Part 17

On the way out Blake carefully looked out for any points where an ambush might be carried out, and noticed that there were two bad spots: one where the road skirted the edge of a wood with a rocky hill close on the other side; the second, about eight miles from Castleport, where the road twisted through a ravine with steep rocky sides dotted with bushes, and at one place crossed a narrow high bridge—an ideal place for an ambush. Blake was so much impressed with this place that he stopped the cars and made his men search carefully the sides of the ravine, but not a sign of any preparations for an ambush could they find. Nor were there any trenches on the road.

After picketing Errinane, Blake searched every house, shop, store, and barn in the village, but not a sign of arms could be found, nor was any yacht to be seen in the harbour.

It was late when they started back for Castleport, and Blake, who was suspicious of an ambush at the bridge in the ravine, which was the nearest point on the road to the Maryburgh country, ordered Black to go ahead with two Crossleys, and to search the ravine thoroughly, and then to wait until the rest of the force caught him up.

Blake’s party was delayed by two punctures, and when they got near to the ravine heavy firing suddenly broke out ahead of them. When within half a mile of the bridge, they saw a party of men running away from a culvert in a dip of the road ahead of them.

Luckily, Blake was in the leading car, and ordered the driver to pull up about a hundred yards short of the culvert, which, sure enough, went up before they had been waiting two minutes.

The firing ahead had now grown heavier, and every now and then the dull thud of a bursting Mills bomb could be heard above the racket of musketry. Realising that Black must be hard pressed, Blake divided his force into two, ordered each party to deploy on one side of the road and attempt to outflank the ravines.

When within three hundred yards of the bridge both parties came under heavy enfilade machine-gun fire—machine-guns which made a noise none had ever heard before, and were probably American Thompson guns,—and they were forced to take the best cover they could find in the open bog.

The machine-gun fire at once died down, only to break out again every time the police attempted to advance by short rushes. By painful degrees they managed to get within eighty yards of the bridge, where the formation of the ground protected them from that horrible enfilade hail of bullets, and gathering themselves together they charged at the reverse slope of the ravine.

At once the firing ceased, and when at last they had torn their way through briars and gorse to reach the top, all that they found was small piles of empty cartridges and two ordinary tweed caps—not a sign of a gunman whichever way they looked.

They then turned their attention to their comrades on the road, and here a heartrending sight met their eyes. At first it appeared as though all the occupants of the two cars were either dead or wounded, but as they descended towards the bridge a small party of police crawled from underneath it, soaked to the skin. They found Black lying against the front wheel of the leading car with four bullet wounds in his body and his head smashed in by a dum-dum bullet—stone-dead.

Blake found out from the survivors that Black had disregarded his orders, and had not pulled up until the cars had passed the bridge, when a hail of bullets swept the cars from the top of both banks of the ravine. Black was wounded by the first volley, was hit twice while getting out of the car to lead his men to the attack, and in the head as his foot touched the ground.

The sun had by now gone down, and collecting all his wounded and dead, Blake pushed off for Castleport as fast as he could.

Beyond a blown-up culvert half a mile from the ravine, which the cars crossed without difficulty on their own planks, they met with no further trouble.

Then followed three feverish days of planning and preparing for the great drive, which it was hoped would put a thousand gunmen out of action for good and all; unless indeed a new Chief Secretary should come to Ireland, perhaps this time from Australia or possibly from India, or even a Jew, who would celebrate his arrival in this unfortunate country by opening wide the gates of the internment camps.

The area to be driven was roughly three hundred and sixty square miles, which will give some idea of the magnitude of the task which a handful of police had to tackle with the aid of a battalion of infantry and a company of Auxiliaries. And when it is added that the entire peninsula consisted of mountains (five of them well over two thousand feet, and unclimbable in many places), bogs, lakes, and rivers, with only one decent road which ran _round the coast and at the base_, it will be granted that the task was nearly an impossible one.

Also the few scattered inhabitants would be certain to be found to act as unwilling scouts for the gunmen. Moreover, once the weather turned wet, which may happen in the course of a few hours on the west coast, a thick mist would cover the mountains, and all the gunmen had to do then was to walk out of the trap and make their way inland.

The plan of attack was as follows. The Castleport-Errinane road crossed the twenty-mile neck of the peninsula, and before dawn one day ten columns, each of eighty men, formed up a mile apart.

As soon as it was light enough to see, these columns started, marching in columns of route for the first two miles; they then deployed into open order, got in touch with each other, and then started to drive the country out of face for the remaining eighteen miles. Frequently the line had to halt while a column would hunt a mountain in its line of advance, or a detour round a lake had to be made.

For the first four miles there was no sign of the gunmen—the column only met flocks of mountain sheep, and no sign of a human being; but, when ten miles from the west end of the peninsula, the troops on both flanks came under fire—evidently an attempt to stop them working round behind the gunmen.

The troops in the centre now tried to advance, but were also held up by heavy fire before they had gone half a mile; but at their third attempt the flanks met with no opposition, and the whole line was able to continue the advance. From now on the gunmen offered a determined resistance at every ridge, but always retired before their positions could be turned.

At last, close on nightfall, the Crown forces came to the strongest position of all—a long ridge in the centre with small hills at each end, extending to the north and south coasts of the peninsula.

As there was no time left for a turning movement, a direct assault was tried, only to fail twice. It was then decided to wait until the full moon had risen, when it would be possible to make a turning movement along the coast.

Unfortunately the sky became cloudy, and during the whole night the Crown forces were unable to move; but as soon as the daylight came another assault met with no opposition.

Once on top of the ridge they could see the remainder of the peninsula to the west coast, and not a sign of a gunman anywhere; nor when they searched every valley and even some sand-hills on the coast could they find so much as a single gunman.

The following day word was brought into the barracks at Castleport that a column of gunmen, thousands strong, had been seen marching in column of route into the Ballyrick Mountains from the coast; but how they could have got there from the Maryburgh Peninsula did not transpire for some time.

Later it was learnt that when the Crown forces gave up the attack on the final ridge to wait for the moon, the gunmen waited until it was dark, when they made their way to the coast. Here they had collected every fishing-boat to be found. The sea being calm, the whole force managed during the night to cross the bay to the north, a distance of fifteen miles, landed on the Ballyrick coast soon after dawn, and at once set off for the Ballyrick Mountains.

XX. THE GREAT ROUND UP.

At the beginning of the Irish war, when the I.R.A., to use its own words, “took the field against the British Army,” its activities were purely local and sporadic. Some unfortunate police patrols of half a dozen men, often less, walking along the King’s highway, interfering with none except evil-doers, would be suddenly fired at with shot-guns, sometimes loaded with jagged slugs and pieces of metal, from a safe cover behind a stone wall with carefully-prepared loopholes.

These police patrols never had a dog’s chance, and should have been discontinued long before they actually were.

At first the murderers did not trouble to make sure that they had a perfectly safe line of retreat behind them when the location of these cowardly ambushes was chosen, but after a few failures they made no mistake in future, the line of retreat, either through a thick wood or down the reverse slope of a hill, being always the first consideration.

Married police living in houses or rooms in the town of their station afforded an easy and safe target for the venom of these hooligan shop-boys and farmers’ sons. At first the police used to go home unarmed, and used to be shot down in the back while passing along an ill-lighted street or lane, or the assassins would knock at the door of the policeman’s home, and if he came to the door would fire at him and then run away.

Occasionally, in districts where the standard of bravery was very high, all the Volunteers would collect in a small town after dark—always after dark—and carry out an attack on the local police barracks. They knew perfectly well that it was impossible for the police to leave their barracks owing to the smallness of their numbers, and that as long as they kept well under cover (which they did) they were just as safe as they would be in their own beds at home.

These so-called attacks on police barracks simply consisted in gangs of hooligans first taking careful cover in houses adjacent to the barracks, and then firing off as many rounds as they possessed. They always ceased fire long before daybreak, in order that they might be home in good time before it was possible for the police to leave barracks or a relief party to arrive on the scene.

At this period of the war, raiding the houses of the Loyalists for arms, and incidentally for money and valuables, not forgetting drink, was a much safer and more remunerative night’s amusement than shooting policemen or attacking barracks, though the price then was £60 for every policeman murdered.

A party of twenty to thirty Volunteers, usually boys from fifteen to twenty years of age, would meet at a fixed rendezvous some time after dark with all the arms they could raise. They would then don black cloth masks, turn up their coat collars, pull their hats down, and sally forth to spend the night robbing, murdering, and terrorising the unfortunate Loyalists of the district.

Imagine the feelings of a respectable old man living in a lonely house, who had probably never harmed any one during his lifetime, and whose only crime consisted in being loyal or refusing to subscribe to the funds of the I.R.A., in many cases a form of common robbery.

Night after night he lies in bed expecting to hear a loud knock at the door, and at last it comes. He opens the door to find a dozen shot-guns, old rifles, and pistols pointed at him. Some brute then demands his arms; the old man says he has none. They push him aside and force their way in. The old man is made to sit down while two young hounds keep prodding him in the back of the neck with the muzzles of their pistols, to remind him what they could do if they liked. The remainder ransack the house from top to bottom, take away any money or valuables they can find, and consume any drink there may be. If they cannot find any money or valuables, they threaten him with death until he disgorges. And lonely women suffered in like fashion.

The demand for arms used to be merely a blind for committing robbery. The location of every firearm in a district was well known from the beginning of the war.

If the reader happens to be an English country gentleman, let him think what it would be like never to know the night or hour when he would be raided by a gang of farm labourers or village loafers, armed and masked, from the nearest village. He might retire to bed to be waked up by loud knocking on his front door. If he did not open quickly a rifle shot would be fired through the lock, and if the door did not open then, it quickly would to the blows of hatchets which would follow. A wild gang of drunken brutes would burst into his nice house, smash desks, sideboards, and cupboards, searching for loot. Lucky man if he escaped with the loss of arms, money, and valuables, and not of home and life as well.

If the reader is an ex-soldier, let him imagine what his feelings would be like if in the middle of the night he was pulled out of his bed by these same ruffians, and given his choice between joining Trotsky’s Own Light Infantry, or whatever the local Red force may call itself, or being shot out of face. Being true to his country, he refuses to have anything to do with Bolshevism, and is shot before the eyes of his agonised wife.

Remember that the loyal country gentlemen and ex-soldiers of Ireland have sacrificed their blood and treasure on the altar of Empire as well as their English cousins, and hence are entitled to as much protection.

But no, when it comes to a matter of politics and votes they are thrown to the wolves, to the eternal shame of England. The sacrifice of the southern Loyalists will form one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of England.

Robberies on a more extensive scale followed: bank managers taking large sums of money to out-of-the-way villages on the occasion of a fair, in order to facilitate payments by buyers to farmers, were held up and robbed. Mail-cars carrying pension money for the old and poor were held up and robbed; likewise post offices, banks, railway stations, and large shops—and most of this money used to forward the cause of armed rebellion. In fact, the Government were largely being fought with their own money, or, rather, that of the helpless British taxpayer.

But this form of warfare, though most unpleasant for the unfortunate Irish Loyalist, and probably disturbing to the few people in England who knew anything about what was happening in Ireland, would never have led to anything provided the British Government had taken the necessary steps quickly to preserve law and order and punish evil-doers. But no, as ever in Ireland, they would do nothing, except procrastinate, until it was too late.

Instead of strengthening the R.I.C. and sending more troops into the country, they merely evacuated outlying police barracks, which were promptly burnt amidst scenes of triumph by the local Volunteers, and hailed by all rebels as the first outward sign of the retreat of the English from Ireland.

If the police released by the evacuation of these barracks had been used to form flying columns to quiet the worst districts, there might have been some sense in this manœuvre; unfortunately, the men were all wanted to make up the wastage in the occupied barracks caused by the large number of resignations of young constables in the R.I.C. at this time.

Looking back, these constables who resigned appear to have been mean deserters of their comrades, but after-events have to a certain degree justified their action. They were certain that, no matter how often the British Government swore to see its loyal servants through, in the end it would let them down, and the pity is that they were right. True, there was a day when an Englishman’s word was as good as his bond, but that day appears to be quite out of date. Or perhaps it does not apply to politicians!

Doubtless greatly surprised at their initial success, the chiefs of the I.R.A. now determined on a much more ambitious form of warfare—namely, the formation of flying columns to harry and murder the Crown forces throughout Ireland, not excepting Ulster; at the same time they started a tremendous campaign of propaganda in England and the States.

The idea of breaking up the British Empire by means of a number of small flying columns of corner-boys in Ireland, and green pamphlets at John Bull’s breakfast-table, appears laughable; but Sinn Fein has shown itself a wonderfully astute judge of the mentality of the present-day politician in England.

The summer of 1920 saw the greater part of the south and west in the hands of the Republic, who not only boasted an army in the field, but ran their own police, law-courts, and Local Government Board. It was not an uncommon occurrence for a man to be first arrested by the R.I.C. for some offence, and then by the I.R.A.; sometimes there used to be quite an exciting race between these two forces to see who could catch the culprit first.

The first flying columns were made up of determined and hard-up corner-boys collected from every district in the south and west, and were sent out under specially qualified leaders to murder as many police and soldiers as they could, no matter whether they were armed or unarmed, asleep or awake. The price for the murder of a policeman rose gradually to £60, and eventually to £100.

With a terrorised population and a Government which refused to function, these columns had everything in their favour, and carried on their campaign of murder and assassination practically unhindered at first.

Their chief channels of information were the post-office and young girls. The larger proportion of post-office officials were openly disloyal, postmasters even being caught red-handed decoding important police and military wires for the information of the I.R.A. And young girls not only obtained information by walking out with policemen and soldiers, but also carried the gunmen’s arms to and from a murder or ambush.

It used to be no uncommon sight in Dublin to see a tram-car held up by Auxiliaries and searched with no result. Before the Auxiliaries had boarded the tram, the gunmen would openly pass their pistols to girls sitting beside them. Any one giving information would never have left that tram alive, nor would it have done any good, as the Auxiliaries were powerless (until near the end of the war) to search women.

As regards transport, they had only to take it where, when, and how they liked—motors, motor bicycles, lorries, and push-bicycles by the thousand in every part of the country. Think how different the result might have been if the Government had taken up all this transport and reduced the I.R.A. to their flat feet. And, of course, they used the trains freely, and without payment, both to carry arms and men.

Young girls, especially if pretty, make far the most dangerous spies in the world; and though they have always been used during a war on a small scale by every country, yet this is probably the first occasion on which a nation has conscripted girls of from twelve to twenty-five years wholesale for this vicious and contaminating work.

Even little children were taught the art of eavesdropping, and, of course, if they did not hear every word, readily filled in the blanks from their imagination. Many a man in Ireland during the last two years has lost his life through the medium of a little child. The Markievicz woman ought to appear on the Day of Judgment with the record millstone round her neck.

Despatches were carried in dozens of ways—boys on bicycles, men on motor bicycles, who also acted as scouts for ambushes, in the sample cases of bagmen (a common method also at one time of sending arms and ammunition about the country), by the post, and by railway guards—in fact, by every method which came to hand.

The I.R.A. obtained much valuable information through opening letters in the post, but their really important and often vital information came to them through a bad leakage in the Castle.

Any shortage of recruits was quickly made good by a drastic form of the old pressgang. An unwilling recruit would be dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, placed against a wall, and given a minute to decide for King George or the Irish Republic. King George meant a bullet in the brain, probably a dum-dum of the worst description; the Irish Republic meant active service with a flying column at some near future date.

Money was obtained in just as simple a way. A levy of, say, a pound a cow or a pound a beast would be laid on a district. A farmer had six cows or one horse, two asses, and three head of cattle. In either case he would pay £6 to the funds of the I.R.A. Any arguing there was would be solely on the side of the collector, who would have the butt-end of a large pistol protruding from his pocket. Such a simple and effective method of collecting a tax! No troublesome forms of beastly red tape, and no large staff of fat and lazy clerks to pay! Just a truculent-looking blackguard with a very large pistol, not necessarily loaded, and the money pours in. Cases of non-payment of this form of taxation have never been heard of, nor is there any means of dodging it. Cattle are not easy to hide.

Rations were obtained by the simple process of requisition. In some cases they used to go through the farce of giving a receipt for the stolen goods in the name of the I.R.A.!

With the police unable to function, banks and post-offices offered an easy prey to these ruffians. The meanest form of robbery was the taking of money to pay old-age pensions from mail-cars on their way to outlying districts.

A special murder gang was formed, which went about the country to murder any man—policeman, R.M., or civilian—who was particularly active in trying or helping to restore law and order in the country—that is, any man who was too tough a nut for the locals to crack. And, of course, in many cases private feuds and spites came under this heading. As has been mentioned, the price for a policeman was £100. People would be heard discussing this openly, and wondering if the price would go up or down, in the same way as they might discuss Dunlop’s or Guinness’s shares.

But the most effective weapon of Sinn Fein has been their propaganda campaign in America and England, coupled with the treasonable and treacherous aid from certain politicians and the effective silence of the daily press, with one great and notable exception.

The following letter, which fell into the hands of the Crown forces in Ireland, speaks for itself:—

Dail Eireann (Department of Finance), Mansion House, Dublin, 21st March 1921.

_To Director of Propaganda._

A CHARA,—The enclosed copy of notes from Ireland will probably be of some interest to you. I have previously sent some copies of these and other things from the Unionist Alliance people.

Many figures have been given in the papers recently with regard to R.I.C. resignations, dismissals, recruitment. All these _questions_ have been asked on instructions from me, and I think you might be able to make very good use of some of them. For instance, in the 10th March ‘Hansard’ (pages 688 and 689) are given the figures which appeared in the ‘Independent’ some days ago. In a few days’ time we shall get total strength and total numbers recruited over certain periods.

I have got an arrangement made in London whereby the ‘Independent’ correspondents will always quote the figures pretty fully for our benefit.

Do Chara,

MICHAEL COLLINS.