I was going to question all the leaders, determined now to find out where he was. I saw Pearse as he sat quietly writing. Even as everything disintegrated around him, there was a stillness surrounding the man that I was afraid to interrupt. But I was desperate.
“Mr Pearse, sir. Have you seen my brother? I know he was here this morning.”
There was a faraway look in his eyes that told me he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
“Willie is about somewhere.” He thought I was speaking of his own brother. But then he looked at me candidly. “My brother is devoted to me. I can only hope that my mother will be consoled that both her sons died for Ireland. I am writing a poem for her.”
I did not dare to ponder what my own mother would think. She would find a poem a poor substitute for her children.
Neither Connolly nor Pearse knew where Jack was. That left Plunkett, the one with the throat operation, Seán Mac Diarmada, Michael Collins and The O’Rahilly. There was also Tom Clarke. Jack had been sent to Fairview with a message for his wife on the very first day.
If Jack had been sent out again while the British were tightening the ring of steel around the GPO, it would be a suicide mission. He was running out of lives.
But there was lots of confusion and disarray. At some stage I saw Tom Clarke instruct a young Cumann na mBan woman called Leslie to go fetch a priest. She didn’t want to go but he looked into her eyes, almost hypnotizing her. She went out to cross Sackville Street, suppressing her tears.
Then Mac Diarmada rushed up to him and they were locked in discussion. I could not get near them.
I gave up running around the building and decided to stick by Connolly, figuring everyone would come to see him at some stage.
At around 3 o’clock serious shelling started. Someone said the GPO wouldn’t burn as the roof was made of concrete. I ran into the Instrument Room and looked up at the arched ceiling. There was a little hole burnt in the plaster about the size of a teacup. The O’Rahilly and Liam Tannam went out through the skylight to take a look at what at caused the breach. I climbed up behind them on the ladder. Blackish smoke was starting to billow.
“I think it’s steam,” The O’Rahilly said. “There’s no flames.”
“No, it’s black, sir.”
“Get the fire extinguishers!”
The blaze grew. So much for the concrete roof. Time was running out.
In the Telegraph Room, they were dousing the floor with water in the hope it wouldn’t catch fire.
I collided with Michael Collins but the big Corkman, his clothes singed, was in a terrible temper. He softened when I asked him about Jack but he knew nothing either.
“The gunboat Helga has come up the Liffey and is bombing the living daylights out of us. If he’s off somewhere, he’s well out of it, for we’re going to have to evacuate. It’s madness being holed up in these buildings. We’d stand more chance in small units in the streets.” He looked miserable and angry at the terrible end that was facing us all.
I thought about speaking to Joseph Plunkett but, when I approached him, he was giving a large ring to Connolly’s secretary, Winifred Carney.
“For my fiancée Grace, if I don’t make it,” he said.
I knew in my heart he was half in the next world already and knew little of the details of the fighting, though he spent a lot of time making notes in a little book. So I left him to his sorrow.
Liam Tannam, who’d been up on the roof, ran down. “We need to get all the bombs and homemade grenades from the top floor,” he shouted. “Get the Citizen Army and the prisoners to bring them down to the basement!”
The place became a seething pit of confusion. The prisoners, terrified and hunched, carried the home-made bombs, tin cans with pieces of match sticking out of them, back down to the basement only for someone to re-direct them out into the courtyard. They looked terrified they’d explode in their hands. Burning masonry was now falling from the ceiling. An officer suggested to The O’Rahilly to let the prisoners go, but he did not want to expose them to the danger outside.
I took the opportunity to ask him about my brother. But he didn’t know. But I was touched that he’d noticed I’d cut off my hair.
I saw the priest, Father Flanagan, going around listening to confessions, and soldiers were making their wills. Liam Tannam swaggered about smoking a cigar, trying to cheer everyone up. But he was one of the few able to keep up morale.
I decided to try to speak to Tom Clarke again. He was sitting holding his revolver in the main hall. Mac Diarmada was arguing with him.
“I am not leaving here,” said Tom Clarke. “I will go down with the building.” So he was determined to be Joan of Arc.
“But, Tom, there is always a chance we might make it,” argued Mac Diarmada passionately.
Despite the fraught nature of their talk, I had to seize my chance.
Mac Diarmada realized that I was standing beside him.
“Is it about Connolly?”
“My brother Jack . . . the messenger . . .”
Tom Clarke lifted his face, his eyes penetrating, and he gave me a look of infinite sorrow. I could not finish my questioning but stood there silent, on the verge of tears. His old face, weathered by fifteen years in British jails, looked so stricken.
“We have not seen your brother,” Mac Diarmada said gently.
I ran out and sat in a corner, shaking. All week the urgency to find my brother had driven me to seek him through hails of bullets, in strange corners and maximum danger. But my courage was beginning to fail me. I could not walk through fire.
Luckily for me, Jim Ryan came to find me to help with looking after Connolly whose pain was worsening. It was hard to breathe with all the smoke swirling about.
As I mopped Connolly’s brow, Lieutenant Mahoney looked intently at me.
“You said your surname was O’Donovan, didn’t you? You are very like your late grandfather, Molly,” he said.
I looked up, astonished.
“He gave us a lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons when I was a student. He had a high reputation in Goa.”
“He died before we knew him,” I said sadly.
“He was famous for running a clinic for the natives and never turned a sick person away. He would have been proud to see how you have worked to help the wounded.”
It was as if, through Lieutenant Mahoney, my grandfather had reached from the world beyond to give me a tender hug. His words turned the tide of despair and gloom for me. I felt a spark ignite again in my heart. I would not give up on Jack yet.
I was helping Lieutenant Mahoney change Connolly’s dressing when we were told to go to the main hall. The supplies were running low and I thought about how it was only a few days ago that I’d dried out the moss in the basement. We used a broom handle broken in two to fix the split for his leg. Connolly thanked me for my work.
Pearse now told all the women, the wounded and the prisoners to leave.
“Go to the Coliseum Theatre – it is fire proof,” he instructed them. “And from there to Jervis Street Hospital.”
Lieutenant Mahoney and Father Flanagan led the wounded and the prisoners out.
I was about to go back to Connolly, when Liam Tannam put his hand on my arm. “Molly, that means you too. You have more chance of finding your brother alive than dead.”
Reluctantly, I joined the evacuees. Where would I start to find him, now that the rebellion was collapsing? Even if Jack had made it out, searching for him was going to be like looking for a needle in a burning haystack.
With terrible urgency, the group of women, medics, prisoners and wounded went through the tunnelling and across the roofs into the Coliseum Theatre.
It felt so strange and eerie to be in that large, empty theatre of three thousand seats. It had only been open one year exactly and the nap of the plush red velvet was still fresh. We had nothing but matches to illuminate us. But the flickering shadows showed we were in the main auditorium.
It was hard to manage the prisoners. One fellow who was carried in a blanket had severe wounds: shrapnel under his eye, a bullet wound in his chest and one in his abdomen. I prayed he didn’t die during the evacuation.
I could tell the priest and the doctors were nervous and tense. We felt like rats in a trap.
Then Father Flanagan groped around and tried to lower the safety curtain in case the fire spread inside. As the curtain fell we all jumped and to our horror it was smouldering. Our ragged group struggled out of the auditorium with the wounded and Father Flanagan saw a light under a doorway. We pushed against it and it flew open. We were staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Halt.”
It was a rebel unit that had been sent to check out the theatre as place of refuge. They were scared and twitchy. One of them was raving in the corner.
“Put away those guns and help with the wounded,” the priest said to them angrily. “We’ve got to get out of here to the hospital.”
After an argument, the soldiers did as he asked and prepared to carry the wounded who were in blankets.
I looked around at the chrome and mirrors of the bar, the groaning injured men, the priest, the shaking and frightened rebels, and I had a sudden memory of my last visit here, sneaking in to see the gymnastics.
“I know the best way out,” I said in a small voice.
But the priest heard me and I led them to the side exit where Jack and I sometimes crept in. This led to a shortcut into Abbey Street.
While Father Flanagan was making a Red Cross flag from a nurse’s apron and a broom handle, a rebel took out a cream cracker wrapped in a hankie. He broke it and handed me half. I thanked him and ate it. I suddenly smiled to myself.
“The British will think we eat nothing but cream crackers, if they find the crumbs,” I said. “Even the leaders share them with each other.”
The rebel soldier grinned amiably but I had a sudden revelation. I remembered the tin of cream crackers from de Valera. Connolly had said that Jack was on “a special”, no doubt meaning special operation. De Valera had said “Yellow Bittern” to me. Was it a code word? Maybe Jack wasn’t just carrying messages but something else in that battered old tin of cream crackers? Documents maybe? And he had been sent to Fairview with a message for Tom Clarke’s wife. And what about all the tin soldiers? I knew I had to speak again to Tom Clarke. He held the key to Jack’s destination.
Nobody noticed me slip away in the dark Coliseum Theatre.
There was falling, burning masonry across the GPO yard as I dashed back inside.
& & &
I am writing down the day’s events to calm my nerves, crouched at the bottom of the stairs in the main hall. Even though it’s likely both diary and I will perish in the flames. I might die without ever having solved the mystery around Jack.
Midnight Friday 28th April.
Moore Street.
I’m still alive, thank God! Who knows for how much longer but it’s a miracle any of us got out of that inferno.
Inside the GPO, there was pandemonium as the evening drew on. Everyone was gathered near the Henry Street exit, screaming and shouting at the top of their voices. Liam was still there, smoking his cigar, spluttering now in the smoke-filled building.
“The O’Rahilly has gone down to Moore Street to find a retreat. It’s a suicide mission,” said young McLoughlin.
I heard the O’Rahilly shout, “For the Glory of God and the honour of Ireland!” Then a fusillade of gunshot.
I felt sick. It would be a miracle if he survived.
I ran back into the main hall and frantically searched round for Tom Clarke. There was grave danger now that the ceiling would collapse. Suddenly, Liam Tannam began to sing: “Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland . . .”
The song by Peadar Kearney who I’d met in Jacobs’ Mill. I looked at the blackened, haggard faces of the rebels, most of them young and beautiful, and I felt a deep deep sorrow. They were all so amazing and pure of heart. What had brought them all to this madness? Surely we were not going to perish in this deathtrap?
I went back to the Henry Street entrance.
“The O’Rahilly has fallen!” a rebel soldier at the door roared.
I heard Patrick Pearse shout, “We must evacuate to Moore Street!”
Volleys of shots rained down Henry Street, so I did not know how this was possible, as the best way down was through Henry Place, an L-shaped alley about seventy yards to the right and opposite. But machine-gun and rifle fire raked down Henry Street. Crossing it would be a suicide mission. Bullets boomed and ricocheted in the narrow canyon of the street.
Another group of soldiers including Liam Tannam went out to reconnoitre. Seán McLoughlin was gone too. I did not expect to see them alive again with machine gunfire sweeping the street.
I do not rightly know how I got to Moore Street. Events became a blur of fleeting impressions. Someone, I think the medic Jim Ryan, grabbed my arm and I was in the party with the leaders, the wounded and James Connolly.
There was a crush, a panic. People were carrying odd provisions – a leg of ham, a case of eggs – and crossing the lane in twos and threes.
I saw the bullets like hailstones hopping on the streets. With head down, as if running against heavy rain, I ran as I had never run before and got into the L-shaped Henry Place.
I heard Seán Mac Diarmada say, “My God, we are not going to be caught like rats and killed without a chance to fight!”
Behind us, the GPO was a burning pyre and the only light in the lane was the terrible glare in the skies. The wounded were groaning but we could not attend to them.
“I’ve lost all my medical supplies! They were in a basket,” I heard Jim Ryan shout out in anguish.
Here there was more panic. The sky was darkening at dusk, the shadows rising. But we had to pass through a cloud of white dust, shot off a whitewashed building in a hail of bullets. Some of the rebels created an obstruction with a motor van to block the shots raining down on us and we crossed into Moore Street.
“Occupy the buildings!” instructed Tom Clarke.
We were behind Cogan’s Grocers at Number 12 at the corner of Henry Place and Moore Street. Someone shot the lock off a cottage door at the back of the shop. I heard later that the sixteen-year-old daughter Bridget McKane was shot dead by the bullet but I walked through the building in a blur and didn’t see anything. I followed with the group, as the men broke their way through the bare walls using a crowbar. The work was so exhausting some of the men fell down asleep. From the greengrocer’s, the men tunneled though all the way to O’Hanlon’s fish shop.
I stayed with Connolly who was brought into Cogan’s Grocers. We were taken into the kitchen and Connolly was laid on the stretcher on the floor. Sitting with us were Miss Julia Grennan, Elizabeth Farrell, Seán Mac Diarmada, Tom Clarke, Patrick Pearse, Willie Pearse and Joseph Plunkett.
Seán McLoughlin came in. “We are surrounded,” he said.
They had a conversation among themselves. He told us all to sleep.
There was talk of a “death or glory” squad to break out through the streets and head to the Four Courts for a final battle, leaving the wounded behind.
There were seventeen wounded in the retreat from the GPO and I spent the night helping Nurse O’Farrell and medic Jim Ryan, attending to their needs.
Jim Ryan was very upset about losing the morphine to help Connolly’s pain in the retreat down Moore Lane. When Nurse O’Farrell asked him how he was, Connolly said, “Bad.” When I helped Jim Ryan change a dressing I saw that his leg was turning grayish-green. There was a putrid smell. Gangrene was setting in, Jim said. Connolly spent most of the night groaning in pain.
Around us, the roar of burning buildings, machines guns and hand grenades crashed like violent waves on a tiny boat. But even as everything came to its bloody end, I still was not going to give up my fight to find Jack. It was my duty and I clung to it as the only thing to keep me going. There was a lull durin
g the night and all was eerie and still for a time. The silence was almost worse than the guns. I pinched myself to stay awake. Pearse and his brother had gone upstairs and made their bed on a wide table. McLoughlin slept on the floor.
When Connolly dosed fitfully, I crept up the stair, terrified to make a sound in case someone shot me out of fright.
Tom Clarke was sleeping on a mattress in a room further upstairs but, as I summoned my courage at the door to speak to him, I heard a whispered conversation between him and Seán Mac Diarmada.
“All is lost,” Tom Clarke said. “But if the boy makes it, at least the women and children can be cared for.”
I did not need to question him. The women and children would be cared for . . . I remembered that long-ago conversation between Kathleen Clarke and Patrick Pearse when I ran into the shop. I had been puzzled about de Valera sending Tom Clarke an old tin of Jacob’s Cream Crackers, thinking perhaps it was a peculiar souvenir for Mrs Clarke. And Jack had been sent to her in Richmond Avenue on Easter Monday. The pieces of the puzzle fell together in a shape.
With a flash of insight, I knew what was being smuggled. I grappled in my knapsack and felt for one of the toy soldiers belonging to Jack. Using my scissors I prised off the bottom. Inside was a rolled-up crisp banknote. I opened it out. A hundred pounds! I had solved the mystery of Jack’s mission. I opened the others, eight in all, and they all had rolled-up banknotes. I noticed one of the tin soldiers, which was rather larger than the others also had a tiny piece of paper with list of numbers that I guessed were some sort of code. He was smuggling money, gathering all the funds of the rebels for the safe keeping of Kathleen Clarke.
The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History) Page 19