1972

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Stay right here!” cried the guard. “Just the other day I was telling a fellow that the pigeon shite on poor Lord Nelson is so thick it’s turning to cement. The sightseers are complaining about it. In fact one lady said to me …”

  “Just show us where the nearest water tap is,” McCoy interrupted, “and hang out a sign saying the observation platform’s closed. We don’t want to get a mess all over the taxpayers’ clothes, do we?”

  It took several trips for the two men to carry all their equipment up the stairs. Then they set to work scrubbing the statue and chipping away encrusted pigeon droppings. The protruding platform hid much of what they were doing from the street below. When they crouched at the foot of the plinth, no one could see them drill a series of downwards boreholes into the column. Barry had drawn a diagram showing the angle required. Before they left the platform the men filled the boreholes with dust and dried pigeon shit, then tamped it flat with their feet. To the casual observer the holes would be invisible. People on the observation platform would be looking out at the city anyway.

  Meanwhile, Barry and Mickey prepared the explosives. A small timer would be used to detonate sticks of ammonol which had been wrapped in paper the exact colour of Portland stone. Attached by wire to the timer was a second detonator with a five-second delay for the gelignite. “One two!” Mickey said, clapping his hands to illustrate. “Like dominoes falling.”

  ON the last day of February, Barry Halloran, wrapped in an overcoat and wearing a woollen cap pulled down over his ears, approached Nelson’s Pillar. A bitterly cold wind had been blowing all day, discouraging the usual crowd of sightseers from attempting the observation platform. The guard on duty was cradling his hands in his armpits to keep them warm.

  Barry nodded to him. The man touched the brim of his cap.

  Referring to his bulging canvas hold-all, Barry said, “I have a lot of camera equipment and a tripod here. May I take them to the observation platform? The boss wants photographs for a new set of commemorative postcards.”

  “You don’t want to go up now,” the guard replied. “There’s a right gale blowing up there. It’d strip the hair off a man’s head.”

  “My head’s covered.”

  “Would you not take your snapshots down here? Maybe show a man in uniform standing beside the Pillar to give an idea of its size?”

  “I wish I could, but the boss insists on views looking out over the city.”

  The disappointed guard opened the gate and waved Barry inside. Halfway up the twisting staircase, his left leg betrayed him. He lurched heavily against the wall. When he recovered his balance he continued the climb, ignoring the pain.

  On the observation platform he opened his hold-all and took out the explosives. With a long, narrow brush, he cleaned out the downwards boreholes below the plinth and packed them with pliable gelignite, then replaced a bit of the debris on top to hide the contents. The disguised ammonol was tucked into an aperture in the base of the statue, facing Henry Street.

  The timer had been set to go off at 2:00 A.M.

  BY the time Barry started back down the stairs the pain in his leg had eased. There was no one to see, but he was wearing the old, devil-may-care grin again.

  The team of Operation Humpty Dumpty scattered to different places around the city. Alone in his room in Harold’s Cross, Barry played his records for a while, then went to bed.

  At two in the morning he tensed. Sat up. Every sense painfully alert.

  He heard no distant explosion.

  I’m probably too far away.

  He fought against a powerful desire to go to O’Connell Street. He lay back down and put his head on the pillow, which felt like a rock to him. How many hours until daylight? At last he gave up the struggle and turned on the light. Selecting one of Ned’s notebooks at random, he settled himself in the armchair to read.

  Shortly after dawn Séamus McCoy pounded on Barry’s door. “The Pillar’s still standing,” he announced in disgust. “I don’t know what happened, but we’d best retrieve our stuff before someone finds it.”

  A different guard was on duty at the Pillar that morning. Barry repeated his story about postcard photographs. “I know it’s a big favour to ask,” he said, “but could you possibly keep anyone from coming up there while I’m working? Other people would distract me or even jiggle the tripod. You understand.” He grinned engagingly. “I’ll make up the missed ticket fees out of my own pocket.” His slight nod and lifted eyebrows hinted that there might be a little something extra.

  “I can give you ten minutes,” the guard decided. “Will that do?”

  “It’ll have to.”

  The day was cold but as Barry climbed to the observation platform he was sweating. Whatever went wrong, the explosives might still go off.

  In a ringing silence, he gingerly retrieved the components of the device and made his way back down the stairs. One very careful step at a time.

  “Did you get some good pictures?” the guard asked.

  “I can’t be sure’til I see how they develop.”

  Back in Harold’s Cross, he and Mickey cautiously examined the device “Here’s your trouble,” said Mickey. “The feckin’ wire on the timer’s loose. Did you shake this thing, Halloran?”

  Barry bridled. “You know better than that. It must have happened when I slipped on the stairs. I guess the hold-all hit the walls. It’s just bad luck; we’ll give it a few days and go again.”

  “You want me to carry the baby this time?”

  “No way,” Barry said emphatically.

  There was a change of guards at the monument over the weekend. On the seventh of March, Barry, whose face was unknown to the new man, again made arrangements to take photographs undisturbed, then climbed the Pillar with his bag of equipment.

  This time he did not return to Harold’s Cross. After stowing his hold-all in a locker at Busáras, he bought a meal he was too excited to eat and wandered for hours around the city. Nightfall found him back at the bus station. He pulled his cap low, hiding most of his face, and slumped in a seat like someone waiting for a late bus. People came and went. No one paid any attention to him. From time to time he got up to stretch his legs and move to a different seat.

  At last the station grew quiet. Only one other intending passenger remained, a man who had fallen asleep with his mouth open. He snored in a jerky, broken rhythm.

  AT 1:32 in the morning the ammonol blew. Like a huge, startled bird, the petrified admiral lifted off his perch. Before Nelson could settle back down, the gelignite exploded. The blast reduced the statue to rubble that collapsed into the street, followed by two-thirds of the Pillar. Bits of the monument were scattered for hundreds of yards. A massive dust cloud arose, but there were no fatalities. No injuries.

  No substantial damage to any other structure.

  The team of Operation Humpty Dumpty was jubilant. It was the perfect prank, making them all schoolboys again. Making them all winners.

  BY dawn the local urchins were scrambling through the rubble looking for souvenirs. But the best souvenir was long gone—taken by a very large woman swathed in a heavy shawl, the first person on the scene after the explosion. As the gardai arrived she was seen scurrying away, but no one challenged her. She was only a woman after all.

  SHORTLY after noon Barry was in his room when his landlord knocked on his door. “There’s a telephone call for you. Did you give this number to a woman?” Philpott’s voice was clotted with disapproval.

  “Only my mother. For emergencies.”

  When Barry picked up the telephone receiver in the hall, Ursula exclaimed, “Nelson’s Pillar’s been bombed! Have you heard yet? It was on the wireless first thing this morning!” She did not sound like anyone’s mother, her son noted with amusement. In her excitement she sounded like a young girl. “The British Empire’s crumbling to dust, Barry. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Mr. Philpott had a different opinion. “Isn’t it shocking? I don’t know how anyone coul
d commit such an appalling crime. It’s obviously the work of mindless barbarians.”

  By that afternoon traders in Moore Street were selling genuine fragments of the Pillar. When their initial stock ran out they had no trouble resupplying. A short drive to the Dublin or Wicklow mountains provided enough pieces of granite to meet the demand.1

  There was widespread public condemnation of the bombing, and a certain amount of private glee. The desecrated monument—quickly nicknamed “The Stump” by Dubliners—was an embarrassment to the government, who wanted it removed as soon as possible. They assigned the job to the Irish army.

  Unfortunately, what remained of the Pillar was at street level. When the army blew it up, the explosion damaged buildings up and down O’Connell Street. Every window was shattered, littering the broad boulevard with dangerous shards of glass. The Dubliners were not slow to comment. “The government should have brought in the first lot to do the job proper,” they said.

  Although badly damaged, Admiral Nelson’s head was not destroyed. Dublin Corporation reclaimed the head and put it in storage, in case an attempt was made in future to restore the famous landmark.

  Speculation as to the identity of the bombers ran wild. Most people thought it was an IRA job—the Boys’ way of celebrating the Rising. Irish army explosives experts said that the skill displayed pointed to the importation of French explosives experts. A northern evangelist told his congregation it was a lightning strike, God’s way of demonstrating his wrath on Catholics.

  A number of people were brought in for questioning. None was from the actual team involved. No one was ever charged.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  THE spectacular success of Operation Humpty Dumpty lifted a great weight from Barry’s shoulders. The Irish Republican Army had not reclaimed the Six Counties with all flags flying, as he had once imagined, but he had pitted his skill against the hated symbol of imperialism and brought it crashing down.

  He was done with all forms of weaponry now. The secret, nagging impulse to violence which he had suppressed for so long was gone.

  In the absence of the Pillar a new symbol was needed to represent Dublin. Barry began photographing the Ha’penny Bridge in every mood and light. Seen through the lens of his camera, the graceful old footbridge was as romantic as a Victorian valentine. Within a week he sold some of the pictures to a postcard company.

  The money bought a glass dome atop a polished walnut base. It was the perfect place to display a stone nose that had once been nicked by a well-placed rifle shot.

  THE official Easter Rising commemoration ceremonies began on the tenth of April. Barry telephoned Ursula to see if she was coming to Dublin for the occasion. “Some of the mares have yet to foal, so I can’t leave,” she told him. “Is that not the worst luck! Take pictures of everything for me, Barry. Be my eyes.”

  Vast crowds packed O’Connell Street on the morning of the tenth. Many of them had been there since before dawn. Wrapped in blankets, sharing family reminiscences and flasks of hot tea. When the signal was given, six hundred men and women, surviving veterans of the Easter Rising, took their places in the reviewing stand in front of the GPO. More than two thousand veterans of the War of Independence lined up facing them across the street.

  Although Ireland professed to be outraged at the destruction of Nelson’s Pillar, quite a few smiled at the empty space where the monument had stood.

  The military parade that marched to the GPO from St. Stephen’s Green included civilian contingents from as far away as America and Australia. Children of the Irish Diaspora had come home to help celebrate.

  At noon the Proclamation of the Irish Republic rang out from loudspeakers, repeating the historic words of Pádraic Pearse fifty years before. The Irish flag was once again raised on the roof of the GPO. For a moment the tricolour clung to the flagpole; then it broke free and billowed above the crowd in a glory of green and white and orange.1

  Barry Halloran felt a lump in his throat. If I take no other photograph today, I’ll have one of the flag flying over the GPO. For Ursula.

  Following a twenty-one-gun salute, President Eamon de Valera reviewed the parading Irish army. As the last units passed the reviewing stand a flight of jet aircraft swept overhead. The army band struck up the Irish national anthem:

  Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland,

  Some have come from a land beyond the wave,

  Sworn to be free,

  No more our ancient sireland

  Shall shelter the despot or the slave.

  The eleventh of April was Easter Monday.

  With the exception of individual clerics, the Roman Catholic Church had vilified the rebels in 1916. Now it honoured them with religious ceremonies in every parish. A solemn Votive Mass in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral was attended by all the leaders of government as well as foreign ambassadors and the papal nuncio. Special places were reserved for relatives of the leaders of the Rising.

  St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin hosted the largest Protestant commemoration. The service was conducted by the Anglican dean of St. Patrick’s; the lesson at the ecumenical service was read by a Presbyterian minister and a captain from the Salvation Army, and prayers were recited by the chairman of the Dublin and District Methodist Church.

  As Barry read in the papers, Jewish services of prayer and thanksgiving were held throughout the country. Robert Briscoe, the Jewish former lord mayor of Dublin, represented President de Valera at the Adelaide Road Synagogue in Dublin.

  In Northern Ireland the archbishop of Armagh presided at a celebratory Solemn High Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh. The church was packed with Catholics, nationalists, and not a few Protestants.

  Ian Paisley called a meeting of his followers in the Ulster Hall, where he gave thanks “for the defeat of the 1916 Rising.”2

  This was reported in the newspapers too.

  ON the seventeenth of April another protest against the commemoration was held in Belfast. On this occasion Ian Paisley heaped praise on the Ulster Volunteer Force, which he had inspired.

  The original UVF had been formed in January, 1913, to resist home rule for Ireland by force of arms. The threat posed by this powerful Protestant militia had led to the founding of the Irish National Volunteers the following November as a defensive measure. In 1916 the Irish National Volunteers fought the British under a new name bestowed on them by James Connolly: the Irish Republican Army.

  Thus had the first UVF, in a cruel irony, given birth to the IRA.

  BARRY Halloran took hundreds of photographs connected with the jubilee of the Rising. They sold quickly, both to Irishoriented publications abroad and to local newspapers. Some of Barry’s pictures excelled anything their staff photographers produced. He was now lodging more money in the bank than he was taking out.

  Barry bought a sizeable banker’s draft to send to Father Aloysius. “Please use this to pay Dr. Roche for his medical services when I was injured, and to repay the money he once loaned to me. The rest is for the benefit of your parish.”

  By return post he received a warm letter of thanks. “We think of you often and remember you in our prayers,” the priest wrote. “Never forget you have friends in Derry.”

  After that Barry wrote fairly regularly to the priest. Father Aloysius always wrote back and told him what was happening in Derry. Since hardly any information from that quarter reached the south, Barry was grateful. Ursula infected me with her passion for the news, and that’s no bad thing.

  Trinity College, long the bastion of the Protestant Ascendancy, had a new but growing Republican Club3 and its own observance of the Rising. Under the imprint of TCD Publishing Company, the current crop of journalism students produced a booklet entitled 1916–1966; What Has Happened? Articles were contributed free of charge by professional men and academics. Copies of the booklet were distributed for sale locally.

  One morning Barry stopped at his usual newsstand to buy his customary copy of the Cork Examiner, but
at the last moment changed his mind. Why bother? Move on, that’s the secret.

  As he was about to walk away he noticed the new pamphlet and stopped to leaf through it. One essay in particular caught his attention. A writer from the Six Counties commented, “We in Ireland have found and are already using a common denominator for re-adjusting our society. We are experiencing acts of real leadership in fostering friendships regardless of geographical borders.”4

  Please God, thought Barry, let it be true.

  A few days later he encountered Cathal Goulding in one of those accidental meetings so common in Dublin. The two men stood on the footpath for a while, talking of this and that. Barry casually mentioned the article.

  “Real leadership?” said Goulding. “I wonder. I agree that a few things in the north are improving under O’Neill, but it’s a bloody slow process while others are leading in a very different direction. Sectarianism is as bad as ever. In some areas it’s even getting worse. It’s damned hard to stand on the sidelines and do nothing.”

  “Of course it’s hard,” Barry agreed. “That’s why …” He stopped himself abruptly. He longed to boast, but in the interests of their own safety the team of Operation Humpty Dumpty had agreed to take their secret to the grave.

  “ … That’s why I’d like to suggest something the Army could do,” Barry extemporised.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you aware of the civil rights marches Martin Luther King’s held in the States? They require large numbers of volunteers who can remain nonviolent in the face of severe provocation. Well, our Volunteers have been rigorously trained in discipline and they know a thing or two about marching. They could stage peaceful protests on behalf of the Catholics in the north. Maybe shame Stormont into doing something.”