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

by Patricia Murphy

  “She just wants to go back in to see her sweetheart, Seán Mac Diarmada,” teased Phyllis.

  Mac Diarmada was always closeted with Tom Clarke. He walked with a limp because of polio but he was the handsomest of the rebel leaders. I suddenly thought of Anto’s line about his gammy leg, and it made me smile.

  I was surprised to see a line of women and children from the slums of Henry Street file by holding a white flag. To my great delight, one was Nancy, our char, with her baby and three youngest ones. I ran to her.

  “Nancy, Anto is safe!”

  She embraced me, then looked into my eyes with a look of pain on her face. “I haven’t seen May since she marched those kids back on Tuesday. Said she’d lose her job if she didn’t go back to the Imperial.”

  I reassured her that I would look out for her eldest daughter.

  “I’d be lost without May,” she said. “She has never given me a peck of trouble. If anything ever happened to her . . .” Nancy shook her head.

  I told her I couldn’t find Jack.

  She smiled briefly. “I’ve been cursin’ all them rebel fellas, as I haven’t had any money this week. But someone has been leavin’ bread and milk. They didn’t come today, but yesterday I found this.” She handed me a little tin soldier, painted green. “Sure, aren’t I always pickin’ them off the floor in his room.” She kissed me gently on the cheek. “Don’t forget he has nine lives.”

  She handed me the soldier and I gripped it tight and put it with the others. No doubt another life risked.

  The door of the GPO opened and we were admitted. I bumped into my friend with the hobnail boots, Liam Tannam. He was in a state, clutching his eyes.

  “I’m blinded! A bullet from the Gresham Hotel struck the granite and the dust got into my eyes!”

  I took him to the First Aid station inside by the Prince’s Street entrance and met a young Indian Army Officer called Lieutenant Mahoney with the medical student Jim Ryan. Lieutenant Mahoney told me he’d been taken prisoner, but felt it was his duty to tend the sick. I admired him for his dedication in his makeshift hospital, his equipment an odd assortment of sterilizing needles, forceps and surgical knives. There was even a vet’s thermometer for a cow! He took a quick look at Liam and reassured him he would be fine and asked me to bathe his eyes.

  I got most of the grit out and made Liam lie down with a handkerchief over his eyes.

  “Have you found your brother? Jack?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m looking for him here.”

  I heard a snore. Liam had fallen instantly asleep.

  The Indian Army doctor came up to me.

  “I heard you talking to Liam about your brother Jack,” he said. “A young lad of that name came in soaking wet. He was closeted with Tom Clarke for a while but I sent him to Jervis Street Hospital. Shivering, he was. I am worried he has a fever.”

  Liam murmured in his sleep, then woke and told me that Jervis Street Hospital was accessed through a hole in the wall from Henry Street and over the roof of the Coliseum Theatre, then down the alleyway. I dashed off like a mad thing, desperate to get to Jervis Street before Jack eluded me again.

  The nurses at the hospital had hidden the access hole from Henry Street with screens. I careened about the wards searching for Jack. But saw no one but women and nuns.

  I was about to speak to the matron when I noticed one of the women looked rather whiskery. I leaned in closer and the strange creature opened her eyes and winked at me.

  “You’re a man!” I gasped.

  “Shush,” he said. “You’ll get the nurses into trouble. They’re disguising us as women. Now fix my plait like a good girl. One of the nurses cut hers off to give me.”

  On closer inspection, a lot of the patients looked distinctly boyish and ugly. A couple were wearing old-fashioned caps and one had a five o’clock shadow. A cleaner, forgetting his disguise scratched himself in a most unladylike manner. A big nun came in who looked like a rugby player. But when I winked at her, she scowled at my impertinence. I think she was just a rather horse-faced woman!

  I laughed on my way back to the GPO. Then I went back to the grim task of scouring the building. Everyone’s nerves were on edge, expecting a full frontal attack. A sudden rumour of an armoured car coming down Henry Street had everyone insanely hanging out the windows. For nothing. Then an explosion. More frayed nerves. Stuttering machine-gun fire. Then more nervous waiting. I resumed my anxious search for Jack around the GPO, feeling like I was in a nightmare, where everything was familiar but strangely altered.

  At around 3 o’clock, Pearse gave a rousing speech from the balcony above the main floor about how a large band of fighters were coming from Dundalk to Dublin, police had been captured and there were grand battles all over. There was a deafening outburst of cheering. Did they really believe him? Within seconds his false claims were shattered by a burst of shellfire.

  I went up to the Instrument Room to search for Jack but instead saw Liam Tannam leap eighteen feet from the hole in the ceiling the rebels had made to gain access to the roof

  “There’s Howitzer guns mounted at Findlater’s Church,” he roared. “Molly, there’s wounded coming down!”

  The injured were lowered with two ropes. I stayed with them, and got busy removing peppershot shrapnel from a man’s face. It was Lieutenant Mick Boland who’d asked me to send him tea before. Surely he hadn’t been on the roof since Monday!

  “It’s just a bit of shrapnel,” he said. “I was in the Boer War in Africa helping the Africaans fight the British so I’m an old warhorse. It’s only a scrape.” He flashed me a grin but winced in pain.

  Lieutenant Mahoney the surgeon came to tell me that James Connolly the Commander was rounding up a crack unit to go to the Independent Newspaper offices on Abbey Street. There was a fair chance that Jack might be among them as they’d need a messenger. Seán McLoughlin, one of the other messenger boys, was being promoted. He was only about twenty. They must have been getting short of men.

  I raced through the building, jumping two steps on the stairs at a time to get down as quick as I could. But I was too late! Connolly was standing at the corner of Abbey Street, watching the troops go in.

  I sank to my knees. The fatigue now was going into my bones. I only came around when I heard a great shouting.

  “Connolly’s wounded!”

  A group of rebels ran out the door and dragged Connolly back into the GPO. I immediately ran to get Lieutenant Mahoney.

  A sniper bullet had caught Connolly on the ankle. The surgeon examined his injuries. He had lost a lot of blood. I handed Mahoney the bandage and stick to make a tourniquet, which he applied to his leg. The bones were protruding so it wasn’t possible to fix a splint.

  “He needs an anesthetic,” said Mahoney urgently.

  I ran upstairs to the First Aid post and came back with a small amount of chloroform and anaesthetic ether. Ryan, the medical student, gave it to Connolly, while Lieutenant Mahoney released the tourniquet. But I don’t think there was very much of the chloroform so he was in a lot of pain.

  I helped him clean the wound, holding the disinfectant, while the surgeon fished out the small fragments of broken bone and tied off the small blood vessels with thread. I watched fascinated as Mahoney fashioned a back splint with a foot-piece out of bandage and stick. I felt a kind of awe watching his deft fingers and precision. In that moment, I vowed to be a surgeon. If I survived this madness, nothing could stop me.

  Connolly at first refused anything stronger for the pain, but the surgeon insisted and gave him an injection of morphine.

  “It’s a compound fracture of his left shinbone,” the surgeon said to Jim Ryan. “He needs serious medical attention.”

  Jim Ryan spoke quietly to Connolly and it was clear that he wasn’t going to be moved anywhere.

  Lieutenant Mahoney was to stay with him and I volunteered to help nurse him. I needed to know if Jack had gone out to Abbey Street and the only person who knew for ce
rtain was the wounded Connolly.

  I was beginning to lose heart and, when I carried a glass of water for Connolly, a fit of trembling came over me. The water sloshed about and I just managed to put it down. I gripped the edge of the iron bedstead.

  Shortly after, shelling began again, moving ever closer. My nerves were stretched to breaking point and I was glad I had the duty of looking after Connolly to keep me focused. A shell hit the barricade on Abbey Street. The cycles and crates caught fire like tinder and carried the blaze to the Hibernian Bank where poor Captain Weafer had died. The building went up in flames. Multicoloured fireballs of terrible beauty burst into the sky like fireworks. Then Hoyts’ Druggists caught fire, engulfing the whole of the block of Earl Street. There was a lot of turpentine there and the colours leaped up, blue and gold and flaming red. An oil works near Abbey Street was next, and a solid sheet of blinding flame leapt a hundred feet in the air. There was a heavy bombardment as drums of oil exploded. It was only a matter of time before my own house was engulfed. And yet I watched, mesmerized by the rainbow flames.

  “The Imperial’s next! We need to get a message to them!” I worried that May, Anto’s sister, might be there and without thinking charged onto the street with a couple of others.

  Bullets still fell on the street like hailstones but we made it across to the hotel and gave them the message. Most of the guests and staff had been evacuated already, including May no doubt, but some of the rebels came back with us. Somebody gave me a large mattress as a shield against the bullets and a group of us made our way back across the street to the GPO underneath it. We must have looked very odd indeed. As I turned to run, I saw the huge plate-glass windows of Clerys store run molten into the channel of the street kerb, a river of liquid glass.

  As we ran in through the Prince’s Street entrance, a rebel from the Imperial who had crossed the street with me said, “There was a phone and I rang the fire brigade like an eejit. They told me they were going to let the fires burn out!” I wondered if my father had managed to repair the telephone lines.

  The noise of bursting glass, the fall of burning masonry was terrible, the heat appalling. Despite dousing the barricades outside the GPO with water, they kept bursting into flames.

  Steam rose off the windows, the ledgers smouldered. The smoke was terrible, choking and acrid. Sackville Street was an inferno.

  I went back to Connolly who slept fitfully. I mopped his brow and tried to get him to take some water, as Lieutenant Mahoney was worried he would become dehydrated in the heat. The light in our room was as bright as day now in the lurid glow of the flames.

  The flames engulfed the tower of the DBC, the copper and glass twisting and bending and falling like a melted icicle. I thought of their delivery boy, stout little Tommy Keenan, on Stephen’s Green. If he was still alive, he would have no job to go to.

  Patrick Pearse, his face flushed by the heat, came to see the surgeon about Connolly. I knew it was useless to question Pearse about Jack.

  He looked at the flames intently and spoke to one of his soldiers. “It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?”

  His companion replied slowly that it was.

  “When we are all wiped out, people will blame us for everything. But without our protest, nothing would have been done after the war. After a few years, people will see the meaning of what we tried to do.”

  He had voiced the same thoughts all week, but now with his face lit up with fire in the heat of battle, his words were like a terrible prophecy fulfilled. It had gone from wiping out the stains of history to this. It was indeed going to be a wipe-out.

  I fear we are all doomed to burn to death, like Joan of Arc on the stake. Except some of us never chose this.

  Huge mountains of billowing jet-black smoke rose in the air. The world was ending. We were trapped in a ring of fire.

  Mr Connolly was dreaming at one point and started to call out, “Mona! Mona!”

  I held his hand and he awoke briefly, searching my face with pain in his eyes.

  “I thought you were my wee Mona coming out of the flames. How old are you, child?” he asked in his soft Scottish burr. For Mr Connolly had been born and bred in Edinburgh and had never lost the accent.

  I told him.

  “I had a girl like you. Died when she was thirteen. Her apron caught fire when she was helping a friend boil water for the washing. Just before we went to America.”

  I mopped his brow. “I’m so sorry for your trouble.”

  “My first born. My wife wanted a boy but I was always as happy with girls. My boy was here. I sent him away on Wednesday.’

  “Did you send my brother Jack over to the Independent offices in Abbey Street?” I asked him but he didn’t seem to hear me.

  “My wife said Roddy was too young too fight but I said he was fifteen and could decide for himself. But it got too hot . . . and to please her . . .”

  He was talking about his own son Roddy, the name of the messenger I had heard him mention to Mick Collins.

  I tried to ask him about Jack again but he was wincing with pain and anxious to say what was on his mind.

  “We might still make it. But if you do and I don’t, will you visit my Mona’s grave for me?”

  I held his hand. “I will try.”

  “She’s buried in plot JL174 in Glasnevin.” He paused and winced the shadow of pain in his eyes. “A pauper’s grave. No headstone. That’s how poor we were. She would have been twenty-four and I pray we do not face her fate.”

  He was exhausted from the effort of speaking and fell back asleep.

  & & &

  I recall my dream less than a week ago, of Jack consumed by fire. As the flames leap and jump, the whole of Dublin lit up by the glare, I too pray I will not die in this inferno. I am too tired to write any more.

  Friday 28th April – late afternoon.

  The GPO.

  I was glad to awake to another dawn this morning and the first thing I saw out of the windows was Nelson’s Pillar emerging faintly from smoke. The weather promised to be fine and sunny as usual this week. There is still the acrid smell of burning in the air, which gags in the back of my mouth.

  While I slept on a pallet on the floor beside Connolly’s iron bed, I dreamed that Jack came to me and roused me by the shoulder.

  “Molly, I have one more mission to fulfill. Special orders. Do not try to follow me. If I fail, console our parents.”

  As he leaned over me, his head framed in the arch of the window, a ring of blue, orange and crimson flames surrounded him.

  “Tell father and mother I did not fire one shot but have died for the cause I believe in.”

  I heard Connolly groan in his sleep and opened my eyes to see Jack’s beautiful face break into a smile. He kissed me lightly on the brow.

  That kiss awoke me. I leaned up on my elbows, my head groggy with sleep, my eyes swimming. I looked at the doorway to see an elusive shape disappear.

  “Jack!” I jumped up and called his name, the dream was so vivid.

  I returned to my bedside vigil by Connolly.

  The illusion was so real, I almost believed it was him. But I am so tired, my nerves so wretched, I was sure my mind was playing tricks on me.

  I went as close as I dared to the window. I could not see our house from the GPO. It will be a miracle if it still stands. Smoke billowed like from a volcano down the wide thoroughfare.

  Connolly wasn’t much better but he was more lucid. Ryan has prevailed on him to take morphine, a powerful drug for the pain. All morning people came and went to his bedside.

  I tensed when I saw Seán McLoughlin, the young dispatch messenger who was at the Independent offices.

  I hovered close to the bedside and heard Connolly say to him, “You have seen more of Dublin than any of us. We better keep you with us. You are calm under fire. Give the order to withdraw all outposts. We will make one last stand.”

  As Seán left to give the instructions, I followed him and asked him if Jac
k had gone to the Independent.

  “I sent him here this morning at the crack of dawn, about six. He came back straightaway with a message for our outpost to fall back to the GPO. That’s why we’re here.”

  My hope rose once more. “Is he resting somewhere?” I asked eagerly. But he shrugged and departed with greater urgency.

  I went back to Connolly and questioned him gently. He had not seen Jack since he sent him to the Independent. So someone else must have issued the order for him to go back to Sean McLoughlin at the Independent offices with the instruction for them to retreat to the GPO.

  I once more searched the building inch by inch. The smoke cleared as the day wore on. The fire is burnt out and my beloved Sackville Street is gone! Only rubble and ruins remain and facades of burnt-out buildings.

  Pearse issued more fanciful bulletins about saving Ireland’s honour and even Connolly, propped on his iron bed, dictated a pronouncement about how the men of North County Dublin had occupied all the police barracks.

  There is a lot of chaos. While some people have food, others are cursing the quartermaster in charge of food for being so sparing in his rations. But he has a difficult job. How do we know how long we have to last out?

  I searched among the prisoners in the basement and all the secret places I know of in the GPO – out in the yard, among the old mail sacks. Still no trace of my brother.

  Like a pebble tossed in a pool, the rippling image of my brother that came to me in my dream fanned through my mind. As I searched, I began to believe that my dream of Jack was real. As real as the breath on my forehead. I went back to sit by Connolly’s bed. When I bent down to retrieve a spoon, I saw the little soldier standing sentry, top left by the leg of the bed. Jack had left his calling card! That makes eight tin soldiers in all.