1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  As he was walking to the tram stop on the thirteenth of August he passed a newsagency and the headline of the Cork Examiner leaped out at him. He bought a copy and read incredulously: “Yesterday evening Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney was arrested in City Hall while attending a meeting of the Sinn Féin Arbitration Court. Also arrested were several ranking officers of the Cork Brigade, including Liam Lynch. The lord mayor was transported under military escort to Victoria Barracks. There he was charged with taking part in illegal activities and possession of a police cipher code. When the authorities demanded that he remove his chain of office MacSwiney refused. Instead he has gone on hunger strike.”

  Dublin trams were always either ahead of schedule or behind. This morning the tram was late. Henry had time to read the article again before it arrived. On the ride to Terenure he sat staring blankly at an advertisement for White’s Delicious Crystal Jellies over the window opposite his seat.

  Erskine Childers had a copy of the Examiner lying open on his mahogany desk. On this morning his eyes were sparking fire. “Those bloody swine!” he exclaimed as Henry entered his study. “Terry, of all people. How dare they attack him after what they did to Tomás?”

  “Do you want me to ask them?” Henry inquired, fighting to keep his own anger under control. “I’m on my way down there.”

  “Are you sure you feel up to it? I don’t like the idea of you traveling when—”

  “There’s a train to Cork this afternoon and I’ll be on it,” Henry said determinedly. “I’ll have the story back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Michael Collins was here only a few minutes ago. He left this for you.” Childers handed Henry one of Collins’ familiar contact lists. “He was that certain you’d be going to Cork.”

  “Where was he going?”

  Erskine Childers, who loved adventure but had an intense dislike of violence, said through tight lips, “Mick’s going to order the squad to shoot the first half-dozen G-men they see leaving Dublin Castle.”

  SPENDING six hours on a jolting train was agony. Henry endured it with gritted teeth, cursing the British, the Great Southern Railway, the weather, and life in general.

  He was not allowed to interview MacSwiney. Nor was the lord mayor’s wife allowed to visit her husband until the day his trial—a court martial—began on the sixteenth of August. There was already considerable interest from the foreign press. “The county of Cork is a hotbed of IRA rebellion,” an English reporter had written. “In July the rebels murdered the divisional commander of the Royal Irish Constabulary, claiming he had attempted to incite his policemen into violent acts against the populace. This is of course scurrilous and defamatory.”

  As he sat among the other journalists at the trial Henry wrote in his notebook: “Lord Mayor MacSwiney appears pale but composed. He has been without food for four days. He is standing trial alone because the IRA officers arrested with him were released by mistake. According to rather embarrassed testimony this morning, the authorities had employed British soldiers who did not fully realize the importance of their captives. The use of soldiers was an attempt to distance the operation from the murder of Tomás MacCurtáin by policemen.”

  During the interval Henry made his way to Muriel MacSwiney. “I’m so sorry about this,” he told her.

  “Why? It’s not your fault.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Thank you, but no. Isn’t it strange that people always ask that? There’s nothing anyone can do, yet they ask.”

  “Is someone minding the baby?”

  “My sister-in-law’s taking care of her. She’ll be all right. It’s Terry I’m worried about. He must be so hungry. I would give anything if only I could cook him a proper meal. But what about yourself, Mr. Mooney? Why, you’re limping.” Her brow creased with concern.

  “It’s nothing—a minor injury, I assure you. Didn’t take a feather out of me.” Henry was touched that in spite of all her troubles, Muriel MacSwiney took time to notice his.

  The military prosecutor brought several charges against MacSwiney based on papers found during an unauthorized search of his office and “likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty.” MacSwiney’s speech following Tomás MacCurtáin’s murder, when he had expressed the determination of Cork Corporation not to be intimidated by official acts of terror, was also used against him.

  The tribunal deliberated for no more than fifteen minutes. During this time MacSwiney and his wife talked together in Irish. When the president of the tribunal returned, he announced that MacSwiney had been found guilty on three of four charges. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

  Terence MacSwiney then made the final statement allowed him. “You have got to realize that the Irish Republic is really existing,” he told the court. “The gravest offense that can be committed is against the head of state. The offence is only relatively less great when committed against the head of a city.”

  Under the laws of the Republic of Ireland, MacSwiney insisted, the British government had no right to try him. He concluded by saying, “I wish to state that I will put a limit to any term of imprisonment you may impose. I have taken no food since Thursday. I shall be free, alive or dead, in a month.”

  What sort of men and women have we in Ireland? I thought valor died with Pearse and Plunkett and MacDonagh; I was afraid that integrity was a casualty of war.

  I was wrong.

  That same night Terence MacSwiney was sent to Brixton Prison in England, putting him at a safe distance from the other Cork hunger strikers. There was nothing more Henry could do for him in Cork. But there were other stories to be told.

  The first name and address on the list Collins had given him was Tom Barry, Bandon, West Cork.

  Henry hitched a ride with a grocery suppliers’ van headed southwest from the city. He rode in the front with the driver while the bicycle he had borrowed from Michael Harrington rode in the back, wedged between stacked cartons of Oxo and Germolene. The lush, fertile area through which they drove gave little hint of the general West Cork landscape: bogland and wasteland and rugged mountains. Poor land and impoverished people.

  The valley of the Bandon was Big House country. Secure behind the high walls of extensive demesnes, British loyalists hunted game on their private lands, fished their private streams, and entertained members of their own class through the efforts of retinues of servants—servants whose ancestors had once owned these same lands.

  Henry sat watching the scene unfold past the van window.

  “Have you people in Bandon town?” the van driver asked conversationally.

  “My father’s mother was a Cork woman, but she’s been dead for many years.”

  “Godamercyonher,” responded the driver.

  “I’m not looking for relatives. I’m…ah…interested in the military.”

  “Plenty of British soldiers around Bandon,” the driver said darkly. He spat out the window. “One of ’em has a nasty accident every now and again.”

  “I’m looking for the Republican Army.”

  The man turned to Henry with a gap-toothed grin. “Why dint you say so? It’s the First Battalion, West Cork Brigade you want then. I’ve two brothers with the IRA myself. You don’t look much like a recruit, though,” he added, eyeing Henry’s good suit.

  “You never can tell,” said Henry.

  The van driver let him out at the last crossroads before Bandon town. “You don’t want to ask a lot of questions in the town, because there’s an army barracks there,” he warned. “They wouldn’t be friendly. Just last month an RIC sergeant, the chief intelligence officer for the British forces in West Cork, was shot dead on the steps of the church. It was the one place he thought he was safe. He went everywhere else with an escort of Black and Tans. The lads who did him just walked away; no one tried to stop them.” The driver grinned again. “If you want to find the First Battalion HQ, follow that road off to the left for a mile or so. Go straight until you come to another crossroads.
Turn left, then right, then left again, maybe three more miles. You can’t miss it,” he assured Henry. “A sentry will have seen you coming.”

  The road was far from straight: twisty and winding and deeply rutted, barely navigable for a man on a bicycle with a healing bullet wound in his hip. When he came to the crossroads, Henry had to stop. He leaned his bicycle against a tumbled-down stone wall while he caught his breath, then stepped to the center of the crossroads.

  He stood in the middle of a vast emptiness.

  Four roads going four ways and no traffic. No people. Not even an ass and cart.

  Henry listened to the tides of blood beating in his ears.

  At length he remounted the bicycle and pedaled on.

  Like most Irish directions, the van driver’s were a marvel of imprecision. When Henry felt sure he had gone at least ten miles, the last five in considerable pain, he dismounted again and eased himself into a sitting position at the side of the road.

  Amid the blazing yellow blossom of a furze bush a small bird sang. A gentle wind blew in from the sea, shivering the grass. Henry closed his eyes for a moment.

  “D’you have any weapons on you?” a mild voice inquired.

  THE sentry, who had been watching Henry from concealment for the last half-mile, was a lad of twenty-two or-three. He was brandishing a pitchfork like a bayonet.

  “I have a revolver in my coat pocket,” Henry told him.

  “Give it over.”

  “I could shoot you with it instead.”

  “You could,” the sentry agreed. “But the noise would bring fifty men down on you at once and you’d never leave here alive. Give me your gun, please, and come with me.”

  Please. Henry handed him the weapon.

  It was beginning to rain.

  They wheeled the bicycle between them across an expanse of boggy field. When Henry paused to bend down and remove his bicycle clips from his trousers, the sentry watched with fascination. “Where’d ye get them things?”

  “Dublin.”

  “Ah,” the young man said in a tone reserved for addressing wonders and marvels. Obviously Dublin belonged in the mythical realms of Camelot and Xanadu. “And what d’you do there?”

  “I’m a journalist. My name’s Henry Mooney.” He held out his hand.

  The young man took the proffered hand and gave it a vigorous shake. “A newspaperman? Say, I have an inclination that way myself. I’m thinking of applying to the Cork Examiner for a job. D’you happen to know anyone there?”

  “I do.”

  “Would you put in a good word for me?”

  “Consider it done.”

  The rain fell harder. On the far side of the field they came to a cut bank, below which the ground fell away sharply. Snugged into the lee of the bank, and well hidden until one was almost upon them, were three tents. The sentry whistled; four men emerged from one of the tents and trotted toward them. “Who’ve you got there, Ellis?”

  “A journalist from Dublin. Says he’s looking for Tom Barry.”

  “He’s found him,” called a voice from the largest tent. “Bring him in to me.”

  Henry was escorted into an old British army tent that sagged from its tent pole with the weight of the rain. Tom Barry was sitting on a packing case, eating a sandwich. He was in his early twenties, with tousled brown hair, a square face, and a short upper lip. Instead of a uniform he wore a tightly belted trenchcoat, but when he stood up to greet Henry he carried himself with military bearing.

  “I have a note,” said Henry, “which will identify me. It’s in my sock. May I show you?”

  Barry gave Henry’s suit the same look the van driver had. “Wait a minute.” He unfolded a newspaper—the Examiner, Henry observed—and spread it on the packing case. “Here, sit on this. You must be perished with the cold. Bring him a wee drop of whiskey, somebody.”

  Henry lowered himself with difficulty. He was getting stiff. He removed his shoe and sock and handed Collins’ note to Barry, who read it through twice. “So the Bulletin readers want to know what we’re getting up to in West Cork,” he said. “It’s about time.”

  “What’s your strength in manpower? We won’t print that, you understand; it’s just for my own information.”

  “We have seven battalions organized around the major towns,” Barry replied.2 His manner was calm and confident, that of a man already accustomed to command. “The Bandon battalion’s the largest; thirteen companies. We’re all volunteers; no one draws pay. And we’re dreadfully underequipped. Right now the whole Cork Brigade has only about thirty-five serviceable rifles and slightly fewer pistols and revolvers. But what we lack in arms, we make up in the spirit of the men. They’ve already proved they’re willing to endure empty bellies and sleep in hayfields and, most important of all, to accept strict military discipline. I say without fear of contradiction—and this you can print—that nine out of ten of these fellows are prepared to give their lives for the Republic.3

  “As the brigade training officer, I’m in charge of setting up real training camps for them, starting next month. There will be five camps for both officers and men, and the good women of Cumann na mBan are going to see to feeding us. When training’s completed each camp will become a flying column. Every brigade is more or less autonomous, and we intend to make West Cork Brigade the best in the whole Irish Republican Army.”

  “Did you have any prior military experience?” Henry asked.

  Tom Barry smiled. “The best or the worst, depending on your point of view. I’m Cork born and bred, but I enlisted in the British army on my seventeenth birthday.4 There wasn’t anything exciting happening for a young lad in Cork in those days. That’s why a lot of us enlisted. Not for king or empire; we just had an itch and we needed to scratch it.

  “I was assigned to the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, so I saw a lot of action. Learned a lot from what I saw, too. In May of ’16 we were trying to break through and rescue General Townsend at Kut-al-Imara, where the Germans and the Turks had him pinned down. One evening when I went to the orderly tent someone had posted a commuiqué from home. ‘Rebellion in Dublin,’ it said. That was the first time I ever heard any mention of the idea of an Irish republic. In my school days I could name you every king and queen of England but was taught nothing of Irish history.

  “The rebellion got me thinking about my own country. I set myself to learning everything I could about our relationship with England. Didn’t take me long to realize that a war for Irish independence was infinitely more worthwhile than supporting British imperialism. So as soon as the Great War was over, I came home and joined the IRA.

  “For our new recruits, I sum up what I’ve learned in one sentence. ‘You need caution and courage in equal measure,’ I tell them, ‘and in that order, not the other way around.”

  As Tom Barry spoke, Henry forgot how young he was. The strong bones of his mature character showed through his youthful flesh like the bare winter tree glimpsed through summer’s foliage. “Do you remember when the police murdered Tomás MacCurtáin?” he asked.

  “I do remember,” the journalist replied. “As a matter of fact I was in Cork when it happened.”

  “A man called Swanzy was the RIC district inspector for MacCurtáin’s area. He’d hounded MacCurtáin for years and finally got him. After the jury brought a verdict against the police Swanzy was transferred, but some of the lads have found him in County Antrim. We’re sending a squad of Cork men up there to do him; every one of them volunteered for the job.”5

  Henry shifted on his packing crate. The pain in his hip had become a drumbeat. “What can you do about Terence MacSwiney?”

  “I don’t know…yet. He was arrested and deported so fast we couldn’t organize to break him out.”

  “He’s threatened to starve himself to death, you know.”

  “If he does,” said Barry grimly, “Cork will rise to avenge him.”

  Henry spent the night in a leaking tent talking with Tom Barry. Sometime during t
he long hours his wound and its circumstances are mentioned; he tried to be offhand about it. “I’ll have a scar but no lasting damage—not like a friend of mine who’ll probably suffer from a head wound for the rest of his life.”

  “Still, being shot is no fun. Did it put the frighteners on you?”

  “It made me want to shoot back. Which reminds me…your sentry took a revolver off me. Would you like to keep it, since you have so few weapons?”

  “That’s very tempting,” said Barry, “but you may need it yourself one of these days. You’re not afraid to use it, are you?”

  “No,” said Henry.

  “Good. Once a man knows the meaning of fear, he has no business fighting.”

  WHEN Henry returned to Dublin, he barely noticed the welcome he received from number 16. The work he had to do was in the forefront of his mind, crowding everything else out—except Precious, whom he gave a mighty hug, a pocketful of boiled sweets, and an old snaffle bit he had seen hanging in a shop window.

  Then he went to his room and began to write.

  First he described the trial in angry but measured tones. Then he wrote a glowing tribute to the spirit and determination of the West Cork Brigade. He did not reveal any sensitive information with the exception of one item, which he had first cleared with Tom Barry. “Tell them,” Barry had insisted. “We want people to know what we’re up against.”

  Henry wrote: “Following the shooting of the head of British intelligence in Cork a number of Republicans were hunted down at random. Two of these were Tom Hales and Pat Harte. They were captured at Laragh and ordered to reveal the names of those involved in the shooting. When they refused they were tortured in front of witnesses, as if this were a Roman spectacle.

  “According to signed affidavits, Hales and Harte were stripped naked and brutally beaten.6 Then they were bound hand and foot and a charge of gun-cotton was strapped to their backs. The officer in charge vowed to ‘blow the anarchists to hell.’ They were allowed to savor the terror of this promise for some minutes before the attempt was made to set off the explosive. The detonators failed, however. The prisoners were then forced to run a gauntlet of bayonets and thrown into a lorry where they were beaten again. Hales was hit in the temple with a rifle butt.