Contents
List of Abbreviations
4
Introduction
7
Acknowledgements
Part 1: Significant Incidents in the War
5 13
The Irish Revolution and Civil War, 24 April 1916–24 May 1923
15
The Murder of Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain and the ‘Stolen’ Jury
25
Cork 1916–1919
The Death of Colonel Smyth
The Disappearance of John Coughlan The Funeral of Terence MacSwiney The Kilmichael Ambush The Burning of Cork
The Incident at Mallow Station Cascading Death
The Clonmult Shootout 28 February 1921
The Crossbarry Ambush
The Destruction of Rosscarbery Police Barracks Tom Barry’s Trench Coat Massacre in West Cork
Michael Collins: ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Be Killed’ The Door to Madness
20 30 33 35 39 51 55 58 62 65 69 76 81 85
90
99
Part 2: The Dead
103
Addendum
372
Possibles
Endnotes
Bibliography Index
368 374 424 432
The Kilmichael Ambush
The Kilmichael ambush, lasting 30 minutes, is one of the most controversial topics in the history of this period.1 An ambush in West Cork by the newly formed Cork No. 3 Brigade IRA flying column resulted in the death of
sixteen Auxiliaries on 28 November 1920. Since the Auxiliaries had been introduced to Ireland as a special gendarmerie to combat the growing rebellion and take the fight to the IRA, their slaughter at Kilmichael was a shock to the British and a major morale boost for the Irish.
After the late Peter Hart described the leader of the ambush, Tom Barry,
as ‘vain, angry and ruthless’, claimed that ‘Barry’s “history” of Kilmichael’ was
‘riddled with lies and evasions’ and said that ‘there was no false surrender’, which Barry had used to explain the annihilation of the Auxiliaries, the
debate over what happened at Kilmichael has attracted historians of the
period like no other.2 Controversy still rages over whether the Auxiliaries were gunned down in cold blood after surrendering, or whether, as Barry
claimed, they started shooting again after supposedly surrendering – the socalled ‘false surrender’ – thus justifying the IRA’s actions.
Confusingly, while Hart accepted that versions of the false surrender story
were circulating as early as 1921, a fact specifically mentioned in General
Frank Crozier’s Ireland Forever, he insisted that changes in Barry’s story over time suggest that the story entered the narrative only after Crozier’s book
was published in 1932.3 (Crozier had been head of the Auxiliaries at the
time of the attack.) This is not in fact the case, as the false surrender was part of the story used to explain the savagery of the ambush in the first published account by Lionel Curtis, in Round Table in June 1921.4
Exchanges in the debate have been robust, but one of the difficulties has
been that few of the ‘combatants’ have returned to the core sources to recon-
struct what actually happened in the fight, preferring to criticise each others’ 39
CORK’S REVOLUTIONARY DEAD
interpretations of various single items of evidence. This re-examination con-
centrates on the BMH witness statements, written thirty years after the event, published eyewitness accounts, a map drawn by the British Army on the day after the ambush (the Fleming map), a sketch map drawn by Tom Barry after
the event, and the record of injuries to the Auxiliaries, the first version of which was published three days after the ambush.
Following the Toureen ambush in October 1920, where the first British
lorry had simply driven at speed through the attack before anyone could
react, Tom Barry, Michael McCarthy and Sonny Dave Crowley scouted
possible locations where the same thing could not happen again, in order to attack the Macroom Auxiliaries, who had been raiding the area since
their arrival there in late August.5 The IRA noticed that individual Auxiliary
commanders had fallen into a pattern of following the same routes while on patrol, and so the location chosen was on one of these routes, just south of
Kilmichael, on the Macroom to Dunmanway road, where two sharp bends meant the lorries had to slow down.
On the chosen day, the IRA contingent
arrived at approximately 8 a.m. Barry then
divided his force into five groups.6 He set up a command post at the eastern bend with his
second-in-command, Michael McCarthy, 150 metres to the west. Just north-west of Barry’s
command post, ten men were placed on a low hill to provide flanking fire once the lead lorry Michael McCarthy (Courtesy of Mercier Press)
was stopped. As the road was narrow, stopping
the first lorry would inevitably halt the convoy. It was the job of Barry’s group at the command
post to do this. Another squad of six riflemen was placed 50 metres opposite
them on the south of the road, at a point from which they could fire on both
ambush sites if the Auxiliaries attempted to take cover south of the road. Scouts kept watch to the north and south of the site. Another group of six 40
THE KILMICHAEL AMBUSH
riflemen was placed well behind and above McCarthy’s section, in case the patrol consisted of three lorries instead of the expected two – these men
would engage the third lorry. They took no part in the actual fighting as they could have hit their own men.
The nature of the terrain meant that McCarthy’s group of three was low
down and very close to the side of the road, with six men behind them and Ned Young across the road. McCarthy sent Young to the south side of the
road before the ambush to prevent the Auxiliaries taking cover around a farm lane opposite his position. Jack Hennessy, John Lordan and Michael
McCarthy had no cover as they lay on their low rock metres above the road, so they built a low wall while they were waiting. Because the column had broken camp just after midnight, the men had had no food since the day before, apart from a ‘bucket of tea’ from a nearby farm.
Half an hour before sunset, at around 4 p.m., approaching Auxiliary
lorries were spotted by the scouts.7 Tom Barry was most likely talking to Michael McCarthy, either about two late arrivals or about calling the
ambush off, when news of the lorries was signalled to him. He directed
the pony and trap driven there by the two late Volunteers up the farm lane to the south and sprinted back to his command post. When the first lorry
neared the eastern bend, Barry threw a grenade into the body of the lorry
and opened fire, killing the driver and the Auxiliary commander, Lieutenant Colonel Crake.8 Simultaneously, the lorry was blasted at point-blank range by the ten riflemen to the north. Barry described what happened at the first lorry after the initial grenade:
Revolvers were used at point blank range, and at times, rifle butts replaced rifle shots. So close were the combatants, that in once instance the pumping blood from an Auxiliary’s severed artery struck one attacker full in the mouth …9
The Auxiliaries in the first lorry stood no chance and all nine were killed.
At the same time the second lorry had been engaged by McCarthy’s 41
CORK’S REVOLUTIONARY DEAD
men. The Auxiliaries from that lorry dismounted at the start of the ambush and spread out on the road, south of and just to the east of McCarthy’s
section. As the ‘driver to the second tender tried to get back out of it all, his
differential broke completely and the tender just ran off the edge of the road and slipped into the bog’ to the west of the IRA position.10 Ned Young left
his position when he saw the driver and another Auxiliary make a run for it to the west. He fired at both men and mistakenly believed that he had killed
the driver, Guthrie, who actually escaped. He then pursued the other man, who had taken shelter under the Crossley tender, and shot him dead.
Jack Hennessy, who was in the most exposed position, less than 5 metres
from the Auxiliaries, described the rest of the fight:
I was engaging the Auxies on the road. I was wearing a tin hat. I had fired about
ten rounds and had got five bullets through the hat when the sixth bullet wounded me in the scalp. Vice Comdt. McCarthy had got a bullet through the head and lay dead. I continued to load and fire but the blood dripping from my forehead fouled the breech of my rifle. I dropped my rifle and took Ml. McCarthy’s. Many
of the Auxies lay on the road dead or dying. Our orders were to fix bayonets and charge on to the road when we heard three blasts of the O/C’s whistle. I
heard the three blasts and got up from my position, shouting ‘hands up’. At the
same time one of the Auxies about five yards from me drew his revolver. He had
thrown down his rifle. I pulled on him and shot him dead. I got back to cover,
where I remained for a few minutes firing at living and dead Auxies on the road. The Column O/C sounded his whistle again. Nearly all the Auxies had been
wiped out. When I reached the road a wounded Auxie moved his hand towards his revolver. I put my bayonet through him under the ribs. Another Auxie tried to pull on John Lordan, who was too near to use his bayonet and he struck the Auxie with the butt of his rifle. The butt broke on the Auxie’s skull.11
John Lordan, who had been next to Hennessy, had stood up at the same time
as him and been shot in the ear. Pat Deasy also stood up and was shot in the abdomen and subsequently in the chest.12 It is claimed that Jim O’Sullivan 42
THE KILMICHAEL AMBUSH
had apparently died earlier when he was killed by the bolt action of his rifle, which exploded and lodged in his skull.13 However, Dan Hou-
rihan, who was next to him, told Meda Ryan in 1971 that ‘after they shouted that surrender, it was silence! Jim lifted himself. Thought it was
all over’ and it was at this point he was shot. This evidence has great weight, as it was given by a witness who ended up positioned between two of the dead IRA men.14 What is certain is that Pat Deasy (Courtesy of Mercier Press)
O’Sullivan died from a head wound.
According to another veteran, Tim Keohane,
some of the Auxiliaries appeared to surrender,
only to open fire again when the IRA fighters emerged from cover to take them prisoner:
The enemy party in the leading lorry was disposed of in about five or six
minutes, but the survivors from the second lorry continued to fight for about
20/30 minutes. At this stage Tom Barry blew a blast on his whistle as a signal
that all men should get on to the road. At the same time he moved with his section along the road from the east to take the survivors in the rear. Tom
Barry then called on the enemy to surrender and some of them put up their
hands, but when our party were moving on to the road the Auxiliaries again opened fire. Two of our men ( John Lordan and Jack Hennessy, I think) were wounded by his fire. Pat Deasy had been wounded, while Jim Sullivan [sic]
and Mick McCarthy (V/C Dunmanway Battn.) had been killed prior to this
happening. The O/C (Tom Barry) immediately ordered an all-out attack, and after a few sharp bursts the enemy forces were silenced. We then found that everybody on the road had been killed.15
Indeed Stephen O’Neill, who had a good vantage point (and therefore was in a prime position as a witness), stated:
43
CORK’S REVOLUTIONARY DEAD
The O/C, with three of the section responsible for the destruction of the first
lorry, came to our assistance, with the result that the attack was intensified. On being called on to surrender, they signified their intention of doing so, but when we ceased at the O/C’s command, fire was again opened by the Auxilia-
ries, with fatal results to two of our comrades who exposed themselves belie-
ving the surrender was genuine. We renewed the attack vigorously and never desisted until the enemy was annihilated.16
Other participants do not mention a surrender call, most noticeably Paddy O’Brien and James ‘Spud’ Murphy, who, being next to Barry, is as important a witness as Stephen O’Neill.17 However, both make clear how intense the fighting was:
Some of the men of the second lorry got out on the road and took up posi-
tions by the fence and started firing back on the men in No. 3 section. We were ordered out on the road – Tom Barry first – and we followed. We got down on
our knees and we opened fire on the men that got out of the lorry at the other
end (west) of the position. After an exchange of fire lasting about ten minutes, they were all killed with the exception of one man who jumped into the bog and ran about 50 yards before being shot.18
According to Jack O’Sullivan, at least one Auxiliary was killed having surrendered, but no other IRA witness mentions this.19
The results of the Auxiliary post-mortems, which were publicised during
the inquest into the events of Kilmichael, appear to back up the evidence in the Volunteers’ witness statements:
44
t
William Barnes: Gaping wound in axilla and four other bullet wounds in various parts of the body. Post mortem wounds. Large bullet wound over heart.20
t
Cecil J. W. Bayley: One bullet wound in head; bullet wound behind right ear which entered skull; one bullet wound on right hand.
THEÂ KILMICHAELÂ AMBUSH
t
Leonard Douglas Bradshaw: Big perforating wound over liver (fired at close range), wound at right shoulder with fracture of humerus, wound in left axilla, fracture of femur.
t
Francis W. Crake: Gunshot wound through head, which entered at point of lower jaw and came out at back of skull. Gunshot wound clean.
t
James Chubb Gleave: Gunshot wound over heart; wound on upper portion of chest and large gaping wound in chest (fired at short range) with scorching; large lacerated wound on left side of pelvis, probably from a bayonet.
t
Philip Noel Graham: Explosive wounds through head.
t
Stanley Hooper-Jones: Two wounds, one in groin and one in axilla. Death due to shock and haemorrhage.
t
Frederick Hugo: Compound fracture of skull, compound fracture of femur and extensive lacerated wounds.
t
Albert G. J. Jones: Bullet wound in axilla. Six bullet wounds in limbs and body. Fracture in femur.
t
Ernest W. Lucas: Gunshot wound in head; severe gunshot wounds in neck and body. Fracture of femur.
t
William Pallester: Large wound through middle of chest over heart, small wound of right hand. Post mortem wounds: compound fractures of skull (brains protruding) caused probably by an axe or some fairly sharp metal implement.
t
Horace Pearson: Bullet wound in head; lacerated wound on forearm; bullet wound in leg.
t
Arthur Poole: Five bullet wounds in neck and shoulder, which were the cause of death. Post mortem wounds, extensive depressed fracture of bones of face head and skull.
t
Frank Taylor: Large wound on chest (bayonet or gunshot), large wound on left shoulder with fracture of joint, one wound in upper right chest, three other gunshot wounds.
t
Christopher Wainwright: One bullet wound on right side of chest; one abdominal wound; two wounds back of right side of chest (fired at short range).
t
Benjamin Webster: Gaping wound in shoulder; fracture of femur; three rifle bullets through back.21 45