comin’ for you, Eoin – Military Tribunal will be goin’ to charge you again over that ugly bloody face o’ yours.”

  That remark actually got a genuine chuckle out of Kelly. “If that were the case, they’d be turnin’ up in lorries and takin’ half the bloody camp away, y’ great idiot!” The word came out sounding like ‘ee-jit’ – one of the few words Kelly spoke in English that showed more than the usually faint Northern Irish accent he had picked up from his mother’s side of the family. “There’d be bigger fish than me here for those fuckers to fry…”

  Hours later, as he sat bound hand and foot in the rear of one of those same sedans, squeezed in tightly between two revolver-armed Special Branch officers, Eoin Kelly would curse those ‘famous last words’ he’d spoken to Glynn. None of the detectives would speak to him at all other than out of necessity, let alone explain where he was being taken or why. Although he was being taken alive, that was as much as could be said judging by the thorough beating he’d received from the guards at the Glasshouse before he’d been handed over: they obviously cared little for what condition he’d be in when he finally arrived at his mystery destination.

  His sides and legs ached painfully where he’d been hit by their batons, and blood oozed faintly from a cut over his right eye – a cut he’d apparently collected, according to the guards at least, while ‘falling down’… several times. Crofton, in the front passenger seat of the car, hardly gave him a second look, and he was fine with that. He couldn’t expect the man to make any great effort to look into his welfare: that’d raise too much suspicion as to the man’s motives. Broy’s Harriers weren’t known for their interest in the welfare of their prisoners.

  It was evening by the time they drove through the gates of Dublin Castle, and Kelly was no more aware of what was going on than he’d been as they’d left The Curragh. It was a cool, misty evening, and the dampness in the air added to the generally unpleasant atmosphere as the structure’s dark walls towered above them.

  To Kelly’s surprise, an RAF officer and four British soldiers armed with Thompson submachine guns stood alongside a 15cwt truck in the middle of that courtyard, and the sight caused his stomach to churn suddenly with fear of the unknown. Although he had no idea as to what was specifically going on as he was dragged from the car, it was obvious from their stares they were waiting for him, and the involvement of the British wasn’t a good sign at all. Kelly had been involved in the 1916 Easter Uprising and numerous other events throughout his younger years that he was sure they’d be most interested in… the presence of those soldiers and the officer could be in regard to any number of incidents, and he was certain their presence wasn’t by chance.

  Crofton and another of the Special Branch men engaged in a short conversation with the RAF officer, all reaching an agreement of some sort as Kelly gave the man a long, hard once over from a distance of just a dozen metres or so. He was about the same age as Kelly and of greater than average height, and although the IRA volunteer wasn’t sure of the man’s exact rank, he could tell it was quite high. The uniform itself seemed quite new, and the number of colour ribbons on the man’s chest (the ‘fruit salad’, as the military called it) seemed to be smaller than one might expect from a man who held such high rank. The officer caught his gaze and matched it with an expression that was emotionless and unfathomable… something that left Kelly feeling more than a little uneasy.

  The expressions on the faces of the two corporals that moved toward him however were easily identifiable, and he instinctively braced himself as they drew near. The first of the two drove the butt of his Thompson into Kelly’s stomach, not actually hurting as much as it might’ve, but driving the wind from him all the same.

  “Come on, you Fenian bastard!” One of them growled as they grabbed him roughly and started to drag him toward the truck, still bound hand and foot,.

  “Corporal…!” The shout stopped all of them in their tracks, and attracted the attention of every man in the courtyard. The officer was beside them in an instant, and the expression on his face was suddenly a long way from fathomless – anger was now clearly at the forefront. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, striking that man?”

  The question left both soldiers, who’d instantly snapped to attention, completely stymied. The man was Irish, after all, and a member of the Republican Army as well – in their minds, they could see no possible reason why they wouldn’t strike him. The reaction also left Kelly uncharacteristically speechless – having officers of the British Empire take his side against their own was something he’d certainly never before experienced, even if the man was, upon hearing him speak for the first time, quite obviously Australian rather than English.

  “B-but sir… he’s Irish…” while seemingly all that needed to be said in the mind of the corporal who’d struck the blow, that tentative answer was possibly the worst possible thing he could’ve said.

  “And that alone makes it all right, does it, corporal?” Max Thorne snarled, deliberately emphasising the man’s lower rank. Thorne had grown up in a society predominantly based on the presumption that human beings weren’t categorised purely along lines of race, religion, sex or political leaning (in high theory at least, if not always in practice). Added to that was the fact he’d grown up and served in the military in an Australia of the late 20th Century: an island continent isolated and far removed from most of the dangers of terrorism, racial and religious schisms, social unrests and general levels of violence that were considered far more commonplace in much of the rest of the world.

  That the man was Irish in itself meant nothing at all to him, and he’d grown up far enough away from the ‘Irish Problem’ of his own time to be able to put aside his own personal beliefs somewhat and recognise that whether Kelly was a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’ depended as much on perspective as fact. Either way, Thorne had a pathological disgust of those who took advantage of others unable to defend themselves.

  “Because he’s Irish, corporal… is that right?” The NCO sensibly held his tongue this time. “And what does that say about your opinion of me, then? I’m just a ‘bloody colonial’ after all!” There was acid in his tone now as he leaned right in close to the man’s face, the volume of his voice quite loud. “I’m not going to bother you with the moral arguments, corporal – I doubt you’d have the slightest chance of understanding them – but let me make myself crystal clear: if this man makes any legitimate attempt to escape, or to attack you in any way, you’re well within your rights to use whatever force necessary to restrain him or protect yourself. Other than that, you will keep your hands off him! Is that understood?” The soldiers could only nod in affirmation – Thorne had indeed made himself
crystal clear. “Excellent…!” The word was laced with heavy sarcasm. “Now get Mister Kelly into the back of that truck and get us down to the docks now – we’ve a boat to catch that won’t wait much longer!”

  The pair had no problem at all in moving an absolutely speechless Eoin Kelly into the back of the waiting truck in record time.

  The boat waiting for them was HMS Arabis, a Royal Navy Flower-class corvette, and the group were heading out of the harbour and turning north-east into Dublin Bay and the Irish Sea within minutes of stepping aboard at the Dublin docks. As cold as it’d been in The Curragh or in Dublin – in spite of it nominally being summer – it was freezing out there upon open water as the choppy, black surface stretched out unbroken around them under the darkening sky of late evening.

  Two of the soldiers remained with Thorne as he and Kelly sat on the corvette’s afterdeck, the central part of the decking taken up by an armoured mount sporting a pair of 20mm Oerlikon cannon surrounded by depth charges, supplies and other equipment. The naval rating manning the guns was alert despite the onset of night – there were no guarantees of safety after nightfall these days, particularly in light of the Luftwaffe’s marked aerial superiority.

  Sitting beside Kelly, Thorne had donned a warm black parka with a multitude of pockets and had directed that a thick woollen pea coat be draped about the Irishman’s shoulders as the two guards stood off a few metres, nevertheless remaining alert.