Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  Her gaze strayed to the crucifix above the door, but even three decades of the rosary failed to erase the picture which haunted her. The body of a girl, no more than eighteen - her head shaved, tarred and feathered, then killed. Finola had known her, they had almost been friends. There had been no harm in her, just a young girl out for a bit of fun, who saw no harm in going out with a British soldier. Now she was dead and Finola's heart ached at the memory of her.

  She had lost Pat to Mick Collins, that was the truth. But if so, she only partly resented it. She did not dislike Mick - how could she dislike anyone with his charm. She was no different to the rest of them, ready to agree to anything after an hour in his company. She had been proud at first, proud that Pat was one of Mick's most trusted men, proud when Mick asked Pat's advice ... but the killings had sickened her. Black and Tans were one thing, but the killing of Irishmen and women was something else again. Killed on suspicion of being British informers.

  A sudden stab of pain emptied her mind. She clutched herself and cried out - and was writhing on the bed when Brigid arrived, complete with Dary and Cooey, her two eldest.

  One look took Brigid to the bed. She placed a hand on her sister's brow, while casting a quick look around the room. Then she despatched the children down to the street to fill the water buckets.

  "And where's himself at a time like this?" Brigid wanted to know.

  Finola sighed with relief as the pain subsided, but a few seconds passed before she had strength to answer. Even then her voice was weak, "Sure won't he be working for Ireland somewhere. With Mick Collins like enough, or waiting -"

  "It's my place he should have been, fetching me an hour ago. I suppose he was working for Ireland when he got you in this state, was he?"

  Finola raised a faint smile, "Sure doesn't he think it's a week away. Would you want him under your feet -"

  Brigid's snort could have meant anything.

  "It's my seventh time," Finola said weakly.

  "And don't you forget it. The seventh is the lucky one and everyone knows it. Sure won't you soon be nursing the strongest baby boy you ever set eyes on."

  "Did you know Pat was the seventh too?"

  "I did not," Brigid said with a surprised smile. "The seventh son of a seventh son! Did you think of that? Sure won't he be the king of all Ireland one day -" Words died in her throat as another contraction made Finola writhe on the bed. Brigid moved quickly to provide what comfort she could. Finola's clutching fingers clamped tight to her hand. Yet how tight was tight? Every ounce of Finola's strength was in that grip, but Brigid knew she could shake free if she wanted. If Finola was as weak as that now ... Brigid shied away from the thought. She waited until the spasm was over, then drew a chair up to the bed. "It'll be a long night by the look of you," she sighed, rummaging in her basket, "and you'll be needing some comfort before it's over." She withdrew the bottle of Cork Gin from her bag with a flourish.

  Finola looked greedily at the full bottle. She drank little as a rule, no more than a glass of stout with Pat on high days and holidays. But if it helped ease this terrible pain...

  A few of them were singing The Soldier's Song in Mulligan's Bar, but they were off in a corner. The other men clustered around Pat, trying to persuade him to continue. Men under the spell of a shanachie no more left a tale unfinished than gave up drink for Lent.

  But Pat was in two minds. He had given his word to wait for a message from his man, but that was hours ago. It should have been delivered by now. He glanced at the clock and felt a sudden uneasiness, as if something were wrong. But that was absurd ... for anything to be wrong today, today of all days ... with the British leaving Dublin Castle at last. Yet as he stared at the clock a nagging worry gnawed at his mind.

  "Tell us about prison," someone pleaded.

  "What's that?" Pat asked absently.

  "When you were in Mountjoy. After the Rising."

  Pat looked hard, as if seeing the questioner for the first time. A young man, no more than eighteen. He looked at the others. His cousin Eamon was his own age, thirty-six, whereas old Flynn the fiddler was the far side of sixty and O'Rourke was nearly as old. But the rest were younger - young men, little more than boys. Dear God, that's all they'd have been in 1916 - just boys.

  Pat resigned himself to telling the tale. Maybe it was for the best. If he had to wait, talking would stop him worrying - a man can't fret for the morning when recalling last night - and it seemed like last night.

  The British turned Dublin upside down after the Rising - searched the city from end to end, street after street, a house at a time. Three thousand people were carted off to jail - some were sent over the water to a special internment camp in Wales - but Pat and Eamon were incarcerated in Dublin, and were still there when the British Prime Minister came to inspect the jail four weeks later.

  "Not that High and Mighty Mr Asquith stayed long," Pat remembered with a grin, "but you could see he was worried sick. He had a face like yesterday's rhubarb."

  Pat and Eamon were soon released, and by Christmas Michael Collins was home from Wales with the rest of the boys. Mick really went to work then, not that he had been idle in the internment camp, picking his men and explaining what he wanted when they got back to Ireland. Even so, 1917 progressed quietly - Dev got out of Dartmoor in time to win the East Clare By-election for Sinn Fein, the new Republican Party, in June - and then, in September, Thomas Ashe died.

  Thomas had been in the Rising, alongside Pat and Eamon. He was released at the end of serving his time, but was re-arrested in August for giving "a speech calculated to cause disaffection". Well, most people thought it was a ridiculous charge and on Thursday 20 September Ashe went on hunger strike. Four days later, after being forcibly fed by the British, Ashe died in the Mater Hospital.

  Collins organised a funeral fit for a saint. Nine thousand Volunteers escorted the coffin through the streets. Down the Dublin Quays went the cortege, and up O'Connell Street packed out with crowds. Fianna Boy Scouts sounded the Last Post at the Glasnevin Cemetery, then the armed escort fired volleys into the air. There was no oration at the graveside. Collins wouldn't allow it. After the volley he simply announced, "Nothing additional needs to be said. That volley is the only proper speech to make over the grave of a dead Fenian."

  The whole country wept. Sean O'Casey wrote a ballad, and the hymn which Thomas Ashe himself composed was sung all over the place, not just in church but in pubs and on street corners. People flocked to join Sinn Fein, yet while all this was happening thousands of Irishmen were in Flanders, fighting the Great War for the British. Of course they had volunteered, but when Lloyd George wanted to conscript Irishmen in 1918... well that was different. Even the church spoke out against it, and at the General Election in December Sinn Fein swept the south like fire through tinder. Seventy-three seats they won to the Westminster Parliament. Not that the newly elected members could go because half were locked up in British jails for speeches "calculated to cause disaffection". So those who were free boycotted Westminster and set up their own parliament in Dublin. The Dail they called it, and Dev was elected President.

  The British really saw red. The Dail was declared illegal and twenty thousand people were arrested in the first six months of 1919. Cabinet ministers went on the run and conducted their business from hole-in-the-corner offices all over Dublin. British detectives from G Division started lifting Republicans faster than a dog picking up fleas - at least they did until Mick Collins put his Squad to work. Pat Connors was in the Squad. They shot three detectives dead before Christmas. Then the British brought a top man down from Belfast, Detective Inspector Redmond but the Squad took care of him in January. After that dozens of men resigned from the Royal Irish Constabulary for fear of the Squad - so the British recruited the Black and Tans.

  They were butchers. Whole lorryloads would roar into a village. Out they would jump, firing shots in the air and ordering men and women from their homes, lining them up against a wall, young and old, the
sick included - to be questioned and searched. No raid ever ended without a dozen people being beaten senseless with rifle butts - and more often than not the Tans set fire to the village as they left, as a "final warning".

  In Mulligan's Bar Pat Connors paused to sip from his jar. Men around him remained predictably silent. Even the youngest remembered the Black and Tans. Everyone knew of villages and towns burned to the ground - Balbriggan, Lahich, Meath, Mallow ... and Cork of course ... the Black and Tans went berserk in Cork. And with the burnings came the killings, all over Ireland.

  By autumn 1920 Dublin was an armed citadel, shut down at night under curfew. Civilians were not allowed out from eight in the evening until five the next morning. All night long tanks and armoured cars careened through the streets. Citizens were pulled from their beds and taken off to suffer God knows what torture at the local barracks.

  Ireland groaned under the lash. Ireland wept. Ireland prayed - and might have succumbed but for the will of one man. It seemed at times that only Mick Collins stood between the British and total subjugation. And Collins was enough.

  Pat remembered the shop in Abbey Street. "We turned it into a painters and decorators. George Moreland's we called it, because it sounded Jewish and Protestant at the same time. We acted the part too - all dressed up in overalls, pretending to be busy with paint pots and things."

  Abbey Street was but a minute from Dublin Castle, so it was easy enough to nip out for a gun battle with the G men and be back in overalls in no time. Daily ambushes took place all over the city. Collins took risks which made Pat's hair stand on end. Every man in the Squad worried about Collins. The military were offering ten thousand pounds for him, dead or alive, but still he cycled around the city like a village postman without a care in the world. First he was at Moreland's organising the Squad, then off to another fake business. To the Irish he became a living legend - to the British the devil incarnate. The British wanted Collins killed off, and the sooner the better. So a group of army officers met in Cairo to plan the destruction of Collins and all that he stood for - and in October the Cairo Gang arrived in Dublin.

  They drifted into the city in ones and twos - and by the end of the week had taken up lodgings all over the city. Then they went to work, always at night, emerging like vampires when curfew fell. Dressed in civilian clothes they swooped everywhere, dragging suspects from their beds and carrying them off to bare barrack rooms for interrogation. One by one those associated with Collins were identified. It was time for the killings to begin.

  Men with English accents burst into a room at the Exchange Hotel in Parliament Street. There they murdered John Lynch, a Kilmallock businessman. It was a mistake. The Cairo Gang sought Liam Lynch, the leader of the West Cork Brigade of the IRA. Liam escaped and raised the alarm.

  Collins struck back. His spies reached everywhere, even into the Castle itself. By 21 November he was ready. At first light that morning men from the Squad fanned through Dublin. Some went to Mount Street. Two men lodged at No. 38, a Lieutenant Aimes and a Lieutenant Bennett. Both were serving officers in the British Army - yet neither was attached to a regiment stationed in Dublin. They had no obvious duties, no apparent reason to be in Ireland at all. Both were secret members of the Cairo Gang ... and at nine that morning they were dragged from their beds and shot dead.

  Simultaneously a visit was paid to a house at 119 Lower Baggot Street where lodged a certain Captain Baggelley, the very same man who had murdered John Lynch. At precisely nine o'clock he too was pulled from his bed and shot. The same fate befell his best friend, Captain Newbury, a few doors away at No. 92 Lower Baggot Street.

  Elsewhere, on their way back from mass, a dozen young men walked briskly to No. 28 Pembroke Street. A maid answered the door. The men pushed past. They consulted their watches. "It's to be done at nine o'clock," Collins had told them. And at nine it was done - with a vengeance. Some of the Cairo Gang refused to come out of their rooms. Others were shot as they opened their doors. Two agents were killed on the landing, already running with blood.

  Visits were made right across Dublin. Some of the Cairo Gang were staying at the Gresham Hotel - they were shot too, some in front of their wives.

  The game was up for the Cairo Gang. Anxious men could be seen leaving their lodgings all over Dublin - hurrying towards the Castle with their baggage. Mick Collins had drawn blood. But the day had just started. When news of the morning's events spread, the Black and Tans took to the streets intent on revenge ... and they took it in full that afternoon.

  A football match was being played at Croke Park. The army was searching the crowd for arms - and the Black and Tans joined in. Half an hour later they mounted a machine-gun and opened fire into the crowd. People panicked and ran onto the field. The firing continued. An old man was sawn in half. A young boy fell screaming. Dead and wounded were all over the pitch. Finally the army intervened and a handful of brave British soldiers drove the Black and Tans back to prevent a massacre. As it was twelve people were killed and seventy badly injured. Ireland had suffered its first Bloody Sunday of the twentieth century.

  In the cramped room on Ammet Street Brigid O'Hara was out of her depth. Faced with a breech birth and a haemorrhaging patient, she sent Dary racing for a doctor. Meanwhile she did all she could - while Finola uttered piercing cries and garbled prayers. She called for Pat again and again as her back arched and her legs splayed wide on the blood-soaked sheet. Brigid bent over her, wiping sweat from the tear-stained face until Finola's wild thrashing subsided. Now her limbs jerked with each successive convulsion as if pulled by unseen strings ... but her strength faded as the blood seeped out of her.

  Cooey, aged seven, sat in the corner, hands clamped over her ears, eyes clenched shut in her frightened face, wishing for the hundredth time she had gone with Dary to find a doctor. She had wanted to go, pleaded ... but her mother had refused - "Sure now, Cooey, you stay where you are - I'll maybe have a need for you later." Need me for what, Cooey asked herself, not daring to question, not wanting to know, not wanting to hear the screams from the bed ... just wanting to be gone from this room.

  The group in the corner of Mulligan's Bar was giving out with rebel songs, while at the counter Pat continued his story.

  Bloody Sunday set a torch to Ireland. Ambushes became commonplace in Dublin - and fighting was even more ferocious outside the city. Flying columns of IRA men waylaid lorry loads of Black and Tans on country roads. Death stalked the land twenty-four hours a day. The Irish Times mourned - "The whole country runs with blood. Unless the fighting is stopped every prospect of a political settlement will perish and our children will inherit a wilderness."

  But who would stop the killings? Who could obtain a settlement? Ulstermen in the north didn't want a settlement - at least not the one advocated by Mick Collins. Protestant Ulstermen would fight to retain their links with Britain - they were British and proud of it.

  At Westminster Lloyd George struggled to find a formula acceptable to all sides. King George V made a speech - "I appeal to all Irishmen ... to forgive and forget, and to join in making for the land they love a new era of peace ... in which the Irish people, north and south, under one Parliament or two ... work together in common love of Ireland."

  Pat Connors rubbed his jaw reflectively. It had not been easy, accepting the idea of a truce. He remembered the arguments - "We've won nothing yet. The British still rule Ireland. Let's get on with the fight." But fight with what? Few knew it - certainly not the British government - but the IRA was desperately short of arms and ammunition. According to Mick Collins they were within three weeks of defeat, and not just for want of bullets - loyal men were almost as scarce. Many had been arrested, tortured, put to death. Pat had lost friends by the score - and Mick's closest friend, Dick McKee, had been murdered in the guardroom of Dublin Castle on the eve of Bloody Sunday. Aye, a truce was sorely needed ... so in July one was declared. After two and a half years of bloodshed, peace descended on Ireland. Leather-gaitered IRA me
n came down from the hills and mixed freely with Black and Tans in Grafton Street. Ireland sighed with relief.

  General Smuts, the South African Prime Minister, came to Dublin as an intermediary seeking a formula for negotiations. Dev faced a devil of a job. Sinn Fein was split down the middle - some wanted a republic at once, nothing else would do, but others were prepared to obtain independence in stages - and when Smuts floated the idea of Dominion status, making Ireland like his own South Africa or Canada or Australia, the idea caught on. Dev said if Dominion status were offered he would do his best to persuade his colleagues to accept it - and Dominion status was offered, when Dev went to London to meet Lloyd George a month later. But it was Dominion status with a difference ... six counties in the north would be excluded ... not, as Lloyd George was quick to point out, due to any British imperial wishes, but simply because Ulster Unionists insisted on remaining British. Dev said bluntly: it was all or nothing - and that was the impasse. Negotiations broke down. Dev returned to Dublin, and Lloyd George threatened to end the truce.

  But the truce held. Dev and Lloyd George maintained an uneasy contact, and after much haggling the Irish were invited to London again. This time Dev stayed in Dublin and Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins led the delegation. The conference dragged on for weeks, bogged down again and again by the twin issues of the Crown and Ulster. The hardline Republicans wanted Republic status now - Australians and Canadians and the like could please themselves - but Ireland could hardly be a Republic if their leaders still swore allegiance to the British Crown. And as for Ulster - well, one look at a map was proof that it was part of Ireland - so of course it had to be included.