The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History)

by Patricia Murphy

  I must confess I got quite a thrill to be conveyed in the ambulance. We passed Westland Row without incident. There was much glass around and we nearly got tangled in a big coil of wires. The rebels had a barricade at either side of the road but they let us through and proceeded round to the small side entrance of Trinity College. We drove by the imposing college railings that surround the several square miles of the playing fields and the large stone buildings of the students’ residences.

  When we pulled up, the driver, an elderly man in his seventies, didn’t seem to notice how young I was. He barely listened to my explanation about being on board by accident as he was preoccupied about securing petrol for the vehicle. He entrusted me to the porter, Mr Massey, who was guarding Trinity’s side entrance and hurried off into the college, telling me to attend to the medical supplies.

  Mr Massey gave me a little cart for the supplies and led me to the chief porter George Crawford, a large bluff man with an air of authority and friendly personality, who was checking provisions going into the student dining area known as ‘The Buttery’. Knowing that I wasn’t meant to be here at all, I began to lose confidence about asking about the dispatch riders. As I hung back, waiting for Mr Crawford to finish what he was doing, all my courage seemed to ebb away.

  As we walked over the ancient cobblestones through the quadrangle, I was astonished to see that already this lofty place of learning had been transformed into a garrison. There were hundreds of British soldiers in front of the dining hall or lounging in doorways. So many horses and men milled about, Trinity resembled an open-air stable or a horse fair. I felt completely intimidated.

  A father ran in with a little boy with a wounded hand.

  “We have no food,” said the father. “He is very weak.”

  They took the boy but wouldn’t let the father come any further. I looked to the porter to intervene but he said he had no sway now.

  “It’s military rules, I’m afraid,” he said. “We’re to have four thousand troops here. They’re coming in from all over. Athlone, the Curragh, Belfast. There’s a battalion of Sherwood Foresters arriving in Kingstown tomorrow – the Lord knows where we’ll put them all! General Maxwell has been put in charge and the rebels won’t know what hit them.”

  “Fall in!” shouted their sergeant as four huge guns were brought through the main entrance.

  “The eighteen pounders are here!” an excited student exclaimed.

  The sheer size of these weapons nearly made me faint. They were mini-cannons, designed to fire shells, I heard the student tell his friends.

  “Amass company!” shouted a corporal and six young Trinity students in civilian clothes stood to attention.

  “Proceed to Tara Street to dig gun emplacements,” shouted the corporal. “Tell anyone who asks that gas is cut off in Trinity.”

  “But, sir, we won’t be able to dig through the cobblestones,” one of them protested.

  But the corporal snarled, “You are now a member of His Majesty’s forces and not in the debating chamber. Do as you are instructed or face court martial.”

  The young student turned pale and joined his companions on his no doubt futile task. For it is well nigh impossible to dig up cobblestones.

  Now that the big guns were going to be turned against the rebels, I feared for us all.

  The porter, George Crawford, took me to the medical centre set up in the music room opposite the dining room. I saw the small boy having his arm bandaged. He was crying for his father. But he looked considerably better after a drink of tea and some toast.

  They were most grateful for my supplies. One of the nurses was another friend from First Aid training and I asked her in a whisper about any rebel casualties – but she’d just come on duty. The only other patients there were ordinary people caught in the crossfire and a couple of British soldiers with superficial injuries.

  “It’s a wonder the rebels didn’t try to take Trinity College,” said Porter Crawford as he led me out. “Though I’m glad they didn’t.”

  I saw a group of students emerging from an exam hall, including a couple of women.

  “Imagine, they all turned up for their entrance exam!” he laughed.

  I thought this a good moment to enquire about any rebel dispatch riders, but just then the porter saw two soldiers come out of a building near the front entrance.

  “Why, it’s the very man himself! Best damn shot I’ve ever seen!”

  I gasped. It was the Australian private, McHugh, who I’d met just yesterday. The best shot in the army.

  The porter called him over.

  “Here, tell the girl about the dispatch riders. It was just after dawn and three of them came pelting down from Stephen’s Green. But we had fifteen sharpshooters . . .”

  McHugh smiled and scratched his head. “I dunno, mate. The shooting was done by the crooked light of the electric lamps, and at a high angle downwards.”

  “It was wonderful shooting,” said the porter. “Four shots were fired at the three cyclists. Three found their mark in the unfortunate dead victim.”

  I turned pale and thrust my locket in front of them.

  “Was he one of them?” I could barely say the words.

  “I couldn’t see my own hand up there,” McHugh said, not looking me in the eye.

  “I brought the body into the Provost’s House about quarter past four this morning,” said the porter. “Let me fetch Miss Elsie Mahaffy.”

  “My mother knows her,” I said. “I spoke to her only days ago.”

  My legs turned to jelly as they led me across the cobblestones, to a small room between the Provost’s House and the Porter’s Lodge at the main gate.

  As we reached the door leading to the room, Miss Mahaffy joined us.

  “Well, the corner boys, not content with spitting into the Liffey, are trying to murder us all!” she exclaimed.

  The porter whispered in her ear.

  “How Bessie will be devastated to have a boy disloyal to the crown!” she cried.

  “Permit me, young lady, to inspect the body for you,” said the porter kindly. “I think it is not circumspect for a young lady to do so.”

  I was angered at Miss Mahaffy. My mother would be much more put out to have a dead son than a disloyal one. My anger gave me courage.

  “I will identify him,” I insisted.

  But, when I got to the room, my nerves failed me. I froze at the doorway. The porter lifted the cloth from over the face. There was a great deal of dried blood around the head but I recognized the clothes. His hair was so matted with blood it had turned a strange shade of coppery brown. The facial injuries were extensive and I could hardly bear to look.

  I saw what remained of a waxen profile covered in blood. The porter saw my face turn pale. He went up to the body and removed the Sam Browne belt and handed it to me.

  With shaking hands, I examined it. It was streaked with dried blood and near the buckle were his initials, JFO’D.

  My legs were so weak, he had to support me.

  “Another of the riders was wounded and escaped on foot. The third abandoned his bicycle and bolted down a side street. No doubt he went back to his headquarters and told them the College was stuffed with armed men,” said the porter.

  “We captured their three bicycles, five rifles, four hundred rounds of ammunition and their dispatches,” said Miss Mahaffy in triumph.

  I felt faint but refused their offers of tea. All I wanted to do was get away. Jack was dead. I could never face my parents again.

  I gripped the belt tightly to my chest and took some strength from it.

  I was hollowed out and lifeless, my own breath ragged in my chest. Yet my duty was clear, as stark as the blood that Jack had shed. I had to confess all to my parents and arrange for the collection of Jack’s body. This was the sole thought in my mind. I would go to the Telephone Exchange in Crown Alley and try to speak to them.

  Miss Mahaffy wanted me to stay with her but a sudden flurry at the gate distra
cted her. A new battalion arrived and a messenger accosted both her and the porter. I saw my chance and bolted out the front gate across College Green.

  Even though it was now a shooting gallery, I managed to dart around the porticos of the Bank of Ireland. Around me bullets whined and pinged. My mission made me reckless. I didn’t care if I was soon to join Jack and was possessed of a mad hectic energy that propelled me like a fury all the way round the back of the bank to Crown Alley.

  The windows were barricaded by what looked like the wooden casings of the banks of telephones. There were soldiers’ rifles poking out of the top-floor windows.

  Suddenly my mad energy deserted me and I collapsed in sobs against the wall. I watched the sun sink in a blood-red sky and felt I could not face another dawn without my darling brother Jack.

  “You there from the Ambulance!”

  It took me several seconds to realize someone was shouting at me. It was an elderly gentleman with a long white beard leaning out from a window above my head.

  “There’s a boy injured in the Store House opposite the Telephone Exchange. He’s been there since dawn. I’ll let you in by the wooden door.”

  I roused myself from my stupor. Jack was dead. I’d seen his body. But there were two other riders and one had been shot in the leg. Was it possible one might be Anto? I felt energy flood into my limbs and a tiny bud of hope. If Jack was gone, maybe I could help Anto or someone else. Anyone else, God help me.

  I inched along the walls. A sniper on the corner of the building raised a gun but I held up my Red Cross flag.

  “Hold fire!” a voice rang out and I was allowed to pass.

  The old caretaker let me in through a tiny door in the large wooden gate. I saw motes of dust in the shaft of light as the door inched open. But it was hard to make out anything else in the gloom. I stepped into the stone courtyard and, lying on some dirty sacking, was a slumped moaning figure.

  “Anto!” I exclaimed.

  His face beneath the freckles was deathly pale. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow. He had lost a lot of blood. His eyelids fluttered and he opened them briefly.

  “Am I died?” he asked. Then he groaned, “Me leg!”

  The bottom of his left trouser leg was soaked in blood. I took out my mother’s sewing scissors and cut his boot off. I felt a sudden calm. I washed his poor foot in surgical alcohol but my hands were trembling so much I used all of it up. I gave him a drink of water from my flask. His foot looked like something caught in a mangle. Trying not to flinch, I looked closer and saw that the flesh was torn open on the top of his foot. I spied a tiny silver bullet nestled among his tendons, like the centre of a blooming red flower.

  I panicked, fearful I would gag. “Pull yourself together, Molly O’Donovan! Don’t be a booby all your life!” I scolded myself out loud.

  Remembering what Dr Ella had advised me about not disturbing the site of the wound, I checked to see if he was still bleeding. I saw beads of blood, so I laid him down and elevated his leg above his heart. I used a small stick and applied a tourniquet just below his knee. I did my best to remember what I had practised on my teddy bear from the manual.

  There was a lot of swelling around his ankle, so I worried that he had internal bleeding. I felt his pulse; it was faint, his breathing shallow. I noticed his toes were purplish blue. His big toe was an unsightly pulp. But at least the bleeding had stopped.

  I’d been so distracted when I heard about the dispatch riders I hadn’t re-filled the iodine and I’d used up all the surgical alcohol. I remembered what Miss Huxley had told my mother about wound cleaning. So I applied sugar to the wound to fight infection. I gave Anto poor Jack’s belt to bite on. Dr Ella saying infection was the enemy came into my mind. So hastily I took out some water in a pail from a nearby butt and washed my hands. Then I rubbed them in a clean cloth that was in the kit.

  “There, there, Anto.”

  I applied a dressing.

  He came in and out of sleep, hovering, occasionally wincing with the pain. I thought it best to keep him awake. So I told him one of Mr Stephen’s fairytales of how Fionn caught the Salmon of Knowledge, while I put a bandage around the wounded foot. For Fionn was in the original Fianna – the legendary band of warriors of Irish myth that had inspired the name of the Countess’s Boy Scouts.

  But Anto began to shiver and seemed to be fading fast. I desperately needed to get him to a hospital. I asked the caretaker to mind him as I sped across the dark narrow alley and rapped on the door of the Crown Alley Telephone Exchange. It was a faint hope but maybe they could call for help. And there was a slim chance my father might still be here or they might have news.

  “Let me in!” I called. “I have a message from Mr Daniel O’Donovan, the Chief Technical Officer.”

  The door opened a fraction and I pushed in to be met by a surprised soldier. As we ascended the staircase the basement door opened, and I saw that it had been turned into a dormitory with mattresses on the floor.

  “There’s twenty brave women here, working all around the clock. They don’t flinch even when a bullet comes whistling in,” said the soldier. He told me he was from Limerick and had been stationed at the Curragh. He was warm and open, but I realized with a sudden panic how foolish I was. If they saw Anto in his Fianna uniform they would arrest him! There was no guarantee he’d get medical attention.

  A woman ran down the stairs and, to my great relief, it was Jane Killikelly. Was it really only two days before that I’d met her hurrying to work? She threw her arms around me and led me to the telephone room, all chat, asking me how I was.

  “Is my father here?” I blurted out.

  “I just spoke to him! I’m probably not supposed to tell you this but he’s just left the Curragh. He’s still going around surrounding counties to restore the lines. He can’t say where in case there’s any spies.”

  Relief flooded into my heart. At least my father wasn’t in the thick of it.

  “We are all holding the fort, thanks to your father,” Jane continued. “The rebels have cut down all the poles and severed the wires, even smashing all the equipment. But he got us a guard before they could take this place,” she said to me with pride.

  My panic rose when she mentioned the guard and I hesitated, in a state about what to do about Anto, as she rattled on.

  “We’ve borrowed mattresses from a nearby hotel and are working around the clock. The rebels didn’t cut the private lines that go through this exchange. So your father’s diverted all the telegraph traffic through here. He’s very clever –”

  “Jane, I need your help but you mustn’t let the guards know,” I whispered to her.

  I confessed to Jane that I had gained entry to the building under false pretenses. She looked at me so sympathetically that I found myself sobbing.

  “I think Anto, my . . . brother’s friend is badly hurt,” I said. “He needs urgent help.”

  “I know the boy. There’s a small hospital at Dublin Castle. They are the closest. I will put a call out for an ambulance.” She went off to do that.

  The seconds felt like hours. Although I badly wanted to talk to somebody, I decided not to tell her about Jack. I would tell my parents in person, since it was entirely my fault. I tried to concentrate on the exchange to take the edge off the agony of waiting.

  I glimpsed about fifteen girls at their desks in the telephone room. Each one faced a switchboard of lights, jacks and small sockets studded with pins. There was a low steady buzz of conversation into mouthpieces.

  “Caller, please hold the line.”

  “Caller, transmit your message now.”

  “Connecting you to Amiens Street, go ahead.”

  The windows were boarded up and the lights were dimmed so as not to attract sniper fire. Each girl, earpiece at the ready, seemed to work almost by instinct.

  Jane dashed over to me from her small cubicle that was set off from the rest. “They are overloaded but they will see what they can do,” she said. “But, Mol
ly, you must go somewhere safe.”

  “Is Dublin Castle a military hospital?” I asked urgently, remembering all the chaos up there. Jane nodded.

  “Anto is in the Fianna. He’s wearing his uniform. They’ll arrest him. Couldn’t we take him to Dr Webb at Merrion Square? They’re well set up there and it’s not much further.”

  Jane looked grave. “We’ll ask the ambulance to take him and you there.”

  I thanked her from my heart as we headed down the stairs.

  “You know, our grandfather still has his old policeman’s nose for trouble. He was right to whisk Christy and Gerard away or else it could be one of them lying there.”

  “You can tell my father I am safe with Dr Ella,” I said hastily.

  “I’ll telephone your aunt in Belfast to tell your mother you are fine. Your Great-aunt Bessie is quite a character!” she laughed. “If there’s interference on the line she says it’s all those Catholics with their heathen prayers!”

  As we neared the front door, we heard the ambulance drive down the narrow street. But just as we opened the door, there was a sudden volley of gunfire.

  Although it was pitch black, I could see by the light of the moon that the ambulance car was armoured. The troops and rebels must have taken it for an army vehicle. Shots rang around it as it came to a halt.