Uncommon Valour

by Paul O'Brien

  Lieutenant Cosgrave was arguing with Ceannt that the British had failed to take the Nurses’ Home and that they should return and continue the fight. Joyce reported the situation to Ceannt and told him that Brugha was holding the building. The Volunteer commandant was dispirited and his men felt for the first time that defeat and death were possible. The men knelt and said a decade of the Rosary. In the distance they could hear the crack of gunfire. The sound of singing wafted through the air: ‘God Save Ireland’ could be heard in broken snatches. God save Ireland, say we proudly, God save Ireland say we all, whether on the scaffold high or the battlefield we die … The voice was that of Vice-Commandant Brugha.

  Realising that Brugha was managing to hold the position, Ceannt shouted, ‘Come on boys.’ Rushing back to the barricade in the Nurses’ Home, Ceannt and the Volunteers commenced firing at the British troops. The rattle of rifle fire, the smoke and the dust was overwhelming. Ceannt knelt by Brugha’s side and spoke in Gaelic. Brugha was then carried out to a small yard at the rear of the building where Lieutenant Cosgrave and Volunteer Joe Doolan attempted to dress his injuries. Both men spent between five and six hours attempting to stem the flow of blood. Brugha was bleeding profusely from a number of wounds and becoming delirious.

  As the military threw hand grenades across the barricade, the Volunteers replied with canister bombs. The building was shaken to its foundations after each grenade exploded, threatening to bring the ceiling down on both defender and attacker. However, the Volunteers stood their ground.

  Captain Martyn’s position was now untenable – he was pinned down and could not advance – so he ordered his remaining troops to withdraw. Captain Martyn and Corporal Walker scrambled across the floor to the hole in the wall where they turned and gave covering fire so that Captain Oates could make his way to them. They crawled back through the breach and rejoined Major Vane and the remainder of the section. Major Vane and Captain Martyn decided to return to the main force to report. Captain Oates ordered his men to cover the hole in the wall as intense gunfire broke out in the lobby from which they had just come. The sound was deafening in the confined area and the British expected an assault on their position. To the dismay of Captain Oates, the untrained recruits of the Sherwood Foresters bolted, leaving him on his own.38

  The officer decided to take the remaining hand grenades and hold his position until his fellow officers returned. Every two to three minutes, he lobbed a grenade through the breach into the lobby beyond. The noise was deafening and after each explosion the Irish Volunteers opened fire in order to repulse any attempt by the British to storm their position. Captain Oates was almost out of bombs when Martyn returned and ordered him to fall back. Word had been sent down the line that the transport column was no longer under fire and that an attempt to cross the bridge was underway. Before the two officers left their position they decided to throw the remaining grenades through the breach. Retreating through the wards full of terrified elderly patients, the two officers met an embarrassed Corporal Walker and another soldier who, having realised that Captain Oates was alone, were returning to lend him assistance.

  In the meantime, a Volunteer named James Foran, who had been occupying the frontage of the South Dublin Union (14) and had not come under direct fire from the British forces assaulting the Nurses’ Home, decided to move through the buildings at the front of the Union in an attempt to link up with Commandant Ceannt and the other Volunteers. Hearing noises outside the building that he thought might be other Volunteers, he opened the front door of the administrative offices. He was spotted by a section of British soldiers near the Bakehouse (18). Foran raised his .45 Webley revolver and opened fire. He then ducked back inside and bolted the door. He ran through the holes that had been bored through the internal walls and exited near the Bakehouse at the rear of the Nurses’ Home. In the Nurses’ Home he found Ceannt and the remaining Volunteers and asked if they should surrender or if it was a fight to the finish. Ceannt replied that it was a fight to the finish.39

  Foran and Robert Evans climbed the stairs to take up a firing position that overlooked the courtyard. Suddenly Foran was pulled from behind. ‘My God, I am shot’, exclaimed Evans as he collapsed. Foran lifted his wounded comrade into a ward and placed him on a bed. Foran then opened a window and fired into the ranks of the attacking British soldiers. Nearby, Irish Volunteers Peadar Doyle and Seán McGlynn became detached from their allies and took refuge on a rooftop. Both men lay on their backs in the roof valley under continuous machine-gun fire from the Royal Hospital. At 7 p.m. a party of British soldiers moved from the convent (8) towards the Nurses’ Home (10). In the dwindling light of the day they fired on some of their own men who were at that moment attempting to storm the front of the Nurses’ Home. Anticipating the confusion outside in the front courtyard, Commandant Ceannt ordered his men to fire into the ranks of the attackers.

  ‘Retire men,’ called out a British officer, ‘we are surrounded.’ Both groups of British soldiers retreated to safer positions.

  From 7.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. the battle for the Union raged across the barrier. Volunteers lay flat on the landing of the stairs firing with revolvers, automatics and rifles out over the barricade. The continuous barrage prevented the British from storming the building. Meanwhile, ‘A’ company of the Sherwood Foresters had succeeded in clearing the left and front flanks of the column near Rialto Bridge. Captain Martyn’s attack on the Nurses’ Home had distracted the Volunteers so that firing on the column had practically ceased and it was decided that it was safe to bring the wagons over the bridge at a gallop. The horses charged the bridge, the wheels of the wagons scraping the cobbled stones. The drivers of the wagons brandished loaded rifles in one hand, while holding the reins in the other. The transport crossed safely with only one bullet hole appearing in a single vehicle.40 The main body of troops followed this and soon the entire column reached the main gates of the Royal Hospital. A message was relayed back to the sections providing covering fire within the Union to withdraw to Rialto Bridge. The left flank withdrew without incident but the Irish Volunteers constantly harried the right flank. Lieutenant Monk Gibbon later wrote of the withdrawal:

  The convoy is formed up and we move off. It is doubtful if we need ever have been halted. It is 7 p.m. now. I am filthy, deaf from firing in the little room and most of my ammunition has gone. Someone gives me a lemon to suck. We continue along the South Circular Road.41

  Both sections of British troops regrouped near the bridge by 9.45 p.m. and immediately marched towards the Royal Hospital arriving at 10.15 p.m. They billeted for the night on the floors of the Hospital’s Great Hall and around the altar in the baroque chapel. Though many slept, others reflected on the past days’ actions, the losses to the battalion and the fighting that they would face in the coming days.

  The skyline had turned a blood red as flames relentlessly consumed the metropolis. Dublin city was burning.

  Chapter 9

  Intermission

  Crown forces made no further assaults on the South Dublin Union and by midday on Friday the Volunteers realised that the British had completely withdrawn from the complex. The days that followed were uneventful except for the sporadic sniper fire that came from the roof of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.

  The British contingent that had attempted to occupy the Bakehouse (18) retired, having received orders from Captain Martyn on Thursday evening. Removing their boots to prevent noise, they rushed back across the courtyard to a place of refuge on the east side of the square. During this withdrawal, a British soldier became detached from his unit and realising that he was pinned down and unable to escape, took cover in the nearby carpentry shop. He stayed in the building overnight and most of Friday as Volunteer snipers sporadically opened fire. Later, as a hearse arrived and Union patients placed the dead body of a British soldier in a coffin, the soldier hiding in the carpentry shop saw his means of escape. Stealthily moving from cover, he climbed into an empty coffin beside that of the
corpse. The two coffins were then loaded onto a cart in full view of the Volunteers who permitted the vehicle to leave the area as it travelled under a Red Cross flag. Later, the khaki-clad Lazarus emerged from his tomb to the astonishment of civilian onlookers.42

  Vice-Commandant Cathal Brugha was in a serious condition and Ceannt requested assistance from Father Gerhard. Wearing his priest’s stole, Father Gerhard led a procession carrying Brugha on a stretcher from the Nurses’ Home to one of the Union medical wards.

  At the same time the Union officials applied to the military for permission to remove Volunteer Dan McCarthy to Merrion Square for an X-ray. He had suffered a serious stomach wound and had been accommodated in a ward at the Union since Monday. In response, the military stated that if he could be moved to Merrion Square, he was fit enough to be moved to the military hospital in Dublin Castle. As McCarthy was loaded into the ambulance, he saw another Volunteer was with him and immediately recognised Cathal Brugha. Both men were transferred to hospital in Dublin Castle. Brugha was put in the care of Sir William Taylor and McCarthy was put in the care of Surgeon Haughton. Having consulted an X-ray of McCarthy’s wound, the surgeon decided not to operate and said, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’43 The surgeon believed that rest and good care would be enough to pull McCarthy through. When the military gave orders for the removal of McCarthy to Kilmainham Gaol, the surgeon’s protests were ignored and the Volunteer was incarcerated in the Gaol.44

  Having examined Brugha, the physicians deemed that he would not survive and he was released into the care of his family. He had suffered twenty-five wounds. Of these, five were considered very dangerous having perforated a number of arteries, nine were considered very serious and eleven were superficial. However, Brugha survived, cheating both death and the British authorities.

  Back in the Union the remaining Volunteers refortified their positions. Although his garrison was badly depleted, Ceannt remained calm and encouraged his men. Since Wednesday they had noticed the red glow of fires appearing over the city. They had also heard the sound of artillery mingling with the relentless sound of both rifle and machine-gun fire. No dispatches had been received from Volunteer headquarters at the General Post Office in Sackville Street since Tuesday morning.

  In the Union outpost at the Marrowbone Lane Distillery, the Irish Volunteer garrison were subjected to incessant sniper fire from British crown forces hiding behind a barricade they had erected near Echlin Street on Tuesday. Communication with Commandant Ceannt had been cut off so he was unaware that the Marrowbone Lane garrison had thwarted a number of British assaults at the canal end of the Union complex. On Saturday night Volunteer Robert Holland ventured out of the distillery under the cover of darkness to collect the arms and ammunition of the fallen British soldiers. Acting with a number of others, Holland managed to acquire a considerable amount of ammunition and more than ten Lee Enfield rifles. When Holland returned to the distillery, Volunteer Jack Saul mentioned to him that he had heard digging outside the gate. Both Volunteers stood ready as they heard the noise of chains rattling. They shouted a challenge but the noise continued. Both men opened fire through the gate into the darkness. A few moments later Volunteer Sergeant Kerrigan appeared and informed them that they had shot and killed a horse belonging to a local trader, ‘Mocky’ Keogh.45

  The garrison within the distillery had been reinforced by men and women who, realising the Rising was taking place, joined them throughout the week. On Saturday the total number of troops inside stood at a hundred men and forty women of Cumann na mBan. They had ample supplies of food and ammunition and morale was high. On Saturday morning British troops had withdrawn out of range of the distillery, but the Volunteers were told to ‘stand to’ as a massed attack was expected. However, the day was uneventful and the men stood down from their positions. News filtered in to the distillery that British troops had suffered heavy casualties in the city and that Volunteers still remained entrenched in their positions. Members of Cumann na mBan baked cakes and a ceilidhe was organised for Sunday evening.

  Members of the 4th Battalion of the Irish Volunteers under the command of Commandant Éamonn Ceannt, had successfully repulsed numerous attacks by superior numbers of British crown forces and held their position within the South Dublin Union and its outlying posts for six consecutive days. Sunday, would be their seventh.

  Chapter 10

  Surrender

  At 2 a.m. on Friday 28 April 1916, General Sir John Grenfell Maxwell arrived at the North Wall in Dublin city. The night sky was illuminated as the buildings on Sackville Street (O’Connell Street) burned fiercely and the sound of gunfire echoed throughout the deserted streets. Accompanied by a number of staff officers, General Maxwell made his way to the Royal Hospital where he conferred with Major General Friend and Brigadier General Lowe. At this meeting Lowe was instructed to tighten the cordon around the Volunteer positions on Sackville Street.

  Patrick Pearse, commander-in-chief of the Irish Volunteers, had initiated contact with Brigadier General W.H.M. Lowe, commander of the British forces in Dublin, and at 1.40 p.m. on Saturday 29 April. Lowe conveyed a note of reply:

  A woman has come in and tells me you wish to negotiate with me. I am prepared to receive you in Britain Street at the north end of Moore Street provided that you surrender unconditionally. You will proceed up Moore Street accompanied only by the woman who brings you this note under a white flag.46

  At 3.30 p.m., Patrick Pearse accompanied by Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell met with Brigadier General Lowe. Handwritten notes ordering full surrender were penned by Pearse, and Nurse O’Farrell delivered them to some of the garrison commanders around Dublin city. It was the beginning of the end.

  At 10 a.m. on Sunday, Commandant Thomas McDonagh of the Irish Volunteers, along with Father Aloysius and Father Albert from Church Street, were admitted to the South Dublin Union. They informed Ceannt that Pearse had surrendered in order to save the citizens of Dublin from further suffering. Having conversed with the envoys, Commandant Ceannt addressed his men and relayed to them the decisions of headquarters. Suggestions were made that the Volunteers should attempt to evade capture, as there was no military guard. However, the majority made a case for complete surrender because they had stood together throughout the week and should continue to do so to the end. The envoys left and proceeded to the garrison at the Marrowbone Lane Distillery where the news of surrender was greeted with dismay.

  Later on Sunday afternoon a British officer (possibly Sir Francis Fletcher Vane) accompanied by a member of the clergy arrived to converse with Ceannt. The officer said: ‘You had a fine position here.’

  Ceannt replied: ‘Yes, and we made full use of it. Not alone did we hold your army for six days but shook it to its foundation.’47

  Ceannt ordered his men to fall in and assemble at the square in the Union. When they had done so Ceannt was told to form up all his men. The British officer looked surprised when Ceannt replied that this was all of his men, ‘forty-one all told’. Lieutenant Cosgrave mobilised the men and his words of command could be clearly heard. They marched to the Marrowbone Lane Distillery and waited there until the garrison emerged to join their ranks. The 4th Battalion then marched under the command of Commandant Éamonn Ceannt to St Patrick’s Park, adjacent to St Patrick’s Cathedral. Father Augustine waited for Ceannt’s men to arrive at the park. He wrote:

  They did not arrive and I began to wonder what was causing the delay. In about fifteen minutes, however, we saw the South Dublin Union garrison marching in, and at once my eye caught sight of the splendid figure of the leader. The whole column marched splendidly, with guns slung from their left shoulders and their hands swinging freely at their sides. They wore no look of defeat, but rather of victory. It seems as if they had come out to celebrate a triumph and were marching to receive a decoration. Ceannt was in the middle of the front section with one man on either side. But my eyes were riveted on him so tall was his form, so noble his bearing, and so manly his stride. He was in
deed the worthy captain of a brave band who had fought a clean fight for Ireland.48

  At the cathedral, the Volunteers grounded their arms under their commandant’s command. Weapons were unloaded and collected by the military and placed in lorries. Joining up with the Volunteer battalion that had occupied Jacob’s biscuit factory, the Volunteers were then marched under military escort to Richmond barracks, passing the Union on the way. In the poorer areas they were greeted with cheers and wishes of luck, but as they neared the barracks the tone changed and the crowds were more threatening and abusive.

  On arrival at Richmond barracks, about sixty men were locked in each room with no furniture and little ventilation. The only sanitary provision was a large bucket in the corner of the room. For breakfast buckets containing tea and a basket of hard biscuits were distributed. The biscuits were tumbled out onto the floor and empty bully-beef tins were used as tea containers. Later in the day, police from ‘G’ division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police arrived and began to identify those who had played a prominent role in the week’s insurrection. Commandant Ceannt and Lieutenant Cosgrave were singled out, separated and marched away for interrogation.

  Those Volunteers, such as James Burke, who had been taken prisoner early in the week, had been taken to Kilmainham police station. They were questioned by military intelligence officers and then moved to Richmond barracks and placed in the guardroom. From there they were conveyed to Kilmainham Gaol. Burke recalled:

  We were brought over to Kilmainham Gaol, where some drunken soldiery of the Dublin Fusiliers immediately set upon us, kicking us, beating us and threatening us with bayonets. We looked at one another the next morning and thought we were dead. The Dublin Fusiliers were the worst of the lot.