Part 14

From the very first Father John opposed the Sinn Fein movement both by word and deed, and when the first Sinn Fein organisers appeared in his parish he quickly hunted them away; but before he knew what was happening practically every young man in the parish had been enrolled, whether he liked it or not, as a soldier in the I.R.A. M’Andrew was quick to seize his chance of revenge, telling the people that the priest was a secret agent of the British Government—hadn’t he served in the British Army and taken the pay of the British Government, an enemy of the people?—and that he was doing his best to stand between them and liberty. In a week Father John was practically an outlaw in his own parish, and M’Andrew became the popular hero.

Though he still officiated in the chapel, Sinn Fein saw to it that he was paid no dues. For nearly two years this state of affairs continued, and it would have been impossible for the priest to live if the older and more sober members of his flock had not come to his house secretly in the dead of night and paid him their dues.

One day, when feeling ran very high, Father John opened his daily paper to see his own death reported, and a long obituary notice, probably the handiwork of M’Andrew.

It was a situation common in Ireland—the peasants blind to the virtues of their truest friend, and making a popular idol of their worst enemy: it is a sad thing that many Irishmen will always insist in believing what they wish to believe.

Father John was by nature a kindly and genial man, a lover of sport, of a good horse, and of the society of men, and those two years must have been a perfect hell on earth for him. Not that any one was ever openly rude to him; they just sent him to Coventry and kept him there, hoping to break his heart, and that by refusing to pay him any dues they would gradually freeze him out, and in his place would come one of those fire-eating young priests who would lead them to victory and freedom.

The summer of 1920 was wet and cold, with frosty nights during every month except July. Now, if your potatoes grow in boggy land, and there comes heavy rain followed by a night’s frost, not once but several times, you will have no potatoes, and probably very little crop of any kind. And if your living depends on the potato crop, you stand a good chance of starving, unless the gombeen man will come to your assistance.

By November the whole parish of Annagh practically belonged to M’Andrew, who held a mortgage on nearly every acre of tenanted land, and proceeded to bully the people to his heart’s content.

On a Sunday morning in December, at about 10 o’clock, the hour when the village usually began to come to life, the inhabitants were startled by the screams of a woman, and when they rushed to their doors saw M’Andrew’s servant running out of the village towards Father John’s house. M’Andrew had been murdered during the night without a sound, and the servant had no idea of what had happened until she went to his room to see why he had not got up. All M’Andrew’s books had been burnt, and afterwards the murderers must have cursed the day they did not set a light to the house as well.

On the next day the village woke up to find a company of Auxiliaries billeted in M’Andrew’s house and the yard full of their cars—a case of out of the frying-pan into the fire.

For some time past the police had known that men on the run were hiding in the mountains near Annagh; but though the area came within Blake’s district, it was impossible to keep any control over it, owing to the fact that the Owenmore river and the Slievenamoe Mountains lay between it and Ballybor.

The Auxiliaries spent the day fortifying M’Andrew’s house, and that night started operations, and the inhabitants soon realised that the British Empire was not yet an “also ran.”

Just as it was getting dark the Auxiliaries in Crossleys would suddenly burst out of M’Andrew’s yard, travel perhaps five or ten miles at racing speed, and then surround and round up a village or district, so that the numerous gunmen who had come from the south for a rest cure found it impossible to get any sleep at all.

The local Volunteers at once sent an S.O.S. to Dublin, and received the comforting answer that a flying column would arrive shortly in the district and deal effectively with the Auxiliaries. In the meanwhile they were to harass the enemy by every means in their power and carry on a warfare of attrition—in other words, if they found one or two Cadets alone—if unarmed so much the better—they were to murder them.

At first the local Volunteers were very much afraid of the Auxiliaries, Sinn Fein propaganda having taught them to expect nothing but murder, rape, and looting from the “scum of English prisons and asylums”; but after a few days had passed and nothing dreadful happened to man or woman, they took heart once more and started their usual warfare.

The Auxiliaries were commanded by a Major Jones, and on the Sunday following their arrival in Annagh Jones left alone in a Ford at an early hour to see Blake in Ballybor. The road crosses the mountains through a narrow pass, and near the top of the pass there is a small chapel, a school, a pub, and a few scattered cottages.

On his return Jones passed this chapel as the people were coming out from Mass, blew his horn, and slowed up. After passing through the crowd he noticed a group of youths standing on the right side of the road, and opened his throttle wide, thereby probably saving his life.

When the car was within ten yards of the group every man drew a pistol, and it seemed to Jones as though he was flying through a shower of bullets. However, though the car was riddled, and had any one been sitting in the other three seats they would all have been killed, Jones found himself uninjured, and the old “tin Lizzie,” responding well to the throttle, flew down the hill at twice the pace Henry Ford ever meant her to travel at.

That evening Father John called on Jones and apologised for the outrage, and Jones at once fell under the charm of the priest. Probably his astonishment at Father John’s visit had something to do with it, but in the days to come, when Father John supported his words by deeds, Jones learnt that his first impression had been a correct one.

Returning in the early hours of the morning from a raiding expedition to the south of Annagh, the Auxiliaries were surprised to see a tall priest standing in the middle of the road and holding up his hand. Fearing a trap—there was a blind corner just behind where the priest was standing—they stopped about two hundred yards off and beckoned to the priest to advance.

They were still more surprised to find that the tall priest was Father John, who, having received information after they had started that the Volunteers were going to lay trees across the road at this corner in the hope of smashing up the Auxiliary cars, had spent the whole night walking up and down the road in order that he might warn them of their danger.

Father John drove back to Annagh with the Cadets, and by the time they reached the village every Cadet swore that the priest was the finest man they had yet met in Ireland, and they didn’t believe there was a finer one.

From that on Father John accompanied the Auxiliaries on many a stunt, and there is no doubt that he gave them every help in his power and all information which reached him; but though he would travel anywhere with them, he would never accept hospitality from them, nor would he enter M’Andrew’s house.

About six miles from Annagh, in a hollow of the mountains, is the tiny village of Glenmuck, completely isolated from the rest of the world, and so situated that its presence was quite hidden until you literally walked on top of it. None of the inhabitants, who lived chiefly by making poteen in the winter time and going to England as harvesters in the summer, possessed a cart, for the very good reason that the nearest so-called third-class road was five miles away, and only a goat track passed within a mile of the place.

Here in due course arrived the flying column of the I.R.A., seventy strong, every man mounted on a bicycle and armed with a British service rifle and as many pistols as he could find room for. They were also the proud possessors of a Lewis gun.

As usual, the gunmen were billeted so many in each farm, and after being badly harassed for some time in the south, Glenmuck seemed like Paradise to them. The nights were spent in dancing, card-playing, and drinking poteen. Somewhere about noon the gunmen got up, and after breakfast visited each other in their different billets after the fashion of our troops in France, walking about openly with their rifles slung over their shoulders. The Lewis gun team passed their days teaching the boys and girls of the village the mechanism of the Lewis gun.

The leader’s idea was to give his men much-needed rest and amusement for a few days, and then to try and ambush the Auxiliaries; and probably they could have spent quite a long time resting here without the Auxiliaries having the slightest suspicion of their near presence. But war seems to be made up so largely of “ifs,” and the “if” in this case proved to be Father John.

When out riding on his rounds one morning, the priest noticed that most of the young people of his parish appeared to be gravitating in their best clothes towards Glenmuck, and suspecting a poteen orgy, he sternly commanded a young damsel to tell him why she was going to Glenmuck, and the girl told him. Father John rode straight back to Annagh, to be just in time to stop Jones from starting off on a raid in the opposite direction.

Jones first sent off a Cadet on a motor bicycle to Blake at Ballybor, sending him a verbal outline of his plan of attack on Glenmuck, and asking him to co-operate with the Auxiliaries from the other side of the mountains. He then turned out every Cadet in the place, left M’Andrew’s house empty to take care of itself, and made off at full speed in the direction of Glenmuck with the priest acting as guide.

They reached the nearest point to Glenmuck on the road at noon, and after leaving a small guard over the Crossleys, the rest of the company set out in open order across the mountain for the flying column’s lair.

The gunmen had had great luck in the south for a long time, and their luck still held. A youth, making his way across country to get a sight of the wonderful gunmen, happened to look behind him when on top of a rise, and saw about a mile away the oncoming Auxiliaries. Being a sharp youth he realised who they were, and ran for the village as fast as his young legs would carry him, and by chance ran straight into the leader when he entered the outskirts of the place.

Reaching the hill above the village the Auxiliaries made a last desperate rush down the slope, in the hope of catching the gunmen scattered in the different cottages, and so mopping them up before they could get together; but by this time the flying column had taken up positions on the top of the far slope above the village, and as the Cadets reached the cottages they came under heavy machine-gun fire.

Quickly realising what had happened, Jones ordered one platoon to make a frontal attack on the gunmen’s position, while he sent a second and third platoon to try to work round their flanks; the fourth platoon he kept with him under cover in the village.

Then followed a very pretty fight for an hour, by which time the gunmen, like the Boers of old, thought it was time to move on and take up a position on the next ridge.

Jones knew that if he could only keep in close touch with the flying column it was only a question of time before Blake, who would be guided by the heavy firing, would attack them in the rear, and that they would then stand a good chance of bagging the whole lot. The fight gradually worked across the mountains, the gunmen retreating from ridge to ridge, while the Cadets stuck to them like grim death, always striving to pin them down, and when they retreated to drive them in the direction from which Blake ought to appear.

Late in the afternoon heavy shooting suddenly broke out behind the gunmen, and the Cadets redoubled their efforts to close with them.

By this time the opposing forces had worked their way down the western slopes of the mountains almost as far as the high upland bogs, and directly the gunmen realised that they were likely to be surrounded, they broke and fled down a valley, closely pursued by police and Cadets. Unfortunately the light was getting bad, and the gunmen’s luck still held good. When they had gone about a mile, they came across a big party of country people with whom they mixed, and when the police came up with them it was impossible to tell gunmen from peasants—probably the former were busily engaged cutting turf while the latter looked on. Their arms were passed to the women, who hid the rifles in the heather and secreted the pistols and ammunition on their persons.

During the whole long fight Father John attended to wounded Cadet and gunman alike, always to be seen where the fight was hottest; and though his calling was conspicuous from his clothes and white collar, yet on several occasions the gunmen deliberately fired on him when attending to a wounded Cadet.

After the battle of Glenmuck the flying column was seen no more in that district, and for weeks the local Volunteers gave Jones no trouble.

Time after time Jones had received information that certain young men in and about Annagh carried arms, but whenever they were surprised in a shop or pub no arms could be found on them, and it was noticed that they always moved about in the company of certain girls.

Soon after the battle of Glenmuck the belles of the district received the shock of their lives when shopping in a town some miles away with these young men. About noon four Crossley loads of Cadets suddenly dashed into the town with two women searchers dressed in dark-blue uniforms, and that day the first real haul of revolvers and automatics was made. As usual, the men passed their arms to the girls directly they saw the Auxiliaries arrive, but this time no notice was taken of the men, while the girls, who on former occasions had stood looking on and jeering at the Cadets, found themselves quickly rounded up, and the women searchers soon did the rest.

After this the moral effect of the women searchers was so great that not a girl in the district dare carry arms or even despatches. The girls were not sure whether the searchers were women or young Cadets dressed up as women, and this uncertainty greatly increased their alarm.

About six weeks later Jones found out that a much-wanted Dublin gunman, called Foy, who had murdered at least two British officers in cold blood, was hidden in the district, and was being fed by his mother and sister, who lived about two miles from Annagh. Time after time the Cadets tried to surprise Mrs Foy or her daughter carrying food to Foy’s hiding-place, but always in vain.

Foy’s presence soon began to be felt in the district. Two Cadets, returning off leave in mufti and unarmed, were taken out of the train and murdered just outside the station, their bodies being left there for all who passed to see, and no man dared to touch the bodies until the police arrived. Next the Cadets were ambushed twice in one week, both times unsuccessfully.

Father John, who had hoped that at last his parish had returned to the paths of peace, was furious, and denounced from the altar all men and women who shielded murderers. Finally, after the murder of the two Cadets, he refused Holy Communion to Mrs Foy and her daughter, which is a very serious step for a priest to take.

And when remonstrated with, he replied that, sooner than not denounce and punish murderers and those who aided and abetted them, he would throw off his coat and become an Auxiliary. More power to you, Father John!

XVII. THE BOG CEMETERY.

After many months of the Sinn Fein Terror, the town of Ballybor became a place of shadows and whispers. At night-time men saw shadows, real and unreal, moving and stationary, at every corner of the streets and in every lane; and during the day-time, when men met in the streets, they would only speak in low whispers to each other, and always keeping one eye over their shoulder.

Public opinion withered and died. Sinn Fein had no use for it—men became completely detached, mere spectators of the unchecked and uncondemned orgy of crime; like the younger generation in England, who waste a large part of their lives in picture-houses, gazing at films of vice and crime. And if a man had been murdered in the main street at Ballybor in the middle of the day, not a hand would have been raised to save the victim—the inhabitants would simply have regarded the incident in the light of a film, and then gone home to their dinners.

The oft-heard remark when a policeman has been murdered, “that it served him right for joining the R.I.C.,” epitomises the attitude of the majority of the Irish public towards so-called “political murder.” As a rule, an Irishman, on being asked if there was any news in the paper, would reply, “No, only the usual columns of murders and outrages.”

Walter Drake, as his name implies, was descended from an Elizabethan soldier who had settled in the west of Ireland and built a large house about two miles from Ballybor, and here for many generations the Drakes had lived, hunted, and farmed.

Walter Drake had at an early age entered the army through Sandhurst, but retired after six years’ service on the death of his father, and since then had lived at the Manor, spending a large part of his time helping his poorer neighbours in every way in his power: a quiet man of a retiring nature, a popular magistrate, and a good neighbour, but a determined Loyalist. Called up again in August 1914, he had served throughout the war with distinction in his old regiment, to return once more to his home.

Had Drake lived in any civilised country in the world, he would most assuredly have died in his bed when his time came, esteemed by all as a just, kindly, and honourable man; but, as in war, the best seem to be always taken, so it has been in Ireland. His only crimes appear to have been that he continued to act as a magistrate after receiving an order from the I.R.A. to resign his commission of the peace, and devoting himself to helping ex-soldiers in the town to get their pensions and trying to get grants of land for such as were worthy. The granting of land to ex-soldiers was bitterly opposed by the Transport Union, who wanted every acre for their own landless members. And probably being a personal friend of Blake’s and beloved by the police force, would constitute another crime in the eyes of the I.R.A.

On a certain Monday night the constable on duty at Ballybor Barracks reported that a great light could be seen in the sky, and thought there must be a big fire not far from the town. Going to the top of the barracks, Blake at once saw that a large house must be on fire, and judging from the direction the chances were that it was the Manor. Taking a dozen men in a Crossley, he at once went off there, to find the grand old house burning fiercely, and by the light of the fire he could make out a pathetic group of figures on the tennis-ground in front of the house.

The first person whom Blake met was the old butler, who told a tale now familiar in many parts of Ireland to-day. The household had retired at their usual hour of eleven, after which the butler had carefully closed up the house and gone to the servants’ hall to smoke a pipe before turning in. Soon afterwards he heard a loud knocking at the front door, followed by a volley of shots, some of which must have been fired through the windows, as he could hear the sound of falling glass.

The old man went and opened the front door, to be met by a ring of rifles, shot-guns, pistols, and electric torches, behind which he could make out the usual mob of masked ruffians. A strange voice then demanded Major Drake; and when the butler told them that the Major had gone to Dublin by the mail that day, a man handed him a letter telling him that in ten minutes’ time they were going to burn the house to the ground, and that he had better warn the inmates if he didn’t want them roasted alive.

The butler at once took the letter to Miss Drake, who read the following pleasant communication addressed to her brother:—

“Major Drake,—Owing to your aggressively anti-Irish attitude, we have received orders to burn your house to the ground. You will be given ten minutes to collect your clothes. By order.—I.R.A.”

The girl hurriedly slipped on a dressing-gown, and went down to the hall to find it full of the brutes sprawling in chairs and smoking. The leader came forward to speak to her, and she begged him to have mercy on her mother, who was old and in feeble health, and who would surely be killed by the shock of having her house burnt and being turned out into the night; and implored the man to take anything he wanted, offering him all the money she had and her mother’s jewellery. For answer the man pulled out his watch, and said that she had exactly ten minutes to get her old English mother out of the house, no more and no less.

Seeing that it was useless to argue with the brute, Miss Drake called the butler and her mother’s maid, woke up the old lady, dressed her the best way they could, and as the household passed out through the central hall, they saw men sprinkling the furniture and carpets with petrol. Hardly had they reached the lawn when the men rushed out past them. There was a violent explosion (petrol-tins bursting), and the house seemed to burst into flames in an instant. And here they remained on the tennis-ground, helpless and hopeless, their only crime Loyalty, until Blake found them there, silently crying.

Seeing that the house was gone, that, in fact, it was impossible to save anything, Blake put the Drakes into the Crossley, with the old butler and the servants, and drove them to a hotel in the town.

Drake had been seen motoring through Ballybor to the station on the Monday, and by that evening there was a whisper in the town that something had happened to him, but what the something was the whisper did not mention. During Tuesday rumour lay dormant. On Wednesday, however, rumour awoke and rapidly made up for lost time, and by that evening it was freely whispered throughout the town that Drake had joined the I.R.A.; that he had bolted to Canada to escape from the I.R.A., only to be taken out of the train on his way to Dublin by a flying column of gunmen, tried by a court-martial, condemned, and executed; that he had gone to Dublin to join the Auxiliaries; and lastly, that he had gone to London to get married.

On Wednesday morning Miss Drake, whose poor old mother lay in a state of collapse at the hotel, came to Blake in great distress, and implored him to find her brother. She was sure something must have happened to him, as she had wired twice, and then, getting no reply, had wired to the secretary of his club, where he had intended staying, and from whom an answer had just come to say Major Drake had not arrived.