The officials were taken completely by surprise. We had them covered and with their hands up before they had time to realize what was happening.
The bags for the military, RIC, the under-secretary and other important offices were quickly collected, and we brought them to the chutes. We had a troublesome job getting them onto the platform. But we did it, and then quickly threw them into a waiting motor van which had been driven up for the purpose. We saw it vanishing round a side street as we made off on foot in a different direction.
When, later in the day, I called at our office, I learned to my surprise from the three intelligence officers who had entered the front of the Rink, that they were in the building and had had the staff held up for fully three minutes, suffering great anxiety, before they saw our inelegant arrival down the chute. The vice-commandant’s watch apparently had been a couple of minutes slow.
Chapter XVI
The war had been intensified, and the British were making a determined and ruthless effort to bring our resistance to an end.
They could no longer get recruits in Ireland for the RIC, and drafts of ‘Auxiliaries’ and ‘Black and Tans’ were sent over from England to fill up the gaps we were making in that branch of their armed forces.
The Auxiliaries were recruited from ex-officers who had fought in the Great War. The Black and Tans were a mixed crowd of ex-soldiers and rough customers who were mainly attracted by the high pay which was offered for their services in ‘stamping out rebellion’ in Ireland.
They were given a pretty free hand in their methods of doing it. They were addressed from time to time upon their duties, and occasionally some extracts from these lectures were made public in spite of the rigorous censorship of the press. One superior officer, advising his men, said: ‘The more you shoot the better I’ll like you,’ and Lord French, the Lord Lieutenant, expressed the opinion that the Irish should be crushed ‘as you would stamp on a poisonous insect’.
It was necessary for us, therefore, to be prepared for the new offensive and to intensify our campaign also.
One morning I was sent to Ballsbridge Post Office to verify a report the D/I had received that a tender-full of Auxiliaries called there each morning and collected the mailbag consigned to the Auxiliary Division, stationed at the adjacent Beggars Bush Barracks.
I confirmed this fact, and reported that the number of Auxiliaries never exceeded five, that the tender arrived at the Post Office punctually at 9 o’clock and that I considered that the mailbag could be captured with comparative safety.
The director of intelligence, acting on my report, caused instructions to be issued to the local Volunteers to seize the bag, which they succeeded in doing after having made several abortive attempts, and without suffering any loss.
We went diligently through the captured letters, after making careful notes from them of the names of Auxiliary Cadets and their home addresses in Great Britain. This and other information we gathered in this manner was transferred to an alphabetical card index for future reference. Indeed, at a later date, this proved of much value in enabling reprisal burnings of Auxiliaries’ houses in Great Britain to be carried out. These reprisals were taken only in the cases of those who had taken part in the sacking and burning of Irish towns and villages.
On the afternoon of the 13th October, while we were engaged in dealing with these captured letters, a knock came to the door of our office. There were three or four of us in the room at the time and, as we were wont to do, we got our guns ready while one of us opened the door.
It was the adjutant-general, Gearóid O’Sullivan. He was greatly agitated.
‘For God’s sake, lads,’ he cried, ‘take your guns and rush up to the Mater Hospital. The Auxies are raiding it, and Dan Breen is there. Quick! Hurry! And look out for Dick McKee who will be there waiting for you.’
Without further words we were on our way. It was only two days before that Dan and Seán Treacy had made their valiant escape from the Carolans’ house in Drumcondra. In the middle of the night the house was raided by a party of Auxiliaries. After a fierce encounter, our men had managed to make their escape through the window of their bedroom. During the fight two officers of the raiding party were killed, when the raiders, in revenge, shot the man of the house, Professor Carolan, who had given shelter to our men without being aware of their identity.
Dan Breen, who had been injured in dropping through the conservatory beneath the window from which he had escaped, was lying wounded in the hospital, and his capture would mean his certain death.
Walking as fast as we could without appearing to be running, my thoughts raced ahead of me in a thousand speculations. Would we be in time? Would he be dead? If so, would we be in time to avenge him? When I despaired, I found myself picturing the grins of triumph upon the faces of his enemies as they took toll of him for the loss of their comrades whose bodies were not yet buried.
Our thoughts feeding our anxiety, we had no heart to exchange a word. We covered the ground with great speed, but the way seemed interminable.
Passing by Nelson’s Pillar we heard shots ringing out close by in Talbot Street. What could be happening there? I wanted to know, but our mission was of greater urgency, and my thoughts went back again to that question which was dinning itself in my mind. ‘Shall we be in time?’
We had gone only a few yards beyond the Pillar when I saw a young man emerge from the Turkish Baths of the Hamman Hotel and approach a touring car by the pavement. Just as we drew up beside him he had the engine running and was making himself comfortable at the wheel.
I turned to my companions. ‘Get in here,’ I said, in feverish impatience. ‘Here’s a lift,’ and I stepped in beside my new acquaintance in the front seat. Surprised at our intrusion he was about to make some remark when I interjected: ‘Drive straight ahead, and go like hell.’
This startled him, but still he hesitated, till I showed him the handle of my pistol.
He was very unhappy. We had not travelled more than a hundred yards, when he showed signs of slowing down.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake take the car and drive yourselves.’
The only answer he got was: ‘Keep her going, or ––––!’
In fact, none of us could have driven the car even if we had wished to.
On reaching a spot convenient to our destination we jumped out and, dismissing our driver, we threatened him with dire penalties if he mentioned us or our journey to anyone.
We hurried to the corner of Eccles Street. Looking up the street towards the hospital we could see that the crown forces had surrounded the building and that the search was still in progress. There were two armoured cars patrolling the entire block.
At the corner were a few Volunteers to whom we spoke. They advised that we should wait, all together, until the brigadier arrived. There was a public house at the corner and we went in for a drink. My throat was parched after our hurried journey. From the window we could see the armoured cars rushing by and our hopes sank.
In a few minutes we saw Dick McKee. Joining him, we stood at the corner and watched the activities up the street. He seemed greatly depressed. I asked him was there any chance of our doing anything.
‘I am afraid we can do nothing now,’ he said. ‘I cannot allow the men to throw away their lives. But we will wait here, and if only the armoured cars will go away we will get a chance.’
He then told me the sad news that Seán Treacy had just been killed in Talbot Street, and of his own miraculous escape.
‘I am only after leaving Peadar Clancy’s shop,’ he said. ‘There were a few of us there – Peadar, Seán,’ and he mentioned some other names which I have forgotten. ‘Suddenly someone rushed in and said the Auxies were coming down the street. Seán was killed. He put up a great fight. There were others hit, also – passers-by. I don’t know how I got away.’
Someone came up and called Dick aside.
The few sentences he had spoken to me filled me with horror. Se
án Treacy was dead! That was the firing we had heard when we were passing Nelson’s Pillar. Now it seemed certain that Dan Breen would follow him and we would have lost two of our greatest soldiers.
Hearing this news the Volunteers gathered round and pressed the brigadier to allow us to take action. Nothing seemed to matter now. ‘We are being defeated,’ I thought, ‘but we must make a last stand.’
Dick was deaf to our entreaties and commanded us to desist.
Just then we saw the Auxiliaries leaving the hospital and entering the waiting tenders.
They were leaving and we had heard no shots fired! We could see no prisoners! I strained my eyes to search the moving figures in the distance. Could it be true? Had Dan escaped? We did not speak, not daring to give words to our hope for fear it would perish. We kept our gaze fixed on the enemy. They were driving away. Then sighs of relief escaped us at last. There was hope.
We had suffered a great reverse, I thought, but if they had missed Dan their victory was incomplete.
And Dick McKee was alive and with us! That thought gave me great comfort. I wanted to surround him with an invisible wall of steel so that nothing could hurt him. If we were deprived of his inspiring presence, then all would be at an end.
My thoughts were interrupted by Dick’s voice, which had the power to draw me out of myself with one word. He was sending us away. There was nothing to be done.
The men started off in groups of two and three. Dick walked along alone. I was terribly anxious for his safety and could not bear to leave him. He had only escaped death by a miracle half an hour before. And here he was walking openly in the streets! I begged him to allow me to accompany him, making an excuse that I was going in his direction.
We walked along in silence. I could see that he was in great grief over Seán Treacy’s death and was, in his heart, mourning for him.
When we reached Lower Gardiner Street he told me that he was going to his office. It was in a building occupied by the Typographical Society, and I knew that this was the brigade office, and I asked him if there was anything I could do for him, trying to linger with him, unable to tear myself away. He replied that there was not and promptly dismissed me.
It was now nearly six o’clock. Around the corner in Talbot Street I saw crowds gathered to look at the ghastly signs of the fight which had taken place there earlier in the day.
I bought a paper and read the official version of their victory.
Feeling very sad I turned my footsteps homeward, till I remembered I had now no home I dared to go to.
I must find somewhere to spend the night.
Chapter XVII
I had been now for three weeks ‘on the run’. I changed my sleeping quarters each night, and I became anxious to secure a safe place so that I should not have to be moving continually.
It was by chance that a fellow Volunteer mentioned to me that I might like to join him and some others who slept in a dispensary on the north side of the city. This suggestion fell in very opportunely with my wishes. The relieving officer was a friend, and he allotted to us the portion of the dispensary which ordinarily would be his residence.
Dan Breen had not been captured by the enemy. He was not in the public hospital but in a private ward, and the hospital authorities had managed to conceal him from the raiders. As soon as the search was over he was removed to a place of safety.
The next day some Volunteers made a gallant though unsuccessful effort to capture an armoured car at Phibsboro’. Their plans miscarried and one of them was killed. I could never help becoming depressed over any loss of ours. We were so few in numbers that we could ill spare a single man.
On the Sunday following the death of Seán Treacy I got word that I was wanted at one of our offices in North Great George’s Street. Here I found the Squad, and we set out for Grattan Bridge, which crosses the Liffey near Dublin Castle.
When we arrived on the bridge we took up our positions. We had been told that two RIC men would pass by, and we would know them from a signal to be given by one of our intelligence officers who would be waiting nearby. They were known to this man, who would take out his handkerchief when he saw them coming.
While we were waiting we were within view of the sentry posted outside the City Hall. I saw that if we came into action we would run a great risk of capture, as it was known to us that the Auxiliaries were standing-to in Dublin Castle not a hundred yards away.
When we had been in position about a quarter of an hour I noticed two men walking along the quays in our direction. One was a stout, stocky man, with a red face. The other was tall and thin. Both men were in civilian dress with caps pulled down over their eyes.
I looked towards our intelligence officer. I saw him give the signal and point in the direction of the two men.
Before I had time even to leave my position and run forward, shots rang out. The smaller man was lying on the ground and the tall one was disappearing at great speed up Capel Street.
The minute the first shot rang out, from the hazard on the bridge an old hack came to life and started to race wildly along the quays. As we moved away I could hear the astonished ‘Hike! Hike!’ of the jarveys, whose interest had been diverted by something even more unexpected.
The dead man was a Sergeant Roche who had been brought up from Seán Treacy’s district in Tipperary to identify him. He had gloated over the corpse of Treacy with such venom that a detective who was present was outraged and he reported the matter to our director of intelligence.
Chapter XVIII
It was Saturday the 20th November. The struggle was at its height. A number of Volunteers and civilians had been shot in their beds by members of the RIC and British Secret Service who were continually raiding houses during curfew hours.
One of their victims was Mr John Aloysius Lynch of Kilmallock, a respected citizen, who, as the custodian of the subscriptions paid in his district, had come to Dublin with £23,000 for the National Loan. He had put up at the Exchange Hotel. The place was raided between 1 and 2 a.m. by a party of British officers and RIC, some in uniform and some in mufti, who demanded from the night porter the number of the room in which Mr Lynch was staying. After their departure the dead body of Lynch was found lying between the sheets. He was not a Volunteer and had never carried a weapon.
Another man, Carrol, shot by the same party, and in somewhat similar circumstances, was the father of one of the Volunteers, and both these cases seem to have been ones of mistaken identity. It is assumed that Mr Lynch was shot in error for General Liam Lynch, OC of the 3rd Southern Division, who came from the same neighbourhood.
We had been engaged for the past three weeks locating the addresses of these intelligence men. Many of them were officers of high rank. They had taken up their abode in private houses in quiet residential neighbourhoods, where they lived in great seclusion, many of them under assumed names and occupations. By one means and another we had got upon their track.
At six o’clock I called to see a Volunteer who lived over a shop in Amiens Street. I had tea there with a girl with whom I had an appointment. She was a country girl employed as a maid in a superior boarding house in one of the fashionable streets on the south side of the city.
I was very anxious to have a conversation with Rosie, but I waited until we had finished our tea. We had met her several times already, and she had been able to give us some valuable information.
When I had first met her she had let fall scraps of gossip about her boarders which had aroused my suspicions. They were ‘English gentlemen’ she thought. They ‘looked like military officers’, though they did not wear uniform. They never went out during the day, but ‘always at night after curfew’.
They were ‘quiet gentlemen’ she said, ‘spending most of their time writing’, and when Rosie had to clean out their rooms she was bothered by the overflowing contents of the wastepaper baskets which she had to dispose of.
She had, at my suggestion, brought me these waste papers, and on looking
through them and piecing them together, with the supervision of Frank Thornton, a senior officer of the intelligence department, we had not been surprised to find notes relating to the movements of Volunteers and other data which were most interesting to us.
She had also managed to get hold of some photographs which were in the possession of these officers. They were of Volunteers who were being pursued by the authorities and who we had reason to suppose were on the list for summary execution.
By now we knew all we needed to know about Rosie’s boarders – their names, both their assumed names and their real ones, their appearance, habits and the nature of their occupation. It had been decided that if we were to survive and our resistance to continue, the time had come to bring their activities to an end, and those of a number of other Secret Service men living secluded in the same way in other private houses in the same district.
Rosie told me that evening that life in the boarding house was just the same, but that two of her officers had moved to a flat in another street. I asked her had she heard the address. She had, and gave it to me.
Bidding her goodbye, I hurried to the office used by us as brigade headquarters and found several officers gathered there. I was aware of the arrangements made for the following morning and gave my information of the change of address of the two officers.
I did not stay long as I had another appointment to keep. I went to Harcourt Street where I met a Volunteer officer whom I had not been acquainted with hitherto. I was to accompany him and his men on the following morning. We made our arrangements about meeting.
It was now near curfew and I hurried home to the dispensary. There were several Volunteers there, all of us engaged on the operations of the morrow.
Espionage and Assasination with Michael Collins' Intelligence Unit: With the Dublin Brigade Page 7