Part 16

The crowd had now had all they wanted and were prepared to go home to tea, but O’Kelly had a good deal more to tell them. Suddenly and without any warning he began to unfold the doctrine of Lenin, to show them how the world and all the good things in it ought really to belong to them, and that these good things would never be theirs until the ruling classes were forced to disgorge them, and that the only way to make the swine disgorge was to kill them one and all—gentry, business men, and shopkeepers.

The man could really speak, and held his audience spellbound while he unfolded the Irish Eldorado of the future; but through all his speech ran the one idea to kill, always to kill those in a higher station of life than his listeners. To finish with he called upon them to start with the police, to shoot them like the dogs they were, and when they were gone the rest would be easy.

Sergeant M’Grath had been detailed to attend the meeting to take down in shorthand any speeches which might require explaining afterwards, but until O’Kelly started to preach the doctrine of Lenin he had not opened his notebook.

The sergeant had served in most parts of Ireland, but O’Kelly’s speech and brogue puzzled him: the man spoke like an Englishman trying to imitate the Irish brogue, but with a thickness of speech which the sergeant could not place. Nor could he place the shape of O’Kelly’s head, a round bullet-shaped one with a high narrow forehead and coarse black hair.

He duly reported O’Kelly’s speech to the D.I., who endeavoured to find out where the man came from, but failed to get any definite information. One rumour said that O’Kelly came from Cork, another from America, and yet a third that he was a native of Castleport. So the only thing to do was to arrest the man and then try to identify him; but O’Kelly had completely disappeared.

Nothing further appears to have been heard of O’Kelly in Ireland during 1919, but the following year an itinerant lecturer on beekeeping turned up in Co. Donegal, who bore a strong resemblance to Lenin’s disciple. This man’s practice was to give a short lecture on bees in school-houses, and then to launch forth into pure Bolshevism—a complete waste of time on the average Donegal peasant. Next he was heard of in Belfast, where he was lucky to escape a violent death at the hands of some infuriated shipyard workers.

In May 1920 the Transport Union in Ballybor began suddenly to give Blake a lot of trouble—cases of men being dragged out of their beds at night and forced with a loaded gun at their heads to join the Union steadily increased.

Several landlords who employed a good many men were threatened that, if they did not pay a higher wage than the maximum laid down by law, all their men would be called out and that they would in addition be boycotted. And any who refused at once had their hayricks burnt and their cattle injured.

Rumours came to Blake’s ears of a man making extraordinary speeches at night in the different country school-houses throughout the district to audiences of young men and girls, speeches which apparently combined Sinn Fein aims with red revolution.

During 1920 Sergeant M’Grath had been sent to Grouse Lodge as sergeant-in-charge, and thinking that he recognised O’Kelly in the revolutionary lecturer who was touring the district, he kept a careful watch on the Cloonalla school-house, and within a week had surprised and captured the man, who turned out to be O’Kelly.

O’Kelly was brought up before the R.M. in Ballybor Barracks, charged with inciting the people to murder the police during the strike of 1919, and pleaded not guilty.

The R.M., who looked upon the man as a harmless lunatic (he had not heard him haranguing a crowd), offered to let him go provided he entered into a recognisance to be of good behaviour and could find two sureties in fairly substantial sums. O’Kelly replied that he dared not enter into a recognisance to be of good behaviour, and further, that if he was released he would continue to preach revolution. Whereupon the R.M. gave him three months and left the barracks.

Blake then saw O’Kelly alone, and endeavoured to find out who and what he was. It was obvious that the man was not an Irishman, nor did he appear to be English. O’Kelly refused to give him any information regarding himself.

While this interview was going on an Auxiliary, whose home was in Scotland, and who commanded a section of Cadets on temporary duty in Ballybor, looked in to see Blake and found him with O’Kelly.

After O’Kelly had left the room the Auxiliary told Blake that he knew the man well, and had often seen him in Glasgow, where, previous to 1919, the man had lived for two years working as a Jewish Bolshevik agent, and that he had suddenly disappeared from Glasgow when the police began to get unpleasantly attentive.

XIX. MOUNTAIN WARFARE.

The movements of the flying columns of the I.R.A.—gangs of armed ruffians, usually numbering about forty, but sometimes more, sometimes less, and led by men with military experience (ex-soldiers and even ex-officers, to their everlasting shame)—have always corresponded accurately to the amount of police and military pressure brought to bear on them, which pressure has continually fluctuated in agreement to the whims and brain-waves of the politicians in power.

Figuratively speaking, these same politicians have kept the police and military with one hand tied behind their back, and sometimes when the screams of the mob politicians in the House have been loudest, have very nearly tied up both their hands. If a chart had been kept during the Irish war showing the relative intensity of the politicians’ screams and the activities of the I.R.A., the reading of it would be highly interesting and instructive.

Extra pressure, more rigid enforcement of existing restrictions on movement, and increased military activity have always resulted in a general stampede of flying columns to the mountains of the west, where the gunmen could rest in comparative safety, and swagger about among the simple and ignorant mountain-folk to their hearts’ content.

Here they would stay until the politicians, frightened by inspired questions in the House, would practically confine the military and police to barracks. The gunmen would then, with great reluctance, leave the safety of the mountains, and return to the southern front, to carry on once more the good work of political murder.

And so the game of seesaw went on. Every time that the Crown forces saw victory in sight the politicians would drag them back again to start all afresh. The wonder is that the Crown forces stuck it so long with every hand against them, and their worst abuse coming from a cowardly section of their own countrymen in England.

Early in 1921 the Crown forces in the south of Ireland suddenly gave forth signs that a determined effort was to be made to deal effectively, once and for all, with the gangs of armed murderers and robbers roaming the country, masquerading as soldiers of the Irish Republic; and again the flying columns fled in haste to their mountain retreats in the west, a part of the country where the majority of the inhabitants have always done their best to keep out of the trouble, with a few isolated exceptions.

This time they stayed longer; in fact, each time it became harder to induce the gunmen to forsake the peace of the mountains for the war in the south. After a time they started to vary the monotony by carrying out punitive expeditions against the police and the unfortunate Loyalists in the surrounding lowlands, but always to fly back to the mountains at the first sight of a force of police or soldiers.

Ex-soldiers were the chief game at this period. A district would be chosen where there were no troops and few police. A list of all ex-soldiers living in this district would be made out, and guides provided by the local I.R.A. commandant. Each ex-soldier would be visited in turn during a night, given his choice of active service with the I.R.A. or a sudden death. Those who remained loyal to the King would be led out and butchered like sheep, though possibly the murderers would not take the trouble to remove their victims, but would fire a volley into them as they lay in bed, and leave them there. Truly a brave army!

Transport presented no difficulty to the gunmen. The British Government took practically no steps to control the movements of motors, motor bicycles, or push-bicycles, except the motor-permit farce, which greatly inconvenienced Loyalists only. All they had to do was to commandeer as many cars or bicycles as they wanted, where, when, and how they liked.

However, this was not all the work which the Sinn Fein leaders intended their flying columns to carry out, and in order to induce the gunmen to return to duty the usual noisy peace squeal was started in England, so that conditions might be made pleasanter for the gunmen in the south. The murdering of ex-soldiers and helpless Loyalists could be easily carried out by local Volunteers under a well-seasoned murderer—an excellent method of initiating raw recruits into the methods of the Sinn Fein idea of warfare. The British Government, always great judges of Irish character, thought that the Sinn Fein leaders were coming to their senses at last, took off the pressure, and the gunmen duly returned to duty.

* * * * *

At length there came a time when these columns really got the wind up, stampeded to the western mountains, and this time refused point-blank to return to duty.

In the late spring of 1921 Blake was suddenly called over to England on private business in London, and afterwards went down to the country to spend a few days with the parents of a man with whom he had served in France.

The day after his arrival Blake’s host told him that a Black and Tan, a native of the place, had been murdered in Ireland a few days previously, and was to be buried that day in the parish graveyard, and asked Blake if he would accompany him to the funeral.

When passing through Dublin on his way to England, Blake had seen in the Castle the account of how this unfortunate Black and Tan had met his death—shot in the back when walking in the streets of a small western town with a girl; and not content with that, the murderers had fired a volley at him as he lay wounded on the ground, and even fired several shots after the girl as she fled shrieking up the street. So terrified were the townspeople that, though there were many in the streets at the time, not one dared to even approach the dying constable, and it was not until a full hour afterwards that a passing police patrol found him lying dead in a great pool of blood. Incidentally, the murderers had by then put sixteen miles behind them by means of stolen bicycles.

Blake accepted, expecting to see a large funeral to do honour to the murdered policeman, but to his great surprise and indignation found that only the near relations of the murdered man were present.

Returning from the funeral, Blake happened to see the local police inspector in the main street of the little town, and at once tackled him about the funeral, wanting to know why the local police had not been present as a last mark of respect to a man who had died for his country.

The inspector seemed greatly surprised and rather taken aback, and replied that he could hardly be expected to turn his men out to attend the funeral of a murderer.

For a moment Blake saw red, and but for a natural horror of making a scene in a public place, would probably have knocked the inspector down. Then, thinking that there must be a bad blunder somewhere, he asked whom the Black and Tan had murdered, and how he had met his death. The inspector admitted that the Black and Tan had been murdered, he believed, and then opened out on the crimes and atrocities which the Black and Tans had committed in Ireland—murder, rape, and highway robbery,—in fact, the usual list of atrocities which is generally to be read in the Sinn Fein propaganda pamphlets.

Blake waited patiently until the inspector had given him a harrowing picture of the condition of the south and west of Ireland: heartrending accounts of homeless and starving women and children, old and young men and boys hunted like wild beasts in the mountains and living on berries and roots; shops burnt to the ground and looted by Black and Tans in mufti; and of men and boys shot by Auxiliaries in the dead of night before the eyes of their relations.

He then asked the inspector who had given him this information, adding that he would like to see the proof of it, and at the same time telling him that he was a D.I. in the R.I.C.

The inspector invited Blake to go to the police station with him, and here, as Blake had expected, he was shown the usual lying propaganda and pamphlets of Sinn Fein, which have been distributed by the million throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and the U.S.A. An extract from one pamphlet is worth repeating:—

“Famine is about to add thousands of innocent victims to the hundreds of thousands already in need of the bare necessities that keep body and soul together. In every Irish village and town sickness, pestilence, and death invade the humble homes, striking swiftly and surely the mothers and children incapable of resistance through months of struggle against cold and hunger.... Children of tender years, ragged and wretched, trudge daily through the cold to a school now used for a relief station to obtain the one meal a day on which they live—a piece of bread and a warm drink.”

Seeing from his ribbons that the man had served in the war, Blake asked him if he would take the word of a brother officer against that of a Sinn Fein rebel. The inspector seemed to think this a good joke, and replied: “A brother officer every time.” “Well, then,” said Blake, “as an ex-British officer, I give you my word of honour that all those pamphlets you have just shown me are a pack of lies circulated by Irish rebels to ruin your country.”

Still the inspector was only half convinced, and in spite of all Blake could say he saw when he at last left that the man’s belief in the printed pamphlets of Sinn Fein was still unshaken. Such is the tremendous effect of print, whether newspapers or pamphlets, on the modern mind, and the firm belief in the old saying that there can be no smoke without a fire.

That afternoon Blake was carried off by his hostess to a drawing-room lecture at a big country-house. His hostess was not quite sure what the lecture was about, but believed it had something to do with Russia. After tea the lecturer arose, and before he uttered a word, Blake had a premonition of what was coming. A tall thin man, with pronounced Celtic peculiarities and a mane of long, lank, black hair, Blake had seen his prototype thousands of times in the west of Ireland.

Throwing back his great mane with a jerk of his head, the lecturer started on an impassioned recital of the atrocities committed in Ireland by the British Army of Occupation, practically the same collection of lies and wicked quarter truths which Blake had heard from the police inspector that morning.

Blake watched the faces of the audience closely, mostly women of the upper and middle classes, and could see that the lecturer’s ready tongue was making a deep impression on them. There was no yawning or fidgeting, and the audience, many of them with the parted lips of rapt attention, kept their eyes riveted on the quite interesting face of the wild man of the west, camouflaged by a London tailor to harmonise with an English drawing-room.

Blake let the man have a fair innings, and then while he was drinking a glass of water (Blake felt like asking him if he would not prefer poteen) stood up and said quietly, “Ladies and gentlemen, so far this lecture has been nothing but a pack of lies from beginning to end. The lecturer is a Sinn Fein rebel camouflaged as an Irish gentleman, and I am a D.I. of the Royal Irish Constabulary. During the war I fought for your country, and the lecturer probably assisted the Boches in every underhand and mean way he could. You can judge for yourselves which of us is most probably telling the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

The wild man turned with a wicked snarl, all signs of the veneer gone, and his face reminded Blake of a cornered gunman he had had to deal with once during a raid on a Dublin lodging-house; and there would probably have been an ugly and unseemly scene, but the owner of the house intervened, and gently but firmly led the wild man out of the room, while Blake and his friends left the house at once.

On his return Blake found a cipher wire from his County Inspector recalling him at once, and going by car to London managed to catch the Irish mail from Euston. All the sleepers were engaged, but by good luck he found himself in possession of a first-class compartment.

While idly smoking a cigarette and meditating on the extraordinary amount of Sinn Fein propaganda he had met with in the course of one short day in England, he noticed a well-dressed slight girl pass and repass the glass door of his compartment several times. As the mail pulled out of the station this girl pulled open the sliding-door from the corridor and sat down opposite Blake, remarking that it was a grand evening, and thereby unconsciously informing him that she was Irish.

Suddenly realising that he was smoking, he asked the girl, who he could see was unusually pretty and quite young, if she had any objection, and, as he had expected, she readily entered into conversation.

After a time she remarked, with a pretty engaging smile, that she saw he had nothing to read, and getting down her suit-case, handed Blake a handful of the identical pamphlets he had already seen that morning in the English country police station. In addition, there was one fresh one on “The Irish Issue,” by William J. M. A. Maloney, M.D., captain in the British Army, August 1914-August 1916.

Blake then saw that his original suspicion was correct, and that he had to deal with that most dangerous of all spies, Sinn Fein or any other breed—a pretty girl.

By the time Rugby was passed he had heard the simple life-history in a rural part of England of the girl, ending with the information that she was going to Dublin for three months, and that she was very much in dread after all the dreadful happenings there she had read of in the papers, and she had never been in Ireland before (all this in a very fine rich Dublin brogue). And Blake began to think that he must really possess that most priceless of assets, to look a much bigger fool than you are.

After the stop at Crewe the girl again attacked him about Dublin, asking if he lived in lodgings there, and, if so, was there a room to let in the same house. A few days previously Michael Collins’s flat in a certain Dublin street had been raided with satisfactory results to the raiders, and Blake gave her this address, assuring her that she would here find quarters entirely suitable to her requirements. The girl took the hint, and the rest of the journey to Holyhead was spent in silence.

On the mail-boat Blake saw the girl once more, sitting with a youthful officer of the Dublin garrison, and carrying on an animated conversation with their heads touching.

On arriving at Ballybor Barracks Blake found further orders awaiting him from the County Inspector to proceed at once to Castleport with all the men and cars he could spare.

The wildest rumours were afloat amongst his men: that the I.R.A. were going to take the field openly (this notable achievement was reserved for the Truce); that a large force of Americans had landed from a yacht at Errinane with stacks of arms, and that they were raising and arming the mountain men of that district greatly against their wish and inclination, and that De Valera had been landed on the west coast from a submarine, was hiding in the mountains of Ballyrick, and was at long last going to take the field himself.

Collecting every man he could spare and taking all the transport except one Crossley, Blake set off with a strong convoy of police for Castleport. The men were in great heart, and eagerly looking forward to a good square fight in the open with the hitherto elusive soldiers of the I.R.A.

At Castleport they found the barracks packed with police, drawn in from all the outlying districts; even two large houses adjacent to the barracks had had to be commandeered to hold all the men.

The County Inspector explained the situation, which was quite simple. A large force of I.R.A. flying columns, estimated at over a thousand strong, were reported to have refused to return to the south, and had taken up permanent quarters in the Maryburgh Peninsula, north-west of Errinane, and were playing old puck generally throughout that part of the west. At first these flying columns had been distributed all through the mountains, some in the Ballyrick country, more in the Slievenamoe Mountains, and a large party to the south of Castleport; but owing to the unpleasant attentions of Auxiliary flying columns they had gradually retired towards the Maryburgh Peninsula, where so far they had been left unmolested.

The gunmen on the Slievenamoe Mountains had had a bad fright from the very efficient company of Auxiliaries quartered at Annagh. Father John had done all in his power to get rid of these unwelcome guests in his parish, but showing a fine turn of speed they just managed to escape, actually dashing through Ballybor in the middle of the night in a convoy of commandeered Fords a few days before Blake’s return.

For some time the gunmen had been in the habit of commandeering their rations at night from Castleport, and during these nights the town would be completely isolated. The first intimation of anything being wrong which the townspeople had was the return one night of several white-faced crying girls, who told their parents that they had just by chance met Pat So-and-So, and that he had asked them to go for a stroll, and hardly had they got outside the town when armed men had seized poor Pateen and ordered the girls to go home at once. Incidentally the poor Pateens were kept as a labour platoon by the gunmen, and made to do all the dirty work of digging trenches, breaking down bridges, &c., which occurred during the operations to follow. A different butcher, baker, and grocer would be visited each time, just to show that there was no question of favouritism with the I.R.A.

While this requisitioning was proceeding every road leading into Castleport was held by strong pickets of gunmen, who, as soon as the ration party returned, would make for the Maryburgh Mountains on bicycles, the ration party travelling on a commandeered lorry.

Directly the County Inspector got wind of this proceeding, he made an attempt to surprise the gunmen one night, but their local information was too good, and he failed. Then, hearing that this big muster of gunmen was hiding in the Maryburgh Peninsula, he collected all the forces he could, and prepared to kill, capture, or drive them into the Atlantic.

Soon after Blake’s arrival at Castleport, apparently reliable information came in that a landing of arms had been carried out early that morning at Errinane, and that these arms were to be taken as soon as it was dark to the Maryburgh Peninsula. The County Inspector at once detailed Blake and Black, the Castleport D.I., to take a large force of police and attempt to seize the arms before they could be taken out of Errinane.

Errinane lies about twenty-one miles to the south of Castleport, on a narrow inland bay. The road runs the whole way through wild mountainous country, though at no point does the road run very close to the mountains.