‘Although the whole affair lasted only four or five minutes, it attracted a great deal of attention, as tramcars going to and from the city were held up. People were watching curiously from their houses and the upper decks of the trams. Other than the firing of the one shot, there was no other incident. The driver was ordered to return to the city. ‘I do not know why,’ O’Daly said, ‘except that we did not want him to know why we held him up.’ Nobody was fooled.
‘It is believed that the purpose of the attacking party was to rescue Mr Barton on his return from the court martial to Mountjoy Prison,’ the Irish Times reported next day. ‘This is borne out by the remark, “He’s not here”, which was made by some members of the attack party after they had made a search of the motor wagon.’ Barton’s trial continued and he was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail the following week and promptly moved to England.
The Squad was out with the Dublin brigade again the following evening when they learned that a trainload of ammunition would be leaving the North Wall on a certain date and that it was to be fired on.
‘The entire Squad, assisted by members of the Dublin brigade and men from the country including General Michael Brennan, assembled in the vicinity of Newcomen Bridge,’ according to Jim Slattery. ‘We were waiting for the train, but at the last moment the operation was cancelled.’ The train with the ammunition consignment was actually approaching. ‘At that particular moment I had the pin drawn from my grenade, and, being rather annoyed over the operation being called off, I fired the grenade at the passing train,’ Slattery continued. ‘I believe that the signalman on the line was wounded.’
Michael Geraghty of 1 Gilford Place, North Strand, Dublin, was actually leaning out of the signal box at the time and it was initially believed that he was shot by one of the twenty or so soldiers on the train. ‘It is assumed,’ the Irish Times reported, ‘that the putting out of a flag from the window of the signal box to indicate that the line was clear was misunderstood by the military guard, and that shots were fired.’
A couple of days later there was a report that two armed men had actually stopped the train, that one had got on and ordered the driver to back up and then after some minutes had told him to go forward again. By then the men on the banking had clearly got away, but there were tyre tracks to indicate that the raiders were using two motor vehicles.
Henry Quinlisk, who had lost touch with Collins after the information he had given to Dublin Castle led to a raid on the Munster hotel, had been making repeated efforts to contact him again. He was told that it had got so hot for the Big Fellow in Dublin that he had gone back to Cork. The Squad suspected Quinlisk was a spy and tried to use him as bait to get at Detective Superintendent Owen Brien. The Squad had been trying to kill him for some time but he rarely moved outside the walls of Dublin Castle.
Seán Ó Muirthile was assigned to keep Quinlisk busy while one of the Squad telephoned Dublin Castle to say that Quinlisk had vital information and would meet Brien outside the offices of the Evening Mail, just outside the castle, at a certain time. Brien turned up but something spooked him before any of the Squad could get a shot at him. He darted back into the cover of Dublin Castle.
Collins learned afterwards that the detective superintendent suspected he was being set up. He blamed Quinlisk, who explained that he had been detained all night by Ó Muirthile.
‘You’re in the soup,’ Collins told Ó Muirthile with a laugh.
Quinlisk should have had the good sense to quit at that point, but he persisted in his efforts to see Collins. So a trap was set. He was told that Collins was out of town and would meet him that night at Mrs Wren’s hotel in Cork city.
Liam Archer intercepted a lengthy telegram from the inspector general of the RIC to the county inspector in Cork. The message was coded, but Collins had the code. ‘On leaving the office, I went to the Keating Branch (of the Gaelic League) and there started to decipher it,’ Archer recalled. ‘While at this Seán Ó Muirthile joined me. The message informed the county inspector that Collins would be in a Wren’s hotel, Cork.’
‘Tonight at midnight surround Wren’s hotel, Winthrop Street, Cork,’ the message read when decoded. ‘Collins and others will be there. Expect shooting as he is a dangerous man and heavily armed.’ The telegram added that Collins should be taken ‘dead or alive’. When Archer showed the telegram to Collins later that night, the Big Fellow remarked ‘That ****** has signed his death warrant.’ He was, however, amused about what was likely to happen at Wren’s hotel. ‘They’ll play síghle caoch with the place,’ he said with a laugh. On the night of 18 February 1920 members of the Cork No. 1 brigade of the IRA met Quinlisk, promising to take him to Collins. Instead they took him outside the city and shot him eleven times. There was one bullet wound through the socket of the right eye, two bullet wounds between the right eye and right ear, and three further bullet wounds on the right side of the forehead, as well as five other bullet wounds to the body. The Cork Examiner concluded, ‘the medical evidence was that they could not have been selfinflicted.’
Next night in Dublin members of the Squad again joined with the Dublin brigade for a raid, this time on the sheds of the Irish Steam Packet Company at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay. There were twenty-five to thirty men involved in this raid for ammunition. They started the raid between 10.30 and 11 p.m.
‘One of the party got over the railings and smashed a pane of glass in the lower window, allowing him to slip off the catch and get through,’ said Vinny Byrne. He opened a wicket gate from inside. Some men stayed on patrol but the majority entered the sheds. They did not realise that the ammunition had been moved by the military the previous day. The raiders did not know where to look, so they just took pot-luck in opening various cases.
‘I remember opening a case and finding that its contents consisted of sticks of black liquorice,’ Byrne added. ‘I filled my pockets and had a good chew for a day or two.’
The order was given to abandon the raid, as there was obviously little use in their search. ‘After all our trouble, we found nothing,’ Byrne noted. Most of those involved in the raid lived on the north side of the city, but Byrne was staying south of the Liffey. As he was on Tara Street he heard some shooting from the College Green area. He went by College Street but did not see anything unusual.
The following night DMP Constable John M. Walsh from Galbally, near Enniscorthy, County Wexford, was killed in Dublin. Pat McGrath and his brother Gabriel had been due to take part in an operation that was called off. As they were returning to their home in Belgrave Square, Rathmines, they crossed Westmoreland Street at the foot of Grafton Street, where they were challenged by two armed policemen. The McGraths fired on the police who returned fire. Pat was hit in the right shoulder. Gabriel raced up College Street, firing as he ran, fatally wounding Walsh. His colleague, Sergeant Dunleavy, was also wounded.
Pat McGrath was critically ill and was taken to Mercer’s hospital before being moved to King George V hospital (later St Brichin’s), where he eventually recovered. He later told Liam Archer that a man dressed as a priest visited him and tried hard to get him to make his confession. Some instinct made him refuse, even though he was seriously ill. He was later convinced the ‘priest’ was the British agent, John Charles Byrne, alias Jameson, but it was some thirty years later that Archer recalled this story and he possible confused Byrne with Allen Bell.
Byrne had gone to England but returned with a case of pistols to demonstrate his supposed sincerity. Tobin brought him and the portmanteau of Webley revolvers to 56 Bachelor’s Walk where New Ireland Assurance had premises over Kapp & Peterson’s at the corner of Bachelor’s Walk and Sackville. Byrne handed over the case to Thornton in the hallway of Kapp & Peterson’s. His story was that he had got the revolvers through communist sources.
‘I immediately walked straight through the hall and down the steps in Kapp & Peterson’s basement, and Tobin took Jameson away,’ Thornton explained. ‘When the coast was clear I handed
the portmanteau of revolvers over to Tom Cullen who was waiting at 32 Bachelor’s Walk, which was the Quartermaster General’s stores.’ Thornton had already asked Jim McNamara to keep his ears open at Dublin Castle about any possible raid because of Collins’ suspicions that Byrne was in touch with Scotland Yard. ‘About mid-day I got a message from McNamara telling me that the New Ireland Assurance Society’s premises at Bachelor’s Walk would be raided at ‘I joined Tobin and Cullen at McBirney’s on the far side of the river at 3 o’clock to await developments,’ Thornton continued. At 3 o’clock crown forces raided the Bachelor’s Walk building. They first went into the cellar and ransacked it. They then searched the whole building, but found nothing other than an Irish Volunteer’s cap. They returned at 1 o’clock the following morning and smashed in the front door. They had picks and shovels and proceeded to dig up the basement looking for a secret passage. Byrne’s fate was sealed.
Liam Tobin told Joe Dolan that he would be meeting Byrne in d’Olier Street at a certain time on 2 March 1920. Dolan was to take a careful look at Byrne so that he could identify him for members of the Squad who would kill him that evening.
‘Paddy [O’]Daly, Tom Kilcoyne and Ben Barrett were to carry out the execution,’ Dolan recalled. ‘Tom Kilcoyne, Ben Barrett and myself met outside Gardiner Street Church and proceeded on bicycles to the place of execution as pre-arranged.’
That evening [O’]Daly met Byrne at the Granville hotel on Sack ville Street. He was supposed to be bringing him to see Collins out in the grounds of the lunatic asylum in Glasnevin. ‘When he came along the road I identified him to Barrett and Kilcoyne. We held him up and searched him and took all his documents. Paddy [O’]Daly stayed back and didn’t take part in the search.’
Byrne tried to bluff them about his friendship with Collins and Tobin, but the Squad members knew better. They asked him if he wished to pray.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘We are only doing our duty,’ one of the Squad said to him.
‘And I have done mine,’ he replied, drawing himself to attention as they shot him twice, in the head and through the heart.
‘The documents found on him were incriminating,’ said Dolan. When Liam Tobin and Tom Cullen saw Byrne being taken away by Paddy [O’]Daly they searched his room in the Granville hotel and took all his effects away, which were said to be very incriminating also.
‘All the facts so far disclosed and the probabilities point to the conclusion that the deceased was a secret service official, acting under the direct authority of the Secret Service Department in London,’ the press reported after the body was found. Walter Long, the first lord of the admiralty, told the British cabinet in May that Byrne was actually ‘the best Secret Service man we had’.
On the morning after the killing of Byrne many of the part-time Squad took part in the seizure of the mail from Dublin Castle as it was being transferred to the main sorting office. The sorting office was now in the Rotunda Rink since the destruction of the GPO during the Easter Rebellion. Those engaged in the seizure on 3 March 1920 included Jim Slattery, Paddy Kennedy, Joe Dolan, Charlie Dalton, Tom Keogh and Vinny Byrne. Pat McCrae was driving the van they had stolen in the raid on Bow Lane stores three weeks earlier. The mail was being transferred in a two-wheel, horse-drawn van, in the charge of a driver and a postman. The van left the main sorting office at the Rotunda Rink for Dublin Castle shortly after 8 a.m. It left via a back entrance into Rutland (now Parnell) Square and then moved into Parnell Street. As it approached the corner of Dominick Street, Slattery stepped off the footpath and grabbed the horse by the head and the reins. Byrne ordered the driver and postman to get down, and Slattery drove the van into Dominick Street where McCrae was waiting with the motor van. The mail was transferred, and McCrae then drove the van to the dump in Mountjoy Court, off Charles Street.
When Byrne and Keogh arrived at the dump they found the intelligence staff sifting through the mail. They joined Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen, Frank Thornton, Frank Saurin and Joe Dolan in opening the letters. Every so often they would hear the sound of a crisp note as someone found money in a letter. There were many applications for passports with postal orders attached for seven shillings and sixpence. When the intelligence staff finished their work, they left Slattery, Keogh and Byrne to destroy the evidence.
Byrne got a brainwave and collected all the postal orders that had been left blank.
‘Leave it to you, Vincie!’ Slattery exclaimed. ‘You would think of something like that.’
‘Let’s have a shot at it,’ Keogh interjected.
‘So we waded through the letters flung all over the floor and picked out all the postal orders that were blank. We divided the number among us and then burned all the letters and any papers lying around and left.’ They agreed to meet that night and pool the money they had collected and share it evenly. Byrne called at post offices in Parnell Street, Westmoreland Street and Duke Street, before going home for his dinner. Afterwards he cashed further postal orders at Aungier Street, Camden Street, Harcourt Place and Merrion Row, often cashing two postal orders at a time. He got all the money in half-crowns. He ended up with about £4 in half-crowns. They pooled the money and divided it that night.
While the Squad members were cashing the postal orders, the intelligence people were analysing some of the correspondence they had seized. One letter would soon take on a particularly sinister significance as part of the counter-murder scheme first advocated back in December. Captain F. Harper Stove had written to Captain Hardy at Dublin Castle on 2 March. ‘Have duly reported and found things in a fearful mess, but think will be able to make a good show,’ he wrote. ‘Have been given a free hand to carry on, and everyone has been very charming. Re our little stunt, I see no prospects, until I have got things on a firmer basis, but still hope and believe there are possibilities.’
It was around this time that the two elements of the Squad were joined into one whole time unit. There is no specific date for when the amalgamation took place, but Vinny Byrne put it at early March 1920 because he and Jim Slattery quit their jobs together on 9 March in order to go full time with the Squad. The IRA had been almost exclusively part time, so they had to have time off work for any operations during working hours. As a result most of their activities had been at night or on weekends. As the British began to reorganise their intelligence service in Ireland, they were free to operate in relative safety during the day when their opponents were busy at work. Hence it was decided to put the whole Squad on a full time basis. It began with twelve men, and they were irreverently dubbed the twelve apostles. They were: Mick McDonnell, T o m Keogh, Jimmy Slattery, Paddy O’Daly, Joe Leonard, Ben Barrett, Vinny Byrne, Seán Doyle, Paddy Griffin, Eddie Byrne, Mick Reilly and Jimmy Conroy.
They reported directly to Collins as director of intelligence, or to his deputy, Liam Tobin. They met daily at 100 Seville Place, where they waited for the call to duty in what was a private house. They passed their time reading, playing cards or just chatting at what was a particularly secluded site. From there they conducted operations on orders from GHQ intelligence. Many operations consisted of searching the city for individuals or small enemy units. Pat McCrea acted as a driver for them.
Later they moved to a school house in Oriel Street, which was deep in the docklands, but it took so long to get from there to a central place that the Squad moved its headquarters to a builders’ yard off Abbey Street. Paddy [O’]Daly and Vinny Byrne were both carpenters, so they set up a cabinet-making business as a front. They acquired carpentry tools and equipped a small office with a rough desk, some calendars and building literature. ‘I painted on the gates in large white letters on a brown ground: Geo. Moreland, Cabinet-Maker,’ Bill Stapleton recalled. ‘There we came together daily dressed in our white aprons – under which we were fully armed – and engaged in amateur carpentry under Vinny’s expert instruction. Vinny met prospective customers and discussed their requirements in detail, took notes, promised to submit an estimate
but pointed out, rather sadly that, due to pressure of work he could not promise when the job could be started. On hearing this the customer invariably said, “thank you!” and left.’
On 10 March 1920 in Cork, District Inspector McDonagh was shot. Having supervised the transportation of ballots to the count centre following municipal elections, he was walking to the Black rock police barracks with a head constable when they were am bushed by some men standing at the corner of Sawmill Street. McDonagh was hit on the left side and his injuries were described in hospital as very serious. Members of the Cork No. 1 brigade of the IRA carried out the ambush. They were under the command of Tomás MacCurtain, who also happened to be the lord mayor of Cork. On 16 March he received a threatening letter on dáil note-paper: ‘Thomas MacCurtain, prepare for death’, it read. ‘You are doomed.’
Constable Joseph Murtagh, a twenty-three-year-old veteran of the RIC from County Meath, was shot and killed on Pope’s Quay near the Dominican church in Cork at about 10.40 p.m on 19 March. He was not on duty at the time and was in civilian clothes, returning from the Palace theatre. Residents of the area said that they heard two shots followed by a pause and then a burst of shots in quick success. Constable Murtagh was dead on arrival at the North Infirmary. Like District Inspector McDonagh before him, Constable Murtagh was shot by men who were nominally under MacCurtain’s command, though in this case they acted without his authority. A few hours later MacCurtain would pay with his life.
Shortly after one o’clock in the morning some men raided his home above the flour and meal business that he ran at 40 Thomas Davis Street. Armed men with blackened faces demanded entry when MacCurtain’s wife answered the knocking and kicking at the front door. Some eight men entered the premises. ‘Come out, Curtain’, one of them shouted.
The Squad Page 9