I shouted to the driver, “Drive like hell!” But the commander-in-chief, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder, said, “Stop! Jump out and we’ll fight them.”
We leaped from the car and took what cover we could behind the little mudbank on the left-hand side of the road. It seemed that the greatest volume of fire was coming from the concealed roadway on our left-hand side. The armored car now backed up the road and opened a heavy machine-gun fire at the hidden ambushers.
It may be mentioned here that the machine gun in the armored car “jammed” after a short time. The machine-gunner, MacPeake, not long after this occurrence, deserted to the Irregulars, bringing an armored car with him.
It was the Crossley tender, which was in the charge of Commandant O’Connell, that received the first shot. The road had been barricaded by an old cart, which the occupants of the tender promptly removed out of the way. After a few minutes the firing at these ceased, and the ambushers concentrated their fire on Collins and the other men who had occupied the touring car. Sean O’Connell then ran down the road and joined them.
General Collins and I were lying within arm’s length of each other. Captain Dolan, who had been on the back of the armored car, together with our two drivers, was several yards farther down the road to my right.
General Collins and I, with Captain Dolan who was near us, opened a rapid rifle fire on our seldom-visible enemies. About fifty or sixty yards farther down the road and round the bend, we could hear that our machine-gunners and riflemen were also heavily engaged.
We continued this firefight for about twenty minutes without suffering any casualties, when a lull in the enemy’s attack became noticeable. General Collins now jumped up to his feet and walked over behind the armored car, obviously to obtain a better view of the enemy’s position.
He remained there, firing occasional shots and using the car as cover. Suddenly I heard him shout, “Come on, boys! There they are, running up the road.” I immediately opened fire upon two figures that came in view on the opposite road.
When I next turned round the commander-in-chief had left the car position and had run about fifteen yards back up the road. Here he dropped into the prone firing position and opened up on our retreating enemies.
Dolan and O’Connell and I took up positions on the road farther down. Presently the firing of Collins ceased. I heard, or fancied I heard, a faint cry of “Emmet!” Sean O’Connell and I rushed to the spot with a dreadful fear clutching our hearts. We found our beloved chief and friend lying motionless in a firing position, firmly gripping his rifle, across which his head was resting.
There was a fearful gaping wound at the base of the skull behind the right ear. We immediately saw that General Collins was almost beyond human aid. He could not speak to us.
The enemy must have seen that something had occurred to cause a sudden cessation of our fire, because they intensified their own.
O’Connell now knelt beside the dying but still conscious chief, whose eyes were wide open and normal, and he whispered into the ear of the fast-sinking man the words of the Act of Contrition. For this he was rewarded by a slight pressure of the hand.
Meanwhile I knelt beside them both, and kept up bursts of rapid fire, which I continued whilst O’Connell dragged the chief across the road and behind the armored car. Then, with my heart torn with sorrow and despair, I ran to the chief’s side. Very gently I raised his head on my knee and tried to bandage his wound, but, owing to the awful size of it, this proved very difficult.
I had not completed my grievous task when the big eyes closed, and the cold pallor of death overspread the general’s face. How can I describe the feelings that were mine at that bleak hour, kneeling in the mud of a country road not twelve miles from Clonakilty, with the still-bleeding head of the Idol of Ireland resting on my arm?
My heart was broken, my mind was numbed. I was all unconscious of the bullets that still whistled and ripped the ground beside me. I think that the weight of the blow must have caused the loss of my reason had I not abruptly observed the tearstained face of O’Connell, now distorted with anguish, and calling also for my sympathy and support.
We paused for a moment in silent prayer, and then, noting that the fire of our enemies had greatly abated, and that they had practically all retreated, we two, with the assistance of Lieutenant Smith, the motorcyclist scout officer who had come on the scene, endeavored to lift the stalwart body of Michael Collins on to the back of the armored car.
It was then that we suffered our second casualty—Lieutenant Smith was shot in the neck. He remained on his feet, however, and helped us to carry our precious burden around a turn in the road and under cover of the armored car.
Having transferred the body of our chief to the touring car, where I sat with his head resting on my shoulder, our awestricken little party set out for Cork.
The darkness of the night closed over us like a shroud. We were silent, brooding with hearts heavy over the ghastly blow, known to us alone, that had fallen upon our hapless country and upon the Irish people throughout the world. We had all left Cork City that morning, confident and happy, intent on improving the machinery of the only possible government that could bring peace to a sorely afflicted, long-suffering people.
We had with us the man in whom the people of Ireland had entrusted their destiny: the man who had risked his life a hundred times in their interests; the man who was adored by his friends and respected by all his foes.
Our day had been a succession of triumphs. And now at its close, like a bolt from the summer sky, fight had been forced upon us. We had fought with success—but our victory was as nothing in the crushing immensity of our loss. Michael Collins was gone!
The much-loved and trusted “Big’ Fellow”—statesman and soldier too—now leaned against me in the darkness, rigid and dead, with the piteous stain on him—Ireland’s stain—darkening my tunic as we jolted over the road. So long as I live the memory of that nightmare will haunt me.
–– 39 ––
THEY JUMPED us on Sunday night as I was bringing Nuala home from our date, the week before our planned trip out to the West.
A date with Nuala, you say? Whatever made me risk a date with Nuala?
She invited me for Sunday brunch after I encountered her after the nine-thirty Mass in Clarendon Street. (She had told me triumphantly that at the Trinity College chapel, the C. of I. had a “Eucharist” and the Catholics had a “Mass.”) I couldn’t refuse, could I? One thing led to another.
Well, I didn’t refuse anyway.
Did I expect to meet her when I strolled into St. Teresa’s for Sunday Mass?
How did I know which Mass she’d attend?
Was there a chance I would meet her? Was I taking that chance?
Tis none of your business at all, at all!
Was she hoping I would show up at the same Mass? Was that why she was so quick with the brunch invitation when we walked out of church together?
Especially since she told me that she’d already made bookings?
What can I tell you?
I’ll admit that I glanced around the crowd at the nine-thirty Mass when I entered the church, looking for a dark blue jacket with a hood.
Perhaps because the nine-thirty was an Irish-language Mass.
The jacket was easy to find, right on the edge of an aisle and spanking clean, another investment of the salary I’d paid her.
“Are you owning this whole pew, young woman? Or may a poor sinner sit in it with you?”
Nuala jumped, startled out of her prayers to a God about whose existence or concern she was uncertain.
Occupant.
“Eejit.” She smiled up at me. “You should be quiet in church.”
“In the focking church,” I whispered in her ear.
“Shush.” She slapped my hand in reproof. “I’m saying me prayers.”
“Am I included?”
“God knows that you need prayers.” She turned away with a sniff.
<
br /> We weren’t saying rosaries any more, I thought to myself, as Liam and Nell did for one another and Michael and Kit. Shy children all of them, and me and Nuala too.
Now we sang hymns and responded to the priest. The Mass, renamed the Eucharist save at Trinity College, was in her own language and said by a priest with his face turned in our direction instead of his back. Nuala probably had never known the Latin Mass. I could barely remember it.
I glanced at her again. I had been wrong in one respect: A rosary was wrapped around her long fingers, not so much to be said, if you take me meaning, but there just in case.
If I said anything to her about it, she would say that she certainly wanted the Mother of Jesus on her side.
Fair enough.
The Mass, oops, Eucharist, was in Irish, as I knew it would be, lovely lilting melodies in both song and word that I did not understand but that lulled me into a peaceful and quasi-religious repose. I looked around at the congregation. Most of them were young folks, like Nuala exiles from the Gaeltacht, seeking their fortune or at least their living in a faraway town and a distant culture.
Closer to home than Boston and better than illegal immigrant status. Not such good pay, however.
“You didn’t tell me that the Mass was in Latin,” I mumbled.
“Shush!” she ordered.
She took my arm firmly in hers as we walked out of church. “I’ll be taking you to brunch,” she announced with a determination that did not permit a refusal. “And there’ll be no discussion about whose treat it is, do you understand, Dermot Michael Coyne?”
“And myself just coming out of the celebration of the Eucharist?”
“We’ll have brunch at the Royal Hospital at Kilmanhaim, and you’ll have to ride public transportation, which will be a terrible burden for you, won’t it now?”
“Anything you say, ma’am.” I permitted her to drag me along. “I must note, however, that I think brunch is a terrible Yank innovation.”
“Shush,” she instructed me as she shoved me towards an 78A bus. “I’m in no mood for arguments and it being Sunday morning.”
It was a clear, crisp day with bright sun and a fresh breeze on the air—weather for a Notre Dame football weekend and themselves playing USC yesterday and me not knowing the score.
“I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you on Sunday morning, Nuala Anne . . . and yourself dragging me off to jail.”
“ ’Tis not a jail, amadon. That’s across the road. ’Tis a hospital, like the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and old soldiers’ home if you take me meaning and a grand masterpiece of Georgian architecture. The brunch profits support its restoration.”
“I’m edified.”
“Sure, I’ve never been there myself.” She giggled.
The Royal Hospital was indeed a masterpiece of Georgian architecture, though to tell the truth not one that I would want to live in if I were an old soldier—not an adequate substitute for a ranch house in Tucson or San Diego.
Brunch was served in the “ground floor,” a lowceilinged cryptlike place with heavy walls and low arches. It was not exactly a real Yank brunch because it did not have what I consider to be essential, raspberry coffee cake, preferably with lots of goo that sticks to your fingers. Like most Irish meals, as opposed to the Yank meals at Jury’s, it was heavy and not particularly nutritious. The brown bread was good, however.
I had to pretend that I enjoyed every bit of food. I ate because herself was watching me closely to make sure I did.
There was entertainment, naturally. There’s always entertainment in Ireland. Today it was singing and dancing by primary grade students. They were not bad at all. At all.
The other brunchers were the real entertainment, however: families, young marrieds, courting couples, the inevitable noisy teens, and children—tons of children—as my adolescent nieces and nephews would say.
For some odd reason, I attract kids. Little girls flirt with me. Little boys stare at me and grin. Toddlers crash into me as they run away from their mothers. So I had a ball playing with the kids—while my hostess smiled approvingly.
Sure, isn’t the big amadon wonderful with kids and himself being no more than an overgrown kid himself?
When I went to the buffet to replenish my supply of brown bread, a little Viking princess with the prettiest blue eyes in all Ireland careened into me in desperately giggling flight from her mother, a black-haired woman younger than me and with a babe in her arms.
I picked little Maeve up and swung her into the air—I knew her name was Maeve because I heard her ma calling after her.
“Ah, Maevie me love, haven’t you the prettiest blue eyes in all of Ireland? Why don’t we run away to the South Pacific together?”
She seemed delighted at the prospect.
“Sure, isn’t she a terrible nuisance?” Her ma beamed at the wee lass. “I don’t know why we bring her here at all.”
“She has her father’s hair, I see.” I spun Maevie around again, producing paroxysms of delighted squeals.
“Aye, and his sense of responsibility too.” Her ma laughed. “Maeve Anne, aren’t you bothering the nice Yanks?”
I had put the winsome little lass back on the floor and she clung to my leg.
“Irish American,” I corrected her, determined to have done with this Yank nonsense.
“Me sister lives in America, in Chicago with all the gangsters, you know?”
Nuala, who had been watching the whole show with vast amusement, thought that was pretty funny.
“Where in Chicago?”
“Ascension Parish,” she replied promptly, understanding the proper Chicago response. “Glory be to God, are you from Chicago too?”
“Next parish over almost. Sure, Maevie, if you come to Chicago, will you be visiting me? I’ll protect you from all the gangsters in town, myself and the mayor, whose family is from Dungarvin!”
So we compared notes and Maevie was persuaded to go back to their table where a proudly smiling father was tending yet another child, this one a boy maybe a year older than Maeve.
“You Irish have big families,” I said to Nuala when I rejoiced her with my new supply of brown bread.
“Not as big as we used to. We just have them young and are done with it. . . . Irish American, is it now?”
“Yanks are white Anglo-Saxon Protestants from New England and maybe New York.”
She grinned. “Won’t I be trying to remember that?”
“Have some more brown bread.”
“You certainly charm the wee ones, Dermot Michael . . . and their mothers.”
“How old would you say that girl was?”
“The mother? Sure, maybe five years older than I am.”
“Three children already.”
“I bet herself had three by that age.”
“Ma?” I smeared a huge amount of clotted cream on my brown bread and added strawberry jam—not exactly gooey raspberry coffee cake but not bad either. “Let me see, four as a matter of fact, and the first conceived out of wedlock.”
“Poor dear woman.”
“I don’t hold it against her.” I propelled the bread towards my mouth. “And himself a bishop now at that.”
“The first child is a focking bishop!” Nuala was shocked.
“Family secret we don’t talk about too much.” I savored the bread and jam, certainly better than peanut butter and jelly. “William T. Ready, by the grace of God and tolerant inattention of the Apostolic See, Bishop of Alton, Illinois.”
“A focking bishop,” Nuala whispered. “Does he know that he was conceived in a cottage without a roof on the shore of Lough Carraroe?”
“He does not! I don’t think it would bother him much. He’s not a bad man for a bishop.”
“It’s strange how things work out, isn’t it?” Nuala suddenly was thoughtful, preoccupied.
“If you ask me, it was all those candles they were lighting and all the rosaries they were saying at the parish church. You should be caref
ul with the rosary, Nuala Anne. You can’t tell what will happen.”
“The woman fancies you, you know.”
Did she mean herself or the young mother who liked my charming smile?
“What woman?”
“Lady Elizabeth.”
“Oh, her. . . . Yeah, I know.”
“You do?” She was surprised.
“Are you thinking I’m a complete amadon?”
“Only partial. . . . So what happens when she calls you and asks you over for a drink?”
“You think she will?”
“I didn’t say that, did I? What if she does?”
Nuala was careful not to seem jealous, only curious. The glint in her marvelous blue eyes suggested amusement rather than anger.
“I lied.”
“You lied?”
“I did.”
“To whom?” She frowned, warning me that it had better not be her.
“To herself.”
“To Lady Liz?”
“Am I a total eejit altogether, woman? Was I not talking about Maeve Anne? And didn’t I lie when I told her that she had the prettiest blue eyes in all of Ireland? And isn’t it yourself that has the prettiest blue eyes in all the British Isles, in fact in all Western Europe?”
“Go ’long with you.” Nuala turned a lovely pink and patted my hand. “Sure, aren’t you all talk?”
“As to Lady Liz, as much as I might fantasize about other responses, I’d be busy in the afternoon all week and most of next week, if you take me . . . my meaning.”
She considered me like a judge would consider a clever witness. “You’d turn her down?”
“I don’t approve of adultery, Nuala, no matter how delectable the woman might be. Do you?”
She tilted her head forward and rested her hand on her wonderful chin. “You’re a strange and interesting man, Dermot Michael Coyne.”
“Maybe only a proud man, Nuala Anne McGrail. If she’s the kind that would make a pass at me, I wouldn’t be the first and not the last either. Maybe I don’t want to be on someone’s list of conquests, especially in the middle.”
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