Irish Mist

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Thank you,” he muttered absently.

  “They were with the Irregulars?”

  “The killers? Oh, yes. A few years later Dev’s party took over the country, but by then he had compromised with both the oath to the King and the division of Ireland.”

  “If he had done that earlier, there would not have been a Civil War and Collins and O’Higgins would have probably lived long lives.”

  Keenan nodded. “What might have been.… Dev had to face the same problem that Collins and O’Higgins faced: the IRA. intransigents. There’s always a new IRA, Dermot. There probably will be one after the present peace process wraps up. Dev outlawed them and repressed them as vigorously as had the Big Fella and Kevin. Between the early nineteen-thirties and the early nineteen-seventies there were frequent outbursts, not very important perhaps, but still people died. Then the Brits made their usual mistakes, and it’s been going on up north for more than a quartercentury.”

  “So,” I said, “you don’t really want a replay of the O’Higgins murder?”

  “Not if we can avoid it, not now anyway. Still, it’s not a matter of overwhelming importance like it once might have been.”

  “Why these three killers?”

  “Och, Dermot, that’s an even more twisted story. But since you and I are playing sennachie this morning let me tell you the story of Major General Sir Hugh Tudor.”

  “Who was he?”

  “He was sent to Ireland in 1920 to take over the Royal Irish Constabulary. The RIC had fallen apart. An Auxiliary Constabulary had replaced them, the Auxies, demobilized enlisted men from the army. Churchill told him to restore order, no matter what he had to do. He was also the commander of the Cadets, as they were called, unemployed officers who also had been demobbed. Many of them were war heroes, some of them with Victoria Crosses.”

  “You mean … ?”

  “Yes, Dermot. Because of the uniforms of the Auxies, they were called the Black and Tans. You might want to glance over this history some of our lads put together.”

  “I will.”

  “Now,” he said firmly, as though he were not convinced that I was fully literate.

  1 Irish Lace

  —11—

  LATER THAT day, after I had finished my conversation with the Commissioner, I scanned his historical record into my computer (with Paperport) and wrote an introductory note:

  The first port of this report is easy, Nuala. I didn’t hove to write a word. It’s a document compiled by historians of the Irish Guards that your man the Commissioner gave me. I’ve edited some of it out so as not to bore you, which heaven forbid.

  Hugh Tudor was the youngest man ever to become a major general in the British Army till that time. He had fought in India during the war and then in France. His division held the line during Passchendaele and thus prevented an even worse bloodbath. The name, by the way, was authentic. In fact, he was christened Henry Hugh Tudor as if he were King Henry IX. He was a descendent of the winning family in the War of the Roses. Probably he had a better claim on the English throne than the bourgeois Germans who have occupied it the last couple of centuries. It doesn’t seem that he cared much for that distinction.

  He was the last Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The son of a sub-dean of Exeter Cathedral, Henry Hugh Tudor was born at Newton Abbey, Devonshire, England, in 1870. On July 25, 1893, he became a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. When the Boer War started in 1899 he was serving with M Battery Royal Field Artillery at Woolwich. He was involved in the advance on Kimberley and was wounded at Magersfontein. While recovering in hospital, he received a message in December 1899 from Winston Spencer Churchill (who was then a war correspondent) wishing him a quick recovery and “all the luck of war.” Churchill later sent him autographed first edition copies of each book that he wrote. Tudor spent the remainder of the War serving on the Staff and by the end of the War he had reached the rank of Captain.

  He married his wife, Eve Edwards, in 1908. She was eighteen years old at the time, an exquisitely lovely young woman to judge by her pictures, and twenty years younger than Tudor. Like him she was the child of an impecunious Anglican clergyman. They had three children in the next twelve years, two daughters and a son.

  It’s hard to get a fix on what kind of a man he was. He seems to have been a typical British officer, spit and polish, ramrod stiff, devilishly handsome. He must have been more than that, however. He was brave but not foolishly so and very bright. Moreover, he made many friends, even among his own troops, and when he fled into exile it was to the land of one regiment of his division. On the basis of his service in Ireland, he was not overly troubled by conscience. Perhaps like many men who had fought in the trenches, the Great War twisted him.

  During that war, he served in both Egypt and India, but it was as commanding officer of the Ninth Scottish Division in France that he became renowned as a fine military leader. Tudor developed the creeping barrage and the box barrage to isolate fields of battle. The box barrage was smoke and heavy artillery bombardment on both sides and in front of the attacking area to isolate, thus preventing enfilade fire and reinforcements. The creeping and box barrages were used everywhere in the later stages of the war. He also became renowned in the British War Office for his use of smoke screens to cloak his troop movements, and in the process saved the lives of thousands of his men. In March of 1917 when there were massive Allied retreats throughout the western front, Tudor’s men stood fast. Churchill said that “Tudor was like an iron peg in the frozen ground.”

  Following the executions of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1918 threat of conscription there was widespread civil unrest and resistance (both armed and passive) to British rule in Ireland. The Sinn Fein MPs refused to go to Westminster and set up their own parliament and government. The Irish Volunteers were waging an intensive guerrilla war against the British establishment which many claim was sparked off by the ambush of two RIC officers at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary, on January 21, 1919.

  The Royal Irish Constabulary, which had earned the title of “Royal” from Queen Victoria for their part in quashing the Fenian Rising of 1867, were unable to contain the latest insurrection. Policemen (many of whom were Irish-born Catholics) were being killed and injured either in their barracks or while on patrol. One source reports that by the end of May 1920, 351 evacuated barracks were destroyed, 105 damaged, 15 occupied barracks were destroyed and 25 damaged, 19 Coastguard stations and lighthouses were raided for explosives and signaling equipment, 66 policemen and 5 soldiers were killed with 79 policemen and 2 soldiers wounded.

  De Valera and other members of the Sinn Fein government urged the shunning of the RIC and their families by their neighbors and friends and that the RIC should be treated as agents of a foreign power. As a result of the violence and shunning there were widespread resignations from the RIC.

  Lloyd George’s Westminster Government created a temporary police force to supplement and assist the RIC in their duties in the alarming situation which was developing in Ireland. The members of the new force were appointed as temporary constables. The Auxiliaries, as they were later called, were recruited from England, Scotland and Wales, with possibly a third of the new recruits from Ireland. They were rank and file World War One enlisted veterans who were then unemployed. They were employed on a contract basis and arrived in Ireland in March 1920.

  It was due to a shortage of the dark bottle green RIC uniforms that the “Auxies” were fitted out in a uniform which was half black (the dark bottle green police) and half khaki (army). Hence the name “Black and Tans.”

  A second temporary police force was created on July 27, 1920. This time the recruits were unemployed World War One veterans who had been officers during the war. They were given the rank of Cadets. They wore either the RIC uniform or army officers’ uniforms with dark Glengarry caps. Together these new forces became known as “Tudor’s Toughs” after their commanding officer. Sometimes he was called “Bloody Tu
dor.”

  In May 1920, at the recommendation of Churchill, who admired him enormously, the government appointed Tudor as the Inspector General of Ireland, the police advisor to the Viceroy and commanding officer of both the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). It was widely believed that he was ordered to bring order back to Ireland by whatever means necessary, no matter how ruthless.

  Like the German soldiers of World War One who invaded Belgium, Tudor’s troops were not trained in guerrilla warfare. Every civilian was a potential sniper and reprisals were widespread.

  The IRA’s Flying Columns were active in nearly every part of the country. Perhaps it was due to the frustration that they encountered in trying to capture and fight the hidden enemy that they ended up as looters, arsonists and murderers. Both sides engaged in bloody reprisals, the most notable was perhaps “Bloody Sunday,” November 1920. After 11 English intelligence agents were assassinated, the Black and Tans fired upon unarmed spectators and players who were playing Gaelic football.

  Many towns and villages were burned and looted by Tudor’s men. Two famous incidents which later involved Tudor occurred on February 9, 1921. On that date a contingent of Auxiliaries went on the rampage in Trim, County Meath, while in County Dublin near Drumcondra two young Irish prisoners were shot dead in a field by an Auxiliary commander named King. General Crozier went to investigate the Trim incident and dismissed 21 Auxiliary cadets and held 5 more to be tried for their part in the raid (two of whom later broke out and robbed a publican). He returned to investigate the Drumcondra shootings but later claimed the evidence was rigged. His power to dismiss Auxiliaries was taken away by Tudor in November 1920. Five of the Trim Cadets were later convicted and nineteen reinstated. Crozier resigned on February 25, 1921, and the London press filled with accounts of Tudor’s treatment of him and Black and Tans atrocities. Later, Mrs. Asquith, wife of the former British Prime Minister, commented to Crozier: “They tell me that you are as much a murderer as any of them, only you like things done in an orderly manner, and at Trim they were disorderly.”

  Peace eventually came with the Truce of July 1921 and Tudor’s Royal Irish Constabulary was disbanded following the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 and a new police force, (“The Civic Guard” later renamed the “Garda Siochana”), was created by the Irish Government. Many of the barracks once occupied by the RIC were handed over to the new police force. Dublin Castle was formerly handed over on August 17, 1922, when Commissioner Michael Staines led his new police force through the castle gates. The Dublin Metropolitan Police (the last of Tudor’s police forces) was finally amalgamated into the Garda Siochana in 1925.

  In 1922, Tudor like many other British veterans of the Anglo-Irish War (and the remnants of the Black and Tans) went to Palestine, where he was appointed General Officer Commanding and Inspector General of Police and Prisons. Three years later, at the age of 55, Tudor, who had been the youngest Major General to ever attain that rank in the British Army, retired. He emigrated to Newfoundland and began working for Ryan & Company, a fish merchant in Bonavista. He later moved to St. John’s and worked for George M. Barr’s fishing industry and resided with Barr’s family.

  His name rarely appears in any Irish history of those troubled times. He was completely forgotten in Ireland, but clearly remembered in England. In 1938, Tudor was invited to a royal reception held in honour of King George Vl’s visit to Newfoundland. According to Paul O’Neill in his book, Tudor attended, hoping that his Irish service would be unknown to the monarch, but when his name was announced, the King looked up and said in a loud voice, “Are you the man who commanded in Ireland?”

  There is no information available which would explain why the Irish forgot him and the English did not.

  He grew to love his adopted homeland and her people and became renowned for his equestrian skill. Illness and failing sight forced him to live his final years as a recluse. Tudor’s wife remained in London and was in Newfoundland only briefly. So be remained in his self-imposed exile without his wife, two daughters and son until his death in the Veterans Pavilion of the General Hospital, St. John’s, on September 25, 1965, at the age of 95.

  He was given a full military funeral with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (which was a component of the Ninth Scottish Division that he’d commanded during World War One) acting as his pall-bearers. His wife, two daughters, and son did not attend the funeral, but instead were represented at the funeral by J. D. Q’Driscoll, one of his friends and former army colleagues.

  After I had glanced over the first part of the document I looked up at Keenan.

  “Interesting,” I said cautiously

  “You wonder why the Deputy Commissioner of the Gardai would know so much about Tudor?”

  “I figure you’re a history buff.”

  “That I am, but there’s more to it. … You’ve noticed, I trust, that many English officers, the English newspapers, and some members of the English upper class like Lady Asquith disapproved of the tactics of Tudor’s toughs?”

  “More sensitive than I would have expected.”

  “Perhaps … but he also gained a reputation as a monster who was an embarrassment to England. Given their past history in this country, that must have meant that he was a pretty horrible person, did it not?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Moreover, by the time he retired in Palestine the IRA was no longer settling scores against English officers. So why go into exile in such an inhospitable place as Newfoundland—which, by the way, was independent of Canada till 1949? Also, why was he never promoted to Lieutenant General? Certainly his distinguished service merited such a rank, and a little brutality in Ireland never prevented promotion of a decorated British officer. Why was he so eager to keep his service in Ireland a secret? Why was he so upset by King George’s unfortunate comment? What did King George know besides the story of the Black and Tans? Why did his wife and family refuse to join him in Newfoundland? Why didn’t they come for his funeral? Granted that Eve was in her seventies in 1965, the children were certainly young enough to travel across the Atlantic and there was an international airport at St. John’s.”

  “Good questions.… Maybe the family didn’t like the Newfoundland weather.”

  “Not enough to break up a family in that social class at that time.”

  In the absence of herself, I was Holmes again, not Watson.

  “Probably he was in disgrace, pretty serious disgrace at that, if it affected even his family. He chose Newfoundland because there were men who had served under him during the war and liked and respected him. So his disgrace had to come in Ireland. Something happened there, something more than just shooting a couple of rebels, which separated the first half of his life from the second half. In Newfoundland he was able to block out what had happened in Ireland.”

  “Bravo!” The Commissioner poured me another cup of tea and helped himself to one of the two remaining raisin rolls. “For many years he had a discreet and apparendy affectionate liason with a woman there, a widow of an officer in the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, most of whose members had been members of the RIC and perhaps protected him from possible IRA gunmen.”

  “And his wife?”

  “She apparently formed a relationship with a retired officer whose own wife was hopelessly insane.”

  I paused to consider the data, again wishing that my wife, Ms. Holmes, were present.

  “Well,” I began, “I would have to assume that he became involved with a woman in Ireland and that involvement somehow ended tragically in some way because of the Tans.”

  He pondered me with half-closed eyelids. “Should you ever want a job with the Gardai, Dermot, me lad, I think we could get you on board as a Chief Superintendent.”

  “I’m a fiction writer, not a detective, though it may come to the same thing. … So I have to assume that the woman was someone very important, a member of the British elite? Hazel?”

  He smiled grimly. “No,
not Hazel. Her tastes ran to Irish revolutionaries and English politicians. Someone much more important.”

  “And this is somehow linked to the death of Kevin O’Higgins?”

  “Yes indeed. Indirectly perhaps but ineluctably. Otherwise I wouldn’t be bothering you with this obscure corner of early twentieth-century Irish history.”

  “And with the attempted kidnapping last night?”

  He rubbed his jaw again. “Candidly, I don’t see how it could, but I’m not ruling out any possibility. … May I show you another document?”

  “Please do,” I said, quite unnecessarily.

  “It was written by another man as a confidential memo for me—one of the brightest and most literate men in the force. I wouldn’t be surprised that someday he ended up in your trade, Dermot.”

  “I don’t have a trade,” I said. “I’m a retired commodity broker.”

  “I meant sennachie.”

  “Oh,” I said as I began to read the second Garda’s analysis.

  Later I scanned that document into my computer and added it to my first report to herself.

  Tudor was present in Listowel when the whole barracks of RIC men refused to take orders from their Inspector General. The confrontation ended peacefully enough. Tudor did not play a major role in the mutiny, at least according to the story which appeared in the papers. He always seemed to be able to lurk in the background. His name became generally known only when his colleague General Crozier denounced him in London. Moreover, he shook hands with the police who had mutinied. He had arrived in Ireland only a couple of weeks before. This was the first hint of what he might be fighting. The police force he was commanding was falling apart. He needed new police, first the Tans and then the Cadets, who were worse even than the Tans. The country, he must have perceived, was on the edge of anarchy. He did not learn the obvious lesson of the encounter at Listowel: if the IRA was strong enough to cause the police in that town to mutiny, they would not be suppressed by counter-terror—or anything else.