Part 6
The launch left the slip at Drumcar at 1 P.M., and Joyce made out that at eight miles an hour they ought to reach Buntarriv Sound at four o’clock and Trabawn Bay in another hour, which should give them plenty of time to land before darkness set in. Unfortunately, when out in the open Atlantic, the engine stopped, and Patsy, who was thoroughly frightened by now, would only sit down and cry. Two of the gunmen knew something of motors, and after nearly two hours discovered that the carburetter was choked with dirt, and it was nearly six o’clock before the Sound was within sight: another quarter of an hour and they would have been too late. As it was, a destroyer opened fire on them just as they were entering the Sound, and they were only saved by the failing light.
Knowing that the destroyer could not follow them, and afraid of wrecking the launch in the dark, they anchored and waited for the moon to rise, and eventually landed on the shore of Trabawn Bay. Joyce was at last in his own country, and before day broke the gunmen were safely lodged in different mountain farms close to Joyce’s home, and the next day Patsy was handed over to the local Volunteers to be returned to Drumcar. The following day they took the launch to a bay surrounded by high cliffs, where no human being except an odd herd ever went, and beached her at the height of the tide on the sandy shore, where they left her for future use.
After a few days at home Joyce began to get restless, and resolved to visit his married sister in the Bunrattey district; but the local Volunteers could only supply them with two bicycles, and the distance was too far to walk—forty-two miles as the crow flies. However, he learnt from a postman that a police patrol visited Ballyscaddan, a small village about sixteen miles east of Ballyrick, daily, and were in the habit of leaving their bicycles outside a public-house which they frequented.
The gunmen spent the night in Ballyscaddan, and about eleven o’clock a patrol of six R.I.C. arrived in the village, left their bicycles outside the public-house, and went inside to refresh themselves. The gunmen, who were waiting in the next house, quickly cut the tyres of one bicycle to ribbons, and rode off on the remaining five, leaving the unfortunate villagers to bear the brunt of the infuriated policemen’s wrath. That night Joyce and his four men slept in his sister’s house in Bunrattey.
Besides his courage, the only redeeming feature about Joyce appears to have been his love for this sister. As usual, she was delighted to see him, but by now the other inhabitants would have as soon welcomed the devil himself as Joyce, knowing that his progress through the country was blazed by reprisals.
Gone were the days when he used to hold audience daily in his sister’s house like a king, and men came many miles simply to see the famous Denis Joyce. Now the country people would avoid him on the road, and not a single person came to see him.
His sister warned him repeatedly that it was dangerous to stay any length of time with her; but Joyce seems to have lost heart, or perhaps his Celtic soul had a premonition of coming disaster. At any rate he refused to go, and spent most of this time sitting by the kitchen fire brooding.
Blake soon learnt of Joyce’s escape by sea from Drumcar, and feeling sure that sooner or later he would visit his sister before starting operations in the south again, concentrated his attention on that district. To this end, he kept his men well away, and at the same time asked for the help of the Auxiliary “travelling circus,” among whom were three Cadets who knew Joyce well by sight.
One of these Cadets, whose personal appearance favoured the disguise, was dressed up as a priest, and sent out on a bicycle to spy out the land. After two days he returned with the good news that he had passed the famous gunman on the road in Bunrattey, and at once Blake made preparations to surround the place that night.
He knew that success entirely depended on maintaining complete secrecy until the house was surrounded, and that if even a whisper of what was in the air got abroad all chances of capturing Joyce were gone. Tired of seeing operations ruined by well-advertised Crossleys, bristling with rifles, tearing along the main roads, he determined to try and catch his man by cunning.
Directly he received the news that Joyce was at Bunrattey, he left Ballybor Barracks with four Crossleys, two of R.I.C., and two of Auxiliaries, in the opposite direction to which Bunrattey lay, until they came to a small village about ten miles to the north, where there was a large flour-mill. Surrounding the mill, the police carried out a perfunctory search and left just before dark, taking with them two of the miller’s lorries, one empty, and the other loaded with flour sacks and two large tarpaulins, cutting the wires as soon as they were clear of the village.
Making their way eastwards until they reached a long stretch of desolate bog-road, they halted with one tender about a quarter of a mile behind and another the same distance ahead. They then proceeded to transfer half the flour sacks to the empty lorry, built them up with a hollow in the middle so that both lorries appeared to be fully loaded, filled the hollows with police, and then threw a tarpaulin over each.
The two lorries then set off to make a large detour in order to approach Bunrattey from the south (the opposite direction to Ballybor), and Blake made out that they ought to arrive there about midnight. The four Crossleys waited and followed at a time which should bring them to Bunrattey a quarter of an hour after the arrival of the lorries.
Joyce’s sister’s house stood back from the main road about eighty yards, was one-storied, very strongly built, and had a tremendous thatch of straw; to the front there were four small windows, heavily shuttered, and a stout oak door, and at the back only a door of the same kind. At a distance of about thirty yards from the house a low stone wall ran round the sides and back, enclosing a small cabbage garden and the haggard, which gave excellent cover for the police.
The lorries stopped within 400 yards of the house, and the police quickly and silently surrounded it without raising the alarm. They then waited for the arrival of the Crossleys, when the Auxiliaries and the remainder of the police formed a second cordon outside the first one.
The leading lorry was now brought into the lane which led up to the house, and left there with the acetylene lamps shining full on the front door and windows, and at the same time the lamps of the second lorry were taken to the back of the house and mounted on the wall, so that any one attempting to leave the house by the doors or windows would be in the full glare of the powerful lamps.
Approaching the house from a gable-end, Blake crawled along the front until he reached the door, on which he hammered with the butt of his revolver, and called on the inmates to surrender, telling them that they were surrounded and that resistance only meant death. Receiving no answer, he called out that if they did not come out at once with their hands up, he would open fire on the house, and for reply there came a volley of bullets through the lower part of the door. He then crawled back to cover, and ordered his men to open fire on the front door with a machine-gun.
The concentrated fire of a machine-gun will cut a hole through a nine-inch brick wall in a very short time, and in a few minutes the oak door was in splinters. While the machine-gun kept up a continuous fire at the height of a man’s chest, four policemen endeavoured to get into the house by crawling up to the door, but when a few feet away two were shot, and the remaining two only escaped by rolling to one side.
All that the police had to do now, provided that Joyce was in the house—and the resistance offered made this a certainty—was to wait until daylight, when the certain capture of the gunmen would only be a question of time. But by now Blake was excited, and remembering how O’Hara had slipped through his hands, he determined to burn the rats out and finish the show. After getting a tin of petrol from one of the cars, he again crawled up to the gable-end, set a light to the tin, and flung it on to the thatch, which at once took fire, burning fiercely.
Only a few days previously this part of the thatch had been renewed, and as the weather had been fine it was bone-dry. But after a few minutes the fire reached the old and wet thatch, and as there was a gentle breeze blowing from the front, very soon the back of the house was completely hidden by a cloud of smoke.
Realising the mistake he had made, Blake ordered his men to keep up a continuous fire on the back door, and at the same time rushed the machine-gun round to that side; but so blinding was the smoke by now that it was impossible to know where the back door was.
Hearing shouts from the front, on going there he found a young woman standing in the doorway with her hands up, who told him that all the men in the house were wounded and unable to move. On entering they found three of Joyce’s bodyguard and his brother-in-law lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor, but not a sign of Joyce or the fourth man.
There was still a chance that the missing two might be found wounded outside the back door, which was ajar, but the smoke was still so dense that no one could approach. After a time the smoke abated, and they found the fourth man dead a few yards from the house, but not a sign of Joyce.
Again working on the theory that the gunman would make for his home in the Ballyrick mountains, which lay to the westward at the back of the house, Blake divided his forces into two, sending each out on a flank in order to get well ahead of the fugitive, and then form a fan-shaped net and beat backwards towards the house. Four miles away to the west was the Owenmore river, which ran northwards through Ballybor, and across the river were two bridges, each about four miles from where they were.
The two forces crossed by different bridges, each dropping three men at the bridges, then went on about three miles, and at daybreak started to beat the country back to the bridges. Here they arrived, worn out, at 10 A.M., and not a sign had any one seen or heard of Joyce.
Sure that Joyce had crossed the river, the police started to beat back again over the ground they had just covered; but by 4 P.M. the men were done in, and Blake had to call them off and return to Ballybor.
That night he got out a large-scale Ordnance map of the Bunrattey district, put himself in Joyce’s place, and tried to think out his line of escape, presuming that the fugitive had avoided the bridges and swum the river at the nearest point from his sister’s house. On crossing the river he would soon come to a thick wood on the slope of a hill, through which the railway line to Ballybor ran, and here he decided that Joyce must be hiding.
Early the next morning Blake set out with a strong force, and approaching Derryallen Wood from all four sides at once, spent the rest of the day beating the wood through and through, but without any result, and they came to the conclusion that by now Joyce must have got clear.
A week afterwards, when Blake was returning in the dusk from Grouse Lodge Barracks, a man stopped the car on an open stretch of road about a mile outside Ballybor. The man turned out to be the loyal guard of the goods train, and he told Blake that for several days past he had seen the engine-driver drop a parcel as the train passed through Derryallen Wood, and always at the same place, into a patch of briers on the side of the line.
Blake’s interest in Joyce awoke afresh, but he felt sure that no living being had escaped them on the day when they searched the wood, and they had not been able to find any trace of a hiding-place. However, it would be interesting to know what the engine-driver dropped when passing through the wood, and by whom it was picked up.
The main road from Ballybor to Castleport ran parallel with the railway, skirting the east side of Derryallen; and here, on a pitch-dark winter’s night, in torrents of rain, two Crossleys stopped for a couple of minutes while Blake and a party of R.I.C. and Cadets dropped out, and then drove on again.
With great difficulty the party found their way in the dark to the railway line, where they remained hidden in some laurels until it began to grow light, when they were able to conceal themselves within easy reach of the patch of briers.
After hours of weary waiting the goods train passed down, and the engine-driver dropped the parcel into the briers. At once the police forgot hunger and cold in their eagerness to see who would pick up the parcel, but again they were doomed to hours of weary waiting.
At last, when the men had nearly reached the limit of their endurance and light was almost gone, they saw a most miserable-looking wild-eyed man crawling painfully towards the patch of briers. When he was within five yards of the parcel Blake called on him to surrender, and every man covered him with his rifle.
Game to the end, though unable to stand on account of a bullet-wound in one leg, Joyce drew his pistol and glared defiance at the police; but as he raised himself to fire, a fifteen-stone Cadet, who had crept up silently behind him, flung himself on the famous gunman’s back, and the long chase was over.
Joyce refused to show Blake his hiding-place, but afterwards they learnt from the owner of the wood that there was a cave in the middle of the wood which had been used by robbers over a hundred years ago, the entrance of which was completely covered by thick heather.
VII. THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES.
After the loss of the American arms the district of Ballybor remained quiet for some considerable time, so that the hard-working farmers in the country and respectable shopkeepers in the town began to hope at last that the trouble was over, and that they might be free to carry on their work in peace. Unfortunately, a quiet and peaceful district is anathema to the Sinn Fein G.H.Q., and before long a Volunteer flying column received orders to operate in the Ballybor district, with a view to stirring up trouble and bringing the county into line with the south.
By this time the large moderate element of Sinn Fein, in other words, practically every man who had a stake in the country—substantial farmers with haggards to burn, and prosperous shopkeepers with shops to burn—realised that they had backed a losing horse, and were prepared to do any mortal thing for peace, except help the police. Unfortunately, the farmers’ sons and shop-boys, who, in the usual course of events, but for the war, would have been in the States by now, took quite a different view. £20 in the £ rates, burnt haggards, and ruined businesses meant nothing to boys who paid no rates nor owned shops or farms.
Up to the winter of 1919 the rebels moved about the country in motors, how, when, and where they liked. Even during the time when every gallon of petrol was being kept for the armies in France, and the Loyalists were only allowed six gallons a month (on paper), De Valera and his staff burnt petrol as freely as a Connaught peasant will drink poteen. In connection with this, it would be interesting to know into whose petrol tanks the many thousands of gallons of petrol which was washed up on the western shores of Ireland from torpedoed vessels passed, and the system of collection and distribution.
After this winter, when the use of cars for illegal purposes became more and more restricted as the car-permit regulations became stricter and more rigidly enforced, the Volunteers began to make great use of bicycles, and their flying columns consisted of cyclists only. Orders were issued from G.H.Q. that every Volunteer must be able to ride a bicycle, and local commandants were instructed to see that every man in their command had one.
During the Mons retreat the cyclists were invaluable, both for fighting small rearguard actions and also for keeping in contact with the enemy. During the present war in Ireland, the explanation of the mysteries of how men can shoot policemen from behind a wall and then disappear into thin air, and of how a column of gunmen can shoot up a train in Kerry on Monday and ambush a police lorry in Clare on Tuesday, is to be found in the intelligent use of the humble push-bike. And until the authorities round up every push-bike in Ireland, these mysteries will continue.
As soon as G.H.Q. determined that the Ballybor district must be brought into line with the south, a small party of gunmen, operating at the time many miles to the south, received their orders, and late that night a silent and ghostly party of cyclists rode into the Ballybor district. At a certain cross-roads they were met by guides, and long before daybreak the gunmen were billeted in ones and twos throughout the townland of Cloonalla.
The following night a meeting of the local Volunteers was held in the National School, and the leader of the gunmen insisted that a police ambush or an attack on the Grouse Lodge Barracks should take place within the next few nights. The general opinion being against an attack on the barracks—the field of fire was too good, and the Black and Tans too handy with their rifles—it was settled (by the gunmen) that the police should be ambushed at a favourable spot where the main road from Ballybor to Castleport passed through a wooded demesne.
The next morning Father Tom, the parish priest, was besieged by the young Volunteers’ fathers, men who had homes and haggards to burn, one and all imploring his reverence to prevent an ambush in the parish, and to save them from the wrath of the Auxiliaries. Some of them, when asked, confessed that the gunmen were staying in their houses, but that their sons had brought them there without leave, and that they were powerless to get rid of them.
From the beginning of the movement Father Tom, who was young for a parish priest and an ardent Sinn Feiner in theory, had been one of the leaders in the district, and even when burning houses and haggards began to follow murderous ambuscades in far-away Co. Cork as surely as day follows night, he still felt a thrill of pride for his countrymen who were giving their all for freedom, and became a fiercer Sinn Feiner than ever; but an ambush (and the sequel) in his own beloved parish was a very different thing, and a calamity to be avoided at all costs (his house stood high, and would give a splendid view at night of burning houses and haggards), and there was obviously no time to lose.
The next day was Sunday, and at mass Father Tom, who was a fine preacher, thundered forth from the altar. A vivid imagination stimulated his eloquence to such a pitch that he reduced most of the older members of his flock to tears.
He told them that it had come to his ears that certain men in the parish were harbouring strangers within their gates, and that these strangers had been trying to incite young and innocent boys to murder policemen. He then described the result of an ambush—how houses were burnt to the ground and women and little children were turned out on the road on a winter’s night (he did not mention the men, knowing that by then they would be up in the mountains), and how innocent men were shot in their beds before the eyes of their wives; but he said nothing about the widows and orphans of the murdered policemen. Finally, he warned his flock against the strangers, who would fade away before the wrath of the soldiers and Auxiliaries fell on the parish, and commanded that they should be instantly turned out under the direst penalties. And with a last curse on the strangers he left the chapel.
If Father Tom had thundered from the altar against ambushes many, many months before, instead of openly encouraging the Volunteers, the result might have been very different; but a leader of men who gives an order to-day and a counter-order to-morrow is rarely obeyed. That night it was learnt that a party of military would proceed from Castleport to Ballybor on Wednesday night, and it was settled to ambush them at the spot chosen in the demesne, the gunmen promising that a carload of arms and bombs would arrive in time for the ambush, and also a doctor.
In the Cloonalla district there lived, nowadays a _rara avis_ in the west of Ireland, a Protestant farmer of the old yeoman type so well known in England, and a staunch Loyalist. To his house there came on that Sunday night two of the leading farmers, who told him the whole story of the proposed ambush, and begged him to warn the police.
The chapel of Cloonalla stands in the centre of the parish, close to a cross-roads, and on that Wednesday morning the inhabitants woke up to find a kilted sentry on guard at the cross-roads, and before most of them could get out of bed, two companies of Highlanders, guided by Blake, were hard at work searching every house for strangers.
Blake had brought with him two old regular R.I.C. sergeants, men who had been stationed in the district for years, and who knew every man, young and old; but the gunmen had been in trouble before, and were not to be caught so easily.
They were all young men and clean shaved, and before the police and Highlanders entered any of their billets, one and all were dressed as women with shawls over their heads; and in one house, where two of them had been billeted, the Highlanders found a young woman sitting on a stool by the fire, nursing a baby under her shawl, while another pretty shawled girl was preparing breakfast for the young mother. A big Highlander could not resist giving her a glad eye, little knowing that “she” was a notorious gunman, and wanted to the tune of a thousand pounds for the brutal murder of a D.I. as he was leaving church.
The only result of the raid was the finding of an old shot-gun in the bed of the local blacksmith, a man who had always defied the local Volunteers, and kept a gun for poaching only, and who was taken off to Ballybor Barracks amidst the jeers of everybody. However, in a few days they realised how useful and necessary a person a smith is in a country district, and before the week was out the whole townland was clamouring for the smith’s release.
However, the raid had good results; the Volunteers refused point-blank to carry out the ambush on Wednesday night, though the gunmen stayed until that day, making every endeavour to bring it off. Finding it was useless, they disappeared that night as silently as they had come, promising to return shortly in greater numbers.
The whole district heaved a sigh of relief when it was known that there were no longer any strangers within the gates, and settled down to farm and lead the life God meant them to live, and hoped against hope that they might never see a cursed stranger again, be he gunman or Auxiliary. Blake let it be known that it was a case of no ambush, no Auxiliaries, and every farmer in the district was quite content to keep his side of the bargain.
But peace was not yet to be the portion of Cloonalla. Within three weeks of the first gunman leaving, a party of twenty arrived on a wild winter’s night, and, as on the former occasion, as silently dispersed to their allotted billets. This time the leader of the gunmen did not ask the local Volunteers to help, but ordered them to carry out the ambush in the wooded demesne on the main road from Castleport to Ballybor, as previously arranged.
The gunmen did not appear during the day-time at all, and had been nearly a week in the district before Father Tom heard of their arrival. Unfortunately, the priest was very ill with influenza at the time, and before he could take any action the damage was done.