Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

Maxwell did not relish the job. To start with, his wife was about to undergo major surgery. Then he felt he deserved better of petty politicians who seemed bent on humbling him. He had worked wonders, he thought, in Egypt, checking the advance of the Turks. And they loved their ‘Maxaweel’, as they called him, and followed him blindly.

  If Kitchener hadn’t picked him personally, he might have turned this job down. But it was his only chance of getting back east, provided he brought the rebellion to a speedy end with a minimum of casualties to his own boys.

  He knew Dublin, which made his task easier. Fourteen years before, he had been Chief Staff-Officer to the Duke of Connaught, C-in-C in Ireland. A brief posting, thank an Anglo-Saxon God.

  He lit another cigarette from the one in his mouth. He had fought a long, hard campaign against nicotine and been routed. His moustache, teeth, fingers, were yellow, and his eyes were creased perpetually against cigarette smoke. Coughing was almost a full-time occupation and he had to clear his throat whenever he wanted to speak. Still, cigarettes kept him off food. If only they did the same for the drink.

  From the North Wall on, he took in the fact that Sackville Street was burning. Not as bad as it looked a few miles out to sea. Still, bad enough.

  Bullets were flying. His big nose, which had earned him the nickname of Conky, sniffed the most wonderful smell in all the world: cordite, with the added aroma of yeast from the many breweries of this most liquid of cities.

  When he disembarked, three cars whisked him and his staff to his HQ at Kilmainham. Within minutes, they approached the imposing Royal Hospital, temporary billet of over two thousand troops added to the usual hundred or so Irish veterans.

  As they went up the drive towards the famous tower, he felt not the slightest pang of nostalgia. It was not in his nature. Besides, he preferred hot sun to belting rain, and browns to greens.

  As soon as he was settled in his quarters, he had himself briefed by Friend and Lowe. He was appalled at the mess the politicians had landed the Army in. He could hardly believe reports of the Administration allowing para-military parades with rifles, bayonets and live ammunition.

  That the Irish were capable of vile things he did not doubt. His mind went back to 1884 when he was a mere subaltern of twenty-five. In Cairo, it had been his privilege to see General Gordon on his way to meet his destiny in Khartoum. He rememberd those curiously detached eyes and the way he bit on his words like bullets before expelling them. Later, when Lord Wolsely sent Colonel Stewart to rescue Gordon, the entire party was massacred by a Monasir Sheikh. When Wolsely heard, he uttered a lament that Maxwell was never to forget:

  ‘If only Stewart had died in battle instead of being murdered like an Irish landlord by a cowardly sulking reptile such as this country and Ireland produce in large numbers.’

  Maxwell was told he had 12,000 men under his command. He promptly approved Lowe’s strategy of strangling the rebels’ HQ. In fact, the battle was almost over, he saw; this would be a mere mopping up operation, though it might be bloody.

  He confirmed Lowe as head of Dublin Command and, within hours, set his personal stamp upon the campaign.

  Firstly, he had a Proclamation posted throughout the city. He threatened to destroy all buildings within any area occupied by the rebels. Firmness, yes. Threats, intimidation, no question about it. He did not intend shilly-shallying with the bloody Irish. Rebels, that’s what he was dealing with, not soldiers of a so-called Republic.

  Secondly, he ordered a pit to be dug in Arbour Hill Detention Centre, big enough for a hundred corpses. It measured 29 feet by 9 feet. On the edge of the pit was a mound of quicklime. Not one fragment of any so-called patriot’s corpse would remain for veneration.

  He knew just enough of Ireland to realize that the body of an Irish felon constituted a danger to the Empire.

  Dawn came to the GPO after a night of swirling smoke and sounds of walls crashing across the street. An ambulance was picking up an old man stretched out dead on O’Connell Bridge.

  Already, The O’Rahilly had sent spare bombs and grenades from the top floors to a place of safety below. Each night, Fitzgerald had pulled his leg about the battle lasting longer than he anticipated, but now the end was undeniably near.

  With first light, firing recommenced. Two 18-pounders opened up on the GPO but intermittently, suggesting the artillery had still not solved their problems. Machine-gun fire never stopped.

  Connolly insisted on being put on a bed with castors so he could be wheeled to action-stations to encourage the men. Satisfied that they were prepared, he dictated the day’s orders to Winifred Carney who typed them on her battered old typewriter. That done, he tried to read a detective story.

  ‘A book,’ he said, through gritted teeth, ‘plenty of rest and an insurrection all at the same time. Not bad, eh?’

  In Coalisland, Nora Connolly was tired of waiting. She had heard that her sister Ina was just north in Clogher. When she enquired how far it was, she was told, ‘Just a gentle stroll.’

  She would collect Ina and they’d travel to Dublin together.

  Unfortunately, the path to Clogher was empty and mountainy; and there were no signposts.

  Birrell went by car through heavy firing – the first he had ever experienced – to Dublin Castle. Nathan met him with a long, sad handshake and told him the Cabinet had extended martial law throughout the land.

  Birrell sat down and wrote to Asquith. All his work for Ireland had been smashed by ‘a supreme act of criminal folly’. The rising, he said, was little more than a street brawl stirred up by a handful of violent men, Connolly’s socialists and hot-heads from the National University which he himself had fathered on the Irish people.

  ‘Of course, all this shatters me. The Thing that has happened swallows up the things that might have happened had I otherwise acted.’

  He suggested that martial law over all Ireland would only increase antagonism towards the military. But he knew his advice was unlikely to be heeded, especially as his other forecasts had turned out so disastrously wrong.

  Later, Maxwell interviewed him and Wimborne. His Excellency kept muttering, ‘I did my best to convince them but they paid no heed. They knew best.’

  The General judged the one a total incompetent and the other a windbag. He heard them out without listening. Only he, an outsider, a professional soldier, could be objective. At least he could not possibly foul things up as they had done.

  He told them he welcomed their co-operation in clearing Sinn Feiners first out of Dublin, then out of the rest of the country which was presently quiet. Meanwhile troops were infiltrating the warren of streets around the GPO and building barricades.

  ‘I’m going to get them,’ he promised. ‘Every one.’

  Connolly asked his secretary to take another dictation.

  ‘To Soldiers’ was a heady account of the way things were progressing, contrary to all known facts. There were risings in Galway, Wexford, Wicklow, Cork and Kerry. Vague references were thrown in to German allies and the USA straining every nerve to help them.

  ‘For the first time in 700 years the flag of a free Ireland floats triumphantly in Dublin City.

  ‘The British army are afraid to storm any positions held by our forces. The slaughter they suffered in the first few days has totally unnerved them.

  ‘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.’

  His rosy face was aglow and Winifred Carney could hardly see through her tears. She went away to type copies and brought them back for him to sign.

  Connolly asked The O’Rahilly to read it to the men in the foyer, which he did in ringing tones.

  Pearse was more candid than Connolly in his despatch. He admitted that communications with outlying posts had ceased. Enemy snipers were growing more numerous.

  ‘I desire now to pay homage
to the gallantry of the soldiers of Irish freedom who have during the past four days been writing with fire and steel the most glorious chapter in the later history of Ireland.

  ‘If I were to mention the names of individuals, my list would be a long one.’

  He happened to glance at where Connolly was trying to inspire his men from his bed, and his heart missed a beat.

  ‘I will name only that of Commandant-General James Connolly, commanding the Dublin Division. He lies wounded but is still the guiding brain of our resistance.

  ‘I am satisfied that we should have accomplished the task of enthroning, as well as proclaiming the Irish Republic as a Sovereign State, had our arrangements for a simultaneous rising of the whole country, with a combined plan as sound as the Dublin plan has proved to be, been allowed to go through on Easter Sunday.’

  He paused, pondering on what might have been. If only MacNeill.… He wanted to be fair to the man who had fostered the Volunteer movement and who would be needed in the years ahead. Besides, the loss of German arms on which the rebellion in the provinces had depended was not MacNeill’s fault.

  ‘Of the fatal countermanding order which prevented these plans being carried out, I shall not speak further. Both Eoin MacNeill and we have acted in the best interests of Ireland.

  ‘For my part, as to anything I have done in this, I am not afraid to face the judgement of God, or the judgement of posterity.’

  In Lower Abbey Street, Mr Whelan and his slight, handsome, sixteen-year-old son Christy, looked from afar at their place of work, Eason’s in O’Connell Street. They saw all its windows were gone and a flag was flying over the GPO. It was impossible to go on. Bullets were flying and soldiers were urging everyone to keep off the streets.

  Back home at Drumcondra, Christy told his stepmother he was tired. None of them had slept much since Monday.

  ‘Go to bed, my dear,’ she said.

  After reading for a while, he went to sleep with his right hand outside the sheet. He awoke screaming in pain. His mother rushed in to find a bullet had gone through his wrist. She closed the window and bandaged his wound.

  Hearing soldiers outside, his father picked him up and carried him for safety to his own bedroom. He had no sooner laid him on the bed than he felt a bullet graze his cheek. Others followed, hitting Christy several times in the head.

  His father, with blood streaming down his cheek, went across to his only son and tenderly picked him up. ‘Christy,’ he moaned. ‘Christy.’

  Soldiers burst into the house through doors and windows. They grabbed the still warm lad and tossed him on the floor. Pinioning the father’s arms, they took him to nearby Mountjoy Jail.

  Indicating the boy, an irate NCO said to Mrs Whelan, ‘That’s what happens, missis, to bleedin’ snipers.’

  In mid-morning, the two 18-pounders intensified their bombardment of the GPO. The first incendiary shell landed on the roof about noon, but did little damage.

  The O’Rahilly, still concerned for the prisoners, fed them and removed them to the cellar.

  ‘I give you my word,’ he told them, ‘you will get out of here with your lives.’

  The snipers on the roof were under fire from the Gresham Hotel and several had been hit by shrapnel. The men in outposts which they could no longer hold were retreating to Headquarters.

  Pearse and Connolly decided that, apart from a few Red Cross nurses, the twenty girls had to leave.

  When they were assembled, Pearse told them:

  ‘When the history of this week is written, the highest honours will be paid you. You have taken part in the greatest armed attempt at liberating Ireland since 1798. You obeyed the order to come here. Now I ask you to obey a more difficult order.…’

  ‘No, sir,’ the girls cried.

  One said, ‘What was all that stuff about equality?’

  Pearse held up his hand for silence. ‘I am not asking you but telling you to leave. It won’t be easy. Some of you may be shot. But you showed your readiness for that when you came here. Now go, and God go with you.’

  McDermott went up to Pearse and hissed, ‘It’s a mistake, man. You might be sending them to their deaths.’

  Fitzgerald’s voice rose above the girls’ objections. ‘You heard the order,’ and Pearse, firm-lipped, confirmed it.

  They finally agreed, believing they might be in the way if the men had to leave the GPO in a hurry.

  Winifred Carney told Connolly that she was staying whatever happened.

  He grinned. ‘You surprise me.’

  With one of them waving aloft a Red Cross flag, the girls left. Everyone remaining, including Julia Grenan and Elizabeth More O’Farrell, held their breath until the firing in the street ceased.

  ‘Now,’ Fitzgerald said to Louise Gavan Duffy, ‘we shall serve a chicken lunch.’

  One of the men turned sharply from the window, where he had just brought down a British sniper.

  ‘Chicken?’ He was horrified. ‘But ’tis Friday.’

  When it was served in the messroom, no one would eat it.

  ‘Wait’ll we see what Father does,’ whispered young Tommy Murphy.

  There was a solemn silence as he put a plate of chicken before Fr O’Flanagan. The priest eyed it keenly for a moment, before spearing a piece with his fork and putting it into his mouth.

  There was a tremendous cheer and all the men began to eat.

  Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington’s two sisters, Mrs Kettle and Mrs Culpane, went to Portobello Barracks to ask about Skeffy. The Captain of the Guard had them arrested on a charge of talking to Sinn Feiners, meaning Hanna and Skeffy.

  When Colthurst heard, he conducted a mock trial to scare them.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ he said. ‘In this Barracks, we have never had anything to do with that traitor, Skeffington. This time, I’ll be lenient. The sooner you two bitches get out, the better for you. And not one word till you’re outside.’

  Their visit, nonetheless, had disturbed him. Something had to be done about this business before it got out of hand.

  By 4 in the afternoon, the fire had spread north up O’Connell Street from the Liffey as far as the Tramway Company Offices in Cathedral Street. Behind, all the houses were burning.

  On the GPO side, the Metropole was now in flames, as was Middle Abbey Street, including the Freeman’s Journal, the offices of the Evening Telegraph and Eason’s.

  Howitzers in the Rotunda were finally getting the range of the Post Office. The first incendiary to cause alarm half-penetrated the roof above the portico. Some of the men threw their rifles aside and grabbed extinguishers. Others, kneeling to avoid being shot, formed a chain to provide buckets of water.

  More and more incendiary shells rained on the building causing fires everywhere. Hoses were hauled up to the roof but most were old and rotten and some had been pierced by bullets. The top floor and the roof flooded and the sheer weight of water threatened their collapse.

  Captain Michael O’Reilly edged his way along the steel struts of the glass dome to direct a hose on to the fire, but water only seemed to feed the flames.

  Pearse went up on the roof and twice a bullet missed his head by inches. With him and Plunkett screaming orders ineffectually, The O’Rahilly took over. His main concern was to keep flames away from the ventilation shaft. If he failed, the whoosh of air would drive the fire down the centre of the building to the cellars where explosives were stored.

  In the lobby, marksmen, kneeling in a black ooze of water, still manned the windows with plaster from the ceiling falling on their heads. From his bed, Connolly shouted that the British were at last about to make their frontal assault.

  McDermott and Clarke helped organize the hoses as men slithered around in the filth.

  Jim Ryan and Father O’Flanagan were attending the wounded.

  The women who had stayed were told to take refuge in the crypt or at the back of the building in a ferro-concrete room.

  The O’Rahilly soon saw it was pointless fighting t
he fire from above. When he and Michael Collins had cleared the roof and top storey, they made the floors as safe as possible by putting sand at the edges and cracks in the doors and then hosing them down.

  In the lobby, The O’Rahilly found total confusion. It took all his voice and moral strength to make the men see that the shaft was more important than any of the small fires that kept breaking out. All hoses were directed up the shaft.

  By six thirty, it was plain that the GPO was doomed. Fire had taken a grip in the lift shaft and the draught of its rampant flames sounded like a tornado as it whistled down into the heart of the building.

  Still the incendiary shells kept coming.

  The O’Rahilly and Liam Cullen had spent time at the rear under the glass roof, playing large hoses. Others had used smaller hoses or formed chains with buckets of water. At best, this was a holding operation.

  The O’Rahilly, with frizzled hair and scorched eyebrows, interrupted his work to confer with the other leaders around Connolly’s bed in the hall. All their faces were black as coal miners’. The ceiling was smouldering and fiery fragments kept falling off. Pillars groaned and threatened to collapse.

  Short of raising the white flag, which Clarke and McDermott would not hear of, their only chance was to break out. At this ludicrously late hour, men were sent down to the sewers to look for a way out. They returned, fetid and filthy, shaking their heads. They would have to leave by the street.

  But where to head for?

  On Great Britain Street there was a soap and sweet factory built like a fortress called Williams and Wood. To reach it, though, they would have to break through the British barricades at the end of Moore Street.

  The O’Rahilly said, almost casually, ‘Let me know when you want to start and I’ll lead the first wave out of here,’ and went back to fighting the fire.

  With sparks flying down the ventilation shaft, the ammunition in the cellar was no longer safe. It had to be brought up and put in the concrete room at the back.

  The O’Rahilly asked for twenty volunteers. Under Dermot Lynch, they manhandled the explosives up narrow winding steps lit by naked candles. Sean MacLoughlain had just picked up an armful of bombs when The O’Rahilly lost momentary control of the hose and the youngster was hit full in the chest. Fortunately, he fell on his back, cushioning the explosives on his chest.