[PDF Download] Ireland's secret war: dan bryan, g2 and the lost tapes that reveal the hunt for irela
Ireland's Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes That Reveal the Hunt for Ireland's
Nazi Spies Marc Mcmenamin
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/irelands-secret-war-dan-bryan-g2-and-the-lost-tapes-t hat-reveal-the-hunt-for-irelands-nazi-spies-marc-mcmenamin/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
How Ireland Voted 2016: The Election that Nobody Won 1st Edition Michael Gallagher
LOST TAPES THAT REVEAL THE HUNT SECRET WAR FOR IRELAND’S NAZI SPIES
MARC Mc MENAMIN
GILL BOOKS
Viris fortibus non opus est moenibus.
(To brave men, walls are unnecessary.)
AGESILAUS
THE GREAT, KING OF SPARTA (C.375 BC)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Prologue: an old box of tapes
e Storm Clouds Gather
Forging Alliances
e Art of Diplomacy
Upping the Ante
e Parachutist
Neutrality Under Pressure
Our Friends and Allies?
viii
ix x
Prisoners of War
Endgame
Unsung Heroes
Epilogue: a journey west
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Author
About Gill Books
Photo Section
FOREWORD
The rst 30 years of 20th-century Irish history have been scrutinised much more carefully than the years leading up to and during World War II, and Ireland’s role in that con agration has been misunderstood and undervalued, both during the war and since. Ireland’s neutral position, its quiet tilt toward the Allies, surely contributed to the country’s transition from Free State to Republic. However, Irish neutrality was not without its critics. Both pro-German factions and those convinced that the policy helped the Allies criticised the country’s stance. Although Irish neutrality was benevolent to the Allies, anti-Irish sentiment was widespread in the US as well as in Britain, and even today many Americans believe that Ireland’s neutrality was a cover for its covert Nazi sympathies.
e rst people to write about Ireland in World War II were journalists such as Sean O’Callaghan and Enno Stephan, who exposed the German spy Helmut Clissmann. By the time I came to the topic, many of the participants were willing to talk about their experiences, and quite a bit of, but not all, documentation was accessible. One cannot overemphasise the value of rsthand oral accounts and other primary sources, and the papers of those who play a role in historic events should be housed in reputable archives so that those who evaluate the past can have adequate materials to lead them to intelligent judgments.
Marc Mc Menamin has rigorously examined documents that earlier journalists and historians either did not have access to or overlooked. For instance, he has scrutinised interviews with Douglas Gageby, of the Irish Times, as well as the testimony of Commandant James Power, the man in charge of the Athlone internment camp. In his previous book, Codebreaker,
Mc Menamin expanded our knowledge of activities of the German colony in Ireland prior to and during World War II. Codebreaker is the de nitive biography of Dr Richard Hayes, who broke the Abwehr code that the failed spy Hermann Görtz brought to Ireland.
One of the men who implemented the Irish position in World War II was Col. Dan Bryan, a genial, intellectual man whose life and writings re ected the highest standards of government service. Mc Menamin has made ample use of Bryan’s papers, as well as of the interviews that I conducted with him and others many years ago. Mc Menamin now provides us with an excellent description of Bryan’s early life and stresses the importance of the goals expressed in his treatise ‘Fundamental Factors
Affecting Irish Defence Policy’. Mc Menamin believes that sometimes one person is labelled a hero while someone else, a real hero, is overlooked. His examination of Bryan leads him to conclude that the man has been as undervalued as Ireland’s policy of neutrality; that he was heroic in his conduct of his duties, and that he deserves greater respect and renown.
Mc Menamin represents a new generation of historians, anxious to go beyond previously accepted stories. He has written an important book, which you are about to read. If his conclusions generate controversy and further investigation into Ireland’s role in World War II, he will have done a great service to the historical profession as well as to the general reader.
Carolle J. Carter Professor Emerita Menlo College Atherton, California
PROLOGUE: AN OLD BOX OF TAPES
This story is a sequel of sorts to my 2018 book Codebreaker: e Untold Story of Richard Hayes, the Dublin Librarian who Helped Turn the Tide of World War II. I felt very strongly when writing that book that it was important to tell Dr Hayes’s story, which had been sadly neglected in the historical record of World War II in Ireland. Hayes had done amazing deeds for the country and was instrumental in breaking a number of German codes during the war. While he was celebrated in the intelligence communities for his achievements in cryptography, he was less esteemed in Ireland, where he is probably better known as an academic and librarian. His Manuscript Sources for the History of Irish Civilisation is still consulted widely by historians and researchers alike.
e book was largely built on the 2017 radio documentary Richard Hayes: Nazi Codebreaker, broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1’s multi-award-winning Documentary on One slot. e press coverage that followed the book’s publication led to numerous offers of TV projects and lm scripts inspired by Hayes’s story. Naturally this piqued my curiosity as to whether there might be lm footage or audio tapes of Hayes and Dan Bryan (whose name came up repeatedly during my research on Hayes – indeed, in truth you can’t separate one man from the other), perhaps in a private collection that had hitherto lain undiscovered. While there is some material in RTÉ’s television and radio archives of both men, in which they mostly talked about other topics – Hayes on Islamic art and Bryan on the War of Independence –material on World War II was thin on the ground. is got me thinking about a book I had consulted while writing Codebreaker. e Shamrock and the Swastika, a ground-breaking study of German espionage in neutral Ireland during the Emergency, was written by Professor Carolle J. Carter of
San José State University in northern California, who carried out the research for it between 1970 and 1973. e book had its genesis in Prof. Carter’s master’s thesis, which she carried out under the supervision of Professor Charles B. Burdick, one of the foremost authorities on World War II and the author of 10 books on the subject, as well as numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. He is still regarded as a pioneering historian on the history of the German High Command throughout the war.
Aer much research online I discovered that there was a large archive at San José State University, named, in the professor’s memory, the Burdick Military History Project. I was aware that Prof. Carter’s book had been mainly written using personal interviews she had carried out with Dan Bryan and Dr Hayes during the early seventies while on a research trip to Dublin. Was it possible that Carter’s audio tapes, recorded so many years before, still existed? I decided to contact San José State University directly. Aer navigating my way around the college switchboard, I was advised to put my request in writing to Dr Jonathan Roth, who today presides over the Burdick collection. Within 24 hours I received a reply from Dr Roth putting me in contact with the university archivist, Carli Lowe. Carli offered to look through the Burdick collection for material relating to Ireland and found that the archive included primary sources consulted by Professor Burdick in his research, as well as research notes and personal correspondence. While nothing immediately seemed to pop up in the library catalogue of the collection in relation to Ireland during World War II, Carli suggested that I speak directly with Prof. Carter. I immediately emailed her to introduce myself and inquire if she still had copies of the tapes that she had used in her research for e Shamrock and the Swastika. e email I received the next day opened a Pandora’s box that eventually became the basis of this book. I suggested to Prof. Carter that we should organise a Zoom call to talk through things further and so that I could explain my rationale for wanting to obtain the tapes she had recorded so many years before. During the course of our initial Zoom call, I discovered that the tapes in Prof. Carter’s possession were utterly priceless. ey were in effect the untold history of
World War II in Ireland told from the point of view of the main protagonists. A precious resource that existed nowhere else in the world.
Prof. Carter had carried out the interviews on vintage audio cassette tapes using old-style eld equipment, over multiple visits to Ireland between 1969 and 1971. Naturally, I was worried that these tapes might not have stood the test of time. Aer all, they had been in storage in the professor’s attic for the best part of 50 years. Over the course of one of our many Zoom calls Prof. Carter told me she would catalogue the material in her attic, a ‘fun thing to do to alleviate the boredom of lockdown’. At the time California was suffering badly from the Covid-19 pandemic, with record daily cases and deaths, despite the best efforts of Governor Gavin Newsom to halt the course of the virus. Prof. Carter and her husband were adhering to California’s ‘shelter in place’ order, so the chance to catalogue the tapes was a welcome distraction from all the bad news.
Aer a week I received an email from her telling me that the tapes were in a very healthy state and that she had catalogued and labelled all the material on them. She had also gone through her notes and research and had a wealth of information from the period that she felt would be of use to me. I read the list Prof. Carter had compiled with utter fascination and sheer excitement that I would be able to hear the voices of those from the war in Ireland tell their own stories.
e earliest tapes date from August 1969 and were recorded in the Republic of Ireland as Derry was about to explode into the violence that became known as the Battle of the Bogside. e rst tapes consisted of interviews with Helmut Clissmann, a prominent Dublin businessman, originally from Germany, who had been involved with the Abwehr, the intelligence service of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. Another interview recorded in 1969 was carried out in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, with Stephen Hayes, one of three wartime Chiefs of Staff of the IRA. is tape is a unique audio recording of an IRA Chief of Staff from the 1940s. Also included in the 1969 batch of interviews was a tape of the testimony of Commandant James Power of Athlone, a member of the Irish intelligence services dealing with Nazi prisoners interned in Athlone during
the war. One of the most interesting tapes from these 1969 recordings was a tape of IRA leader James O’Donovan (also known as Jim and Seamus), who helped establish the initial links between the IRA and Nazi Germany just before the outbreak of the war in 1939. O’Donovan travelled several times to Berlin and his oral testimony of the period is fascinating.
Prof. Carter returned to Ireland the following summer to carry out interviews with retired members of the Irish intelligence services, including Richard Hayes, as well as with the writer Francis Stuart, who himself had been embroiled in espionage with Nazi Germany during this period. By far the most important tapes were a series of seven interviews with Colonel Dan Bryan, the head of Irish Military Intelligence for the bulk of the duration of the war. Bryan was a towering gure in the history of the Emergency and is perhaps one of Ireland’s least-known heroes. He masterminded Irish intelligence services throughout the war and was regarded by those who knew him with whom I have spoken, and by historians of the period, as a man of honour. e Bryan interviews, which were mainly carried out during Prof. Carter’s last visit to Ireland in 1971, were perhaps the most important of all the tapes since they were the oral testimony of the man who knew most about Ireland’s secret war against Nazi Germany.
It occurred to me that these tapes were so important that it was crucial that they be preserved and that, once the details in the tapes were properly logged to tell the story of their contents, some sort of project should be put in place for this purpose. Prof. Carter agreed and gave me her permission and her blessing to use the tapes in whatever way I saw t. us the idea of this book, and an accompanying radio series with RTÉ, was born. If the content of the tapes was as signi cant as I thought, it was important that the public should get to hear them and read more about them. A huge bee in my bonnet is the fact that the history of World War II in Ireland is oen undersold or misrepresented in the history curriculum taught in schools. e curriculum is the foundation stone on which a lot of the Irish understanding of the war is built and sadly at present it is mostly a tale of glimmer men, rationing and little else. Irish history is oen taught through a nationalist lens, so it is hardly surprising that this basic version of the war in
Ireland is uppermost in the public consciousness. Finally, I felt that these tapes, if presented in the right way, could, alongside some of the already great scholarly work out there on the period, begin to change the conversation in Ireland about the war. But one big problem remained. How do you get a big box of audio tapes from California to Donegal in the middle of the biggest global pandemic in a hundred years?
ere was only one person who could help me resolve this quandary: Liam O’Brien, the series producer of RTÉ Radio 1’s multi-award-winning Documentary on One series. Nobody gets the worth of a story more than Liam, and nobody understands better how to tell it. Since Liam took over the Documentary on One strand in 2006 it grew from a little-known programme to one of the most successful radio documentary units in the world, winning over 250 international awards and becoming the envy of public service broadcasters throughout the world. So I called Liam and we had a long conversation about the box of tapes in California and how to get them to Ireland. We both agreed that transporting the tapes themselves was out of the question; the risk of damaging them was too great. Liam agreed with me that we should use the tapes to form the basis of a radio documentary series, along the lines of such recent RTÉ programmes as 2020’s e Nobody Zone and 2021’s Gunplot, with this book to accompany it. e best course of action, we felt, was to get the tapes converted into digital audio les that could be sent over the internet to Ireland, where we could listen to the content and restore the audio if need be. Liam promised the nances to do this and was an enthusiastic backer of the project from the outset.
en began the process of trawling the internet to nd a suitable place to digitise the tapes. Making digital copies of anything that was recorded as far back as the 1970s is a laborious process. e audio has to be played in real time while the les are copied into a computer program. Given there are almost 35 hours of audio in the tapes, this would be no mean feat.
Aer searching numerous audio shops in southern California that could do the conversion process, I was able to narrow the possibilities down to three or four businesses in the San Francisco Bay area. Of course, Covid
ruled out many of the businesses as they were severely curtailed by the pandemic, which at this stage was affecting the United States worse than any other country in the world. I had almost given up hope when I decided to get in contact with Sean Sexton at the Digital Roots Studio in Oakland, California. Sean couldn’t have been any more helpful and we arranged to have the tapes picked up at Prof. Carter’s house and then transferred to digital les before being dropped back. By the time all this had been arranged it was much safer in terms of Covid in California, so the professor insisted that she and her husband would bring the tapes to Oakland themselves – they were dying to get out of the house aer having spent so long in lockdown, and it would also be a great opportunity to go for a drive in their new electric car. Sure enough, the tapes and transcripts were dropped off and three weeks later I received an email from Sean to say that he had digitised all the audio and would send it over to me later that night. In the meantime, I was in Donegal, having returned home for the Christmas break from my job as a teacher, and I had planned on spending two weeks at home. I ended up staying for two months. As soon as Covid cases began to improve in California they began to spiral out of control in Ireland; schools here were closed, and it would be April before all students returned to their classrooms.
Sean began to send the audio les over on a Saturday aernoon. Given the sheer volume of audio, it took quite a bit of time to download the les. It was going to take at least an hour, so I decided to have a beer to congratulate myself on all the hard work getting the les as far as my computer in the rst place. As I sat with a sense of anticipation, I couldn’t help being struck by the marvels of technology. Only a few years ago such a feat would have been impossible and these tapes would likely have never seen the light of day, at least not in Ireland. As I mulled over how things had changed, a ping from my laptop let me know the downloads were complete and that it was now, aer all the effort, time to listen to them.
I opened the rst recording. It came from an interview with Dan Bryan in 1971, long before I was born. Expecting to hear some sort of fearsome ve-star general, I was struck by Bryan’s speaking voice. is gallant man,
who had singlehandedly helped thwart the Nazi’s plans for Ireland, sounded more like a rural GP than a military man, with his so-spoken intonation and a hint of a rural Kilkenny accent. I couldn’t help marvel at the sound of his voice and it reminded me very much of a line from the 2014 lm e Imitation Game about another unsung hero of World War II, the famous codebreaker Alan Turing: ‘Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.’ at is certainly true of Dan Bryan and Richard Hayes.
It was also incredible to hear the voices of Helmut Clissmann, Stephen Hayes and Jim O’Donovan telling their own stories of the war. I was struck in particular by Hayes and O’Donovan, who, even though they disagreed with each other within the IRA, both felt that they were continuing the pure republicanism of the 1916 leaders. Hayes sounded like a typical rural Wexford man, while O’Donovan’s Roscommon accent hadn’t been in any way diminished by years spent living in Dublin and elsewhere. In his own way, Clissmann also takes the listener by surprise, sounding more like a businessman – which he was at that stage – than a former intelligence agent for the Abwehr. His interviews, like those of the others, were thoughtful and re ective and very much true to his own version of events. It is only by taking all these tapes together, alongside the body of secondary source literature that exists out there, that one can begin to paint the bigger picture and to sketch the story of Ireland during the war through the eyes of those who lived it.
With the tapes nally in Ireland, work began in earnest to try to develop a radio series with them, which I hope will see the light of day sometime soon. I also began to dra what would eventually become this book. From the outset I was determined that the book would tell the story as much as possible in the rst person, so there are many quotations from the various protagonists. Naturally, there will be gaps in any narrative and what is contained in the tapes isn’t by any means a de nitive account of the period. erefore, I have lled in some of the gaps using testimony taken from les released by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs as well as Foreign Office and MI5 and MI6 les from the British National Archive at Kew. I have also
consulted Dan Bryan’s papers and a portion of an incomplete memoir dictated to the historian Eunan O’Halpin, which were all deposited in Bryan’s alma mater, University College Dublin. To esh out the story further, I have drawn on a rich body of secondary sources on various aspects of this period written by Professor O’Halpin, Dr Mark Hull of Kansas, journalist Enno Stephan, who was the rst person to write about German espionage in Ireland during WWII, and of course Prof. Carolle Carter herself. I have also consulted works by historian T. Ryle Dwyer, perhaps the best-known authority on much of the history of the war years in Ireland. In doing so I have been able to sketch a broad narrative of the war in Ireland, inserting the rst-person testimony of those interviewed in the tapes at appropriate intervals. I have augmented all this with the extensive archival research I have carried out over the last number of years.
is book does not purport to be the de nitive history of the war in Ireland. It is intended to illuminate this period for the casual reader of Irish history and to illustrate that there are many facets of it, such as World War II era, that have been neglected in terms of commemoration and acknowledgement over the years. e story presented here isn’t entirely chronological, as various events over the period intersected and overlapped, and to follow a strictly chronological approach would not do justice to the bigger picture; neither would it, in my opinion, be as entertaining. e narrative unfolds in an episodic manner, dealing with the major issues and themes of the war: the origins of G2; republican intrigue; Allied attitudes towards Ireland; Nazi spies; and so forth. What I hope will set this work apart from others is that I have consciously tried to make it about the individuals involved and to allow them, as much as possible, to drive the narrative from their own perspectives. It can oen be said that personalities loom large in the telling of Irish history. For example, the World War II period is oen read as the triumph of de Valera – but the reality is much more nuanced, and de Valera was oen at odds with Bryan and others in the intelligence services. is history hopes to document the period using oral testimony in a bottom-up fashion and bring previously unheard voices to the fore.
As I write, Ireland is coming to the end of the greatest national emergency since the days of World War II. Covid-19 has wreaked untold havoc, the likes of which have not been seen on this island in a century. What has been notable has been the sacri ce of those nameless faces in the medical profession who have put their lives on the line for the common good. is book is a tribute to that same spirit, a spirit that characterised the lives of Dan Bryan, Richard Hayes and many others during the course of World War II, people whose sel ess interventions and quiet patriotism did a great service to this country during one of its darkest hours. What follows is the story of Bryan, G2 and the hunt for Ireland’s Nazi spies and how we as a country are still learning to reckon with the legacy of World War II. In order to tell that story, it is necessary to go back to the beginning. Back to the most unlikely of places, back to rural Kilkenny at the turn of the century. As Ireland approaches its centenary as a nation, I hope that someday I will be able to pass a statue of Dan Bryan and Richard Hayes in Dublin or, indeed, Kilkenny or Limerick. But perhaps most of all, I hope that having read this book many others will also share in that aspiration.
I
THE STORM CLOUDS GATHER
I regard certain events during World War II as the high point of my career.
COLONEL DAN BRYAN, FORMER DIRECTOR OF IRISH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, DUBLIN, 16 FEBRUARY 1984
Perhaps all tales of heroism begin in the most unlikely places. is story is no different. And, while this tale is multifaceted, rst and foremost it’s the story of how one man, Dan Bryan, the son of a small middle-class farmer from County Kilkenny, masterminded the most sophisticated security operation in the history of the Irish state. A clandestine operation that helped thwart a Nazi invasion of Ireland during World War II, the story of which has remained hidden in plain sight for over 80 years. It’s also the story of republican/Nazi intrigue and the competing narratives of patriotism that characterised the early years of de Valera’s Ireland. In truth, the fate of independent Ireland rested on the shoulders of Bryan, a most unconventional army officer who resisted the narrow de nitions of republicanism espoused by some of his peers in the National Army and who truly saw the gravity of the looming threat of Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Black Brigades as the dark clouds of fascism began to gather over Europe in the 1930s. Bryan was undoubtedly one of Ireland’s greatest unsung heroes, and his origins in rural Ireland were far
from the corridors of power in Irish Military Intelligence in Dublin, where he oversaw Irish state security for over a decade.
Dan Bryan was born in a small rural townland near Gowran, County Kilkenny on 9 May 1900. He lived the early part of his life on the family farm with his widowed grandmother Bridget and his parents, John and Margaret Mary (née Lanagan), of Maddoxstown, County Kilkenny. Dan, the eldest child, was followed by eight brothers and ve sisters. e family farm of 500 acres, inherited by Dan’s father from his own father (whom Dan was named aer), gave the family nancial security. Young Dan had a happy childhood, working with his brothers and sisters on the farm. By the time Dan was a young boy his parents were able to employ three farm hands and a domestic servant.
John Bryan was a rm believer in the power of education and put considerable nancial resources into the schooling of his children; he had to let go of two of the farm hands to put four of the children through school. As the eldest, Dan held a certain level of responsibility and had to help with the family’s nancial situation. With his father’s encouragement, he went to University College Dublin to study medicine (though he had initially wanted to study law). When he le Kilkenny and made his way to Dublin, he was taking his rst steps into an Ireland that had changed utterly since the turn of the century.
e Dublin of this period was a hotbed of republican activity and the city had been convulsed by the fallout from the 1916 Rising, the scars of which were still visible. Many of the landmarks on O’Connell Street lay in ruins and the General Post Office, the site of Pearse’s reading of the Proclamation, was a burnt-out shell – it wouldn’t open to the public again until 1929.
Dan initially roomed at various boarding houses on the South Circular Road and on the Rathmines Road in south County Dublin. He loved life in the city, but Kilkenny was always close to his heart and he returned home once a month to visit his parents. He settled easily into life as a student at UCD, but it wasn’t long before he became aware of the many separatist organisations that had emerged in the city in the wake of the Rising. Dublin
was hot with nationalist fervour, manifest in cultural and political institutions such as the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the GAA. A separate, unique Irish identity was espoused in most walks of life and it was no surprise that Dan became hugely in uenced by the spirit of the time, despite his wealthy land-owning family background. e British occupation of Ireland le scars that ran deep throughout the Irish countryside, with old resentments harking back to the penal times and beyond, and Kilkenny was no exception. Following the executions of the 1916 leaders, anti-British sentiment was rife. Such a changing of the tide culminated in May 1917 when former Easter Rising participant W.T. Cosgrave, who would become a colleague of Bryan’s in later years, won a byelection in the county.
Aer two years as a medical student Bryan joined the Irish Volunteers as a seventeen-year-old in November 1917 and served in C and G companies of the 4th Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. He almost immediately became involved in raids, armed patrols and observation work and carved out a reputation as a formidable and dedicated Volunteer. Owing to the erratic British response to the public outcry in the wake of the 1916 executions, the Dublin Brigade was allowed to blossom. Indeed, in the months up to when Dan Bryan joined, most of the remaining leaders from the Rising had been released from Frongoch internment camp in Wales and many had reintegrated into the Volunteers. e Dublin Brigade grew into a considerable force, which bene ted from new enlistees who had travelled to Dublin from the countryside in search of work or for education. is in ux of Volunteers was timely as the group planned to actively resist conscription during the latter part of World War I. In April 1918 the Dublin Brigade helped organise a general strike against conscription and organised attacks on British food exports, which they redistributed to the city’s poor. Dan Bryan had experienced a political awakening that would go on to de ne the rest of his life.
As the political situation deteriorated, the Dublin Volunteers campaigned for Sinn Féin in the general election of December 1918. ey also stewarded their rallies and were embroiled in riots involving families
who had relatives in the British Army. e political landscape of Ireland changed utterly when Sinn Féin won the election and formed Ireland’s own parliament, Dáil Éireann. On 19 January 1919, the Dáil met for the rst time, in Dublin’s Mansion House, and declared Irish independence. e rst military blow for independence was struck on the same day in Tipperary when Volunteers, led by Seamus Robinson, with Dan Breen among them, shot dead two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constables at Soloheadbeg as they transported gelignite to a nearby quarry. Both RIC men were Catholics, one a native Irish speaker.
All Volunteers across the country took an oath of allegiance to Dáil Éireann and soon began to refer to themselves as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). e bloodiest day of the new con ict with the British occurred on 21 November 1920, when IRA Director of Intelligence Michael Collins orchestrated the assassination of the Dublin Castle G Division detectives known as the Cairo Gang. e IRA had eliminated a crucial cog in the British intelligence network in Dublin. e British responded on the same day – Bloody Sunday – with an indiscriminate attack on civilians at a Dublin and Tipperary football match at Croke Park and the assassination of Volunteers Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy and civilian Conor Clune. Bryan, who by this stage had shown huge aptitude for carrying out observation work, played his own role that day as a scout on Baggot Street Bridge during the attack on the Cairo Gang. In January 1921 Bryan was appointed assistant battalion intelligence officer in the IRA, working in his new role with fellow Volunteers Seán Dowling, Seán MacCurtain and F.X. Coghlan. It was in intelligence that Bryan was to excel. During the entire period of the War of Independence and the Civil War he didn’t, to popular knowledge, even re a weapon.
e War of Independence ended with the truce of 11 July 1920. Bryan supported the Treaty and the new Irish Free State. In June 1922, he joined the new National Army as an officer on the general staff and quickly made a name for himself. He began working in army intelligence during the Civil War that was to follow, commanding a group of agents who were widely feared in Dublin for their wide-scale arrests of anti-Treaty republicans.
Bryan oen worked on his own late into the night and regularly held meetings with various agents and informers. He was a teetotaller (and remained one all his life) and didn’t smoke, and because of this he very oen cut a solitary gure in the army. On 4 September 1923 he was promoted to the rank of captain and in February 1924 formally moved into the intelligence branch of the nascent Irish Defence Forces, a move that would help steady the ship when the army faced the biggest challenge of its brief existence with the Irish Army Mutiny in March 1924. e dispute was caused by a proposed reduction in numbers following the Civil War, and by rank-and- le dissatisfaction with the lack of territorial gains aer the delineation of the border between the Free State and the new political entity of Northern Ireland. Indeed, Bryan’s skills would come to the fore in this dispute, solidifying his growing reputation as a future leader in the Defence Forces.
During the 1920s Military Intelligence became a formidable force in gathering information on subversives and those seen as enemies of the state. It crushed the remnants of the republican movement who refused to recognise the Free State, rendering them almost impotent. Its jurisdiction covered foreign affairs as well as internal security matters. Its role in internal security brought it into contact with republicans as well as the Free State’s secret civil police force, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). Based at Oriel House on Dublin’s Hawkins Street, the CID had a reputation for torture and murder. While there is no suggestion that such methods were sanctioned by the government of the day, they did prove effective in establishing the rule of law in the state. e CID was disbanded aer the Civil War, and in late 1925 responsibility for political surveillance was transferred to the new police force, An Garda Síochána. is process included the transfer to the Gardaí of over 30,000 political les, informers and agents held by Military Intelligence.
Following the scaling down of army intelligence Bryan was transferred to the Defence Plans division of the army, and in 1927 he attended the veyear review conference of the Treaty defence arrangements as well as the Imperial Conference in London. By 1931 Intelligence had been colloquially
rebranded G2, an American designation used as part of the continental staff system to refer to army intelligence, security and information branches around the world. e continental staff system used in structuring military staff functions was based on one originally employed by the French Army in the nineteenth century. Each staff position in a headquarters or unit is assigned a letter pre x corresponding to its function and one or more numbers specifying a role.
e Irish system consisted of four divisions. G1 handled personnel, G2 intelligence, G3 operations and G4 logistics. All were overseen by the Chief of Staff and the Assistant Chief of Staff. Policy was directed by the Department of External Affairs, later to become known as Foreign Affairs, over which the minister of the day had authority. In addition to this there were four regional commands located in the western, eastern and southern areas of the country and in the Curragh. e net cast by the intelligence apparatus in Ireland was extensive and it could rely on the support of C3 (the Garda Security Section), the Garda Aliens Section, Garda Special Branch, the Naval Service and the Coastal Service, as well as the departments of Immigration, Posts and Telegraphs, and Justice.
Bryan became acting director of G2 in 1931 and tted in well into the new system. He knew the importance of maintaining relationships with various sections of the community and he maintained informal contacts within the republican and labour movements. During this time Dan found great personal happiness when he fell in love with Eleanor Mary BartonFraser, known as Ellen, of Ballsbridge, and they married in 1930. e couple lived at 9 Heytesbury Lane, Ballsbridge, and Ellen was a great support to Dan throughout his career in the army.
Bryan’s cool and calm demeanour was to serve him well in his role as Acting Director of Intelligence. ese attributes were ones that were badly needed as the 1930s, one of the most tumultuous decades in the history of the state. Aer over a decade in power the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party, led by W.T. Cosgrave, lost eight seats – and its majority – in the 1932 general election. It had fought the election on its record of having provided 10 years of stable government, but public patience had worn thin following
the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the global economic depression that followed. Buoyed by a manifesto promising protectionist policies, industrial development, self-sufficiency and improvements in housing and social security bene ts, Fianna Fáil won 72 seats, an increase of 15 from the 1926 election.
Fianna Fáil was still ve seats short of an overall majority, but it still looked like the only party capable of forming a government. Discussions got under way immediately aer the election and omas J. O’Connell’s Labour Party agreed to support Fianna Fáil. e party could now form a minority government. e changing of the guard was to prove the rst major challenge to Bryan and his colleagues in G2. It was clear that Civil War divisions still ran deep in Irish society and there was huge trepidation that the army would resist the peaceful transfer of power to de Valera’s party, although, as Bryan recalled in the rst batch of the interviews recorded by Prof. Carter, this was merely conjecture:
I’ve mentioned this question of doubt when Fianna Fáil took over and brie y there was an atmosphere that when they took over that the army might resist them and stage a coup d’état. is view of certain elements in Fianna Fáil is certainly con rmed by the story that Fianna Fáil TDs came to Leinster House to take their seats on the occasion quietly armed with revolvers. Brie y, I would say that there was never any serious suggestion of a coup d’état. ere was all kinds of wild talk and speculation but nothing else that I know of. It is well to say here too that this atmosphere soon broke down into a position of personal good relations and the creation of those good relations may have been due to considerable extent to the personality of the Minister of Defence, Mr Frank Aiken, although his personality and policies in other respects have been subjected to the most drastic criticism.
In June 1933 Bryan graduated from the infantry officer’s course, during which he showed his independent streak; for his thesis he wrote a document
that initially drew the ire of his superiors but would later go on to rede ne Irish security policy. is was timely. In the same year in Germany Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party (officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, NSDAP) took power for the rst time. Closer to home, General Eoin O’Duffy’s quasi-fascist Blueshirts were posing their own problems for de Valera’s government. G2 was tasked with surveillance of the group, which had arisen out of the Army Comrades Association and other elements in the army. O’Duffy would prove to be a vehement critic of de Valera, which indirectly gave G2 a new lease of life.
Aer a three-year sojourn in the Chief of Staff’s Office Bryan returned to intelligence work in 1935 and was soon promoted to the rank of Deputy Director under Colonel Liam Archer, eight years senior to Bryan. Archer and Bryan differed in many ways, but they both wanted to keep Ireland neutral during the war. A native of Phibsboro, Archer had joined the Irish Volunteers in May 1915 and was attached to F Company of the 1st Battalion of the Dublin Brigade, under the command of Piaras Béaslaí. Archer also fought in the Easter Rising in 1916 and with the engineering section of the IRA during the War of Independence. Promoted to commandant, he took up a position as a postal worker to help Michael Collins in the intelligence section of the IRA. He joined the National Army in 1922 and was given command of the Signals Corps, a unit that specialised in communications and information systems essential to army operations. Archer was appointed Director of Intelligence in 1932 and alongside Dan Bryan was instrumental in G2’s reorganisation.
It soon became apparent to both men that war in Europe was looming for the second time in the twentieth century. Bryan became obsessed with studying foreign press reports and security brie ngs and was convinced that any major European con ict could have dire consequences for Ireland. He was acutely aware of both how vulnerable Ireland was to the threat of foreign invasion, and how subversive elements such as the IRA could be manipulated by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Both Bryan and Archer were very aware that G2 had a unique and important role in protecting the state. e problem was that prior to the 1930s Ireland faced mainly internal
security threats from republicans and other subversive elements. Never had the state been so vulnerable to outside threats. Archer and Bryan approached the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Michael Brennan, to communicate their concerns. In a memo to Brennan, Bryan outlined the gravity of the situation and his fears that the dangers to the state weren’t being taken seriously by the government: ‘e International Situation gives cause for great unease. I fear this unease is not felt outside this department.’
e Chief of Staff forwarded the memo to the government, along with his own memo strongly agreeing with Bryan’s and Archer’s analysis. e warning was met with deep concern by the Taoiseach, de Valera, who immediately set in motion plans to set up a Cabinet Committee on National Defence.
Archer advocated immediate rearmament in line with what G2 had observed in other European nations. In the meantime, Bryan wrote a document entitled Fundamental Factors Affecting Irish Defence Policy. e document took a three-pronged approach. Its primary objective was to consider the military consequences for Ireland of a war in Western Europe or in the Atlantic with Britain as one of the main belligerents. e second objective of the document was to consider what military courses of action, if any, were open to Ireland in such a war. e third considered what the results would be if any of the methods outlined in the plan were adopted. Bryan described in very clear terms Ireland’s fundamental defence aws, as well as the wealth of forces needed in the event of a major war on the continent, and he stated his belief that Ireland was sleepwalking into a disaster of epic proportions if its present course wasn’t altered: ‘e Saorstat people are further not prepared in practice to provide sufficient forces to guarantee even relative freedom from outside interference.’
He also set out the options of neutrality, default or non-recognition, cooperation or resistance for consideration by the government, weighing up the likely success of each option in very clear and stark terms. For Bryan, Ireland’s geographical position was of fundamental importance. It was an asset in terms of its strategic location but also a huge problem given the country’s total lack of defensive measures, trained manpower and limited
economic resources. Such aws were, in his opinion, down to an abysmal lack of knowledge by civil servants and government ministers of defensive measures necessary to protect the state, which further compounded the already grave situation. Bryan recommended neutrality as the best option for Ireland and advocated that the country pursue defensive measures and security procedures modelled on those used by Britain during World War I. e document was circulated among government ministers and debated widely in the corridors of power. Indeed, Bryan’s Fundamental Factors was the only major policy document outlining the Irish defence situation that was compiled in the years leading up to the outbreak of the war in 1939.
Even though Bryan’s memo was widely distributed among government minsters, it was ultimately set aside. It wasn’t until aer the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Rhineland that de Valera and his Cabinet were spurred into action. It was as if they had awoken from slumber to nd the house already on re. e government now faced the unenviable task of trying to equip for defensive purposes an army that they had neglected and run down for a decade. Such neglect had le neutrality the only viable option for the country. Indeed, Ireland’s feeble state from a defensive point of view drew derisory comments from many quarters. e infamous William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, and famous for his wartime broadcasts from Germany, lamented: ‘e Irish army wouldn’t beat the Tinkers out of Galway.’
Undeterred, Bryan set about utilising the more positive aspects of Ireland’s strategic situation to its advantage. Deep water ports and, crucially, the Treaty Ports (Cobh and Berehaven in Cork and Lough Swilly in Donegal) were sufficient for Ireland to develop security arrangements, and preparations were put in place by de Valera and the Cabinet. De Valera’s acquisition of the Treaty Ports was to prove a huge asset in the months and years ahead. Perhaps most crucially, and unpalatably for many in government and military circles, was Bryan’s belief that if any security operation was to be successful, Ireland had to reassess its relationship with the old enemy.
It was soon clear that the Treaty Ports were to be essential for Ireland to be recognised as a separate neutral entity from Britain in the event of a European war. Even during World War I, US authorities had selected Berehaven as a base from which troops en route to France could receive protection; so Ireland’s coast was already well established in the international public consciousness. Bryan’s assessment of Ireland’s security status was extensive. He noted that Lough Swilly, the Shannon Estuary and Galway and Killary harbours could provide safe anchorage for entire eets of ships of either Allied or Axis forces. He felt that these could be protected from U-boat or Allied submarine attacks as well as aerial bombardment, if certain measures were put in place – the inlets were wide enough to provide natural protection.
Bryan also noted the fact that up to 75 per cent of sea communication passed through the English and St George’s Channels as part of the North Atlantic trade route to the major European ports. e Irish Sea acted as a natural barrier, allowing the creation of a ank that was vulnerable to submarine attack. is would be of huge concern to the British. It was also something that Bryan had long mulled over. roughout his life Bryan had a deep and passionate love of military history. His knowledge was to stand him in good stead in the preparation of Fundamental Factors. e vulnerability of an Irish Sea ank could have led to a silent economic blockade of Britain, one which Bryan knew as a student of history could have disastrous consequences. Similar situations had occurred during Napoleon’s reign; and during the American Civil War President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of 3,500 miles of the Atlantic and Gulf coastline to sti e Confederate trade routes. A similar approach could not be countenanced if Ireland was to remain neutral in the war.
In reality, co-operation with the British was the only viable option. Indeed, by 1937 it was all but agreed on by both countries. Anglo-Irish defence co-operation had been inevitable since the Treaty Ports were reluctantly returned in 1938. e British believed that the ports would be available to them in the event of a war and that it was better to return them and work together in a spirit of co-operation rather than try to retain them
and have to defend them against a hostile Irish population. Indeed, the British believed that it would take an entire army division as well as antiaircra guns to defend the ports against the Irish Army. eir thinking was that while not having the ports was detrimental, the cost of retaining them was even more so.
Irish Army resources were scant and they were poorly prepared for the war to come. e Irish Air Corps was particularly ill equipped. In the weeks leading up to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, the only ghter aircra available to the Defence Forces were four Gloucester Gladiators. ese were British-built biplanes used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) that had been exported to Ireland during the late 1930s. Although they soon became obsolete, Gloucesters acquitted themselves fairly well in dog- ghts against the more superior Axis planes such as Junkers or Stukka dive bombers. ey were used in almost all theatres of the war and own by the RAF in France, Norway, Greece and Malta. Four planes, however, were simply not enough to defend the whole island of Ireland.
Ireland’s weakness in the air was matched by an equally pathetic numerical strength in terms of personnel. By the outbreak of the war in 1939 the entire mobilised Defence Forces consisted of 19,136 men: 7,600 regulars; 4,300 A and B reservists; and 7,236 volunteers. e Irish Army was neither trained nor equipped for any sort of war. Ireland was in many ways extremely vulnerable, a sitting duck for any invading force.
But the mainstream body politic was both deluded and naive. Many members of the government and opposition, and the civil service, had been members of the Old IRA and had fought in the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence or the Civil War. With the exception of military men such as W.T. Cosgrave and Richard Mulcahy, many in officialdom still clung to a romantic notion of guerrilla warfare as a means of defending the country. is idea couldn’t have been further from reality. e murderous ferocity of Hitler’s Panzer divisions had been unleashed on many unsuspecting nations, and such highly mechanised warfare would have completely overwhelmed the Irish defences. While the Irish spirit of resistance was certainly not dormant, it wasn’t a match for the advances in technology and military
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
2. General Characteristics.
Town House, Old Aberdeen
The county is almost purely agricultural. It has always enjoyed a certain measure of maritime activity and of recent years the fishing
industry, especially at Aberdeen, has made immense progress, but as a whole the area is a well-cultivated district. Round the coast and on all the lower levels tillage is the rule. In the interior the level of the land rises rapidly, and ploughed fields give place to desolate moors and bare mountain heights in which agriculture is an impossible industry. The surface of the lowland parts, now in regular cultivation, was originally very rough and rock-strewn. It was covered with erratic blocks of stone, gneiss and granite (locally called “heathens”), left by the melting of the ice fields which overspread all the north-east of Scotland during the Ice Age. These stones have been cleared from the fields and utilised as boundary walls. Some idea of the extraordinary energy and excessive labour necessary to clear the land for tillage may be gathered from a glance at the “consumption” dyke at Kingswells, some five miles from Aberdeen. This solid rampart stretches like a great break-water across nearly half a mile of country, through a dip to the south of the Brimmond Hill. It is five or six feet in height and twenty to thirty in breadth and contains thousands of tons of troublesome boulders gathered from the surrounding slopes. The disposal of these blocks was a serious problem. It has been solved by this rampart. In other parts the stones were built up into enclosing walls and now serve the double purpose of enclosing the fields and providing a certain amount of shelter for crops and cattle. The slopes of the Brimmond Hill are in certain parts still uncleared and the appearance of these areas helps us to realise what this section of the country looked like before the enterprising agriculturist braced himself to prepare the surface for the use of the plough.
Consumption Dyke at Kingswells
The soil, except in the alluvial deposits on the banks of the Don and the Ythan, is not of great natural fertility, yet by the exceptional industry of the inhabitants and their enterprise as a farming community it has been raised to a high degree of productiveness. The county now enjoys a well but hard earned reputation for progressive agriculture. Notably so in regard to cattle-breeding. It is the home of a breed of cattle called Aberdeenshire, black and polled, but it is just as famous for its strain of shorthorns which have been bred with skill and insight for more than a century. In spite, then, of its inferior soil, its wayward climate and its northern latitude, the inborn stubbornness and determination of its people have made it a great and prosperous agricultural region and only those who on a
September day have seen from the top of Benachie the undulating plains of Buchan glittering golden in the sun can realise what a transformation has been effected on a barren and stony land by the industry of man.
The most easterly of the Scottish counties, it abuts like a prominent shoulder into the North Sea. It has, therefore, a considerable seaboard partly flat and sandy, partly rocky and precipitous. The population of the numerous villages dotted along this coast used in time past to devote themselves to fishing, but the tendency of recent years has been to concentrate this industry in the larger towns, Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Aberdeen.
Other industries there are few. Next to agriculture and fishing comes granite, which is the only mineral worthy of mention found in the county. It is the prevailing rock of the district and is quarried to a considerable extent in various parts. A large part of the population earn their living by this industry, and Aberdeen granite, like Aberdeen beef and Aberdeen fish, is a well-known product and travels far. Paper and wool are also manufactured but only on a moderate scale.
There is only one other general feature of the county that deserves mention and that is its attractiveness as a health resort. The banks of the Dee, more especially in its upper regions, is a much frequented holiday haunt; and every summer and autumn Braemar, Ballater and Aboyne are crowded with visitors from all parts of the country. The late Queen Victoria no doubt gave the
The Punch Bowl, Linn of Quoich, Braemar impetus to this fashion. Her majesty at an early period of her reign bought the estate of Balmoral, half-way between Ballater and Braemar, and having built a royal castle there made it her practice to reside for a large part of every year amongst the Deeside hills. Apart from this royal advertisement the high altitude of the district, and its dry, bracing climate, as well as its romantic mountain scenery, have proved permanently attractive. Here are Loch-na-gar (sung by Byron), Ben-Macdhui, Brae-riach, Ben-na-Buird, Ben-Avon and other Bens, all of them 4000, or nearly 4000, feet above sea-level, and all of them imposing and impressive in their bold and massive forms. These mountains supply elements of grandeur which exercise a fascination upon people who habitually live in a flat country, and Braemar is not likely to lose its merited popularity.
3. Size. Shape. Boundaries.
Aberdeenshire is one of the large counties in area, standing fifth in Scotland. Although Inverness contains more than twice the number of square miles in Aberdeenshire, its population is far behind that of Aberdeen, which in this respect is the third county in Scotland. Its greatest length from N.E. to S.W. is 102 miles; its greatest breadth from N.W. to S.E. is 50. The coast line measures 65 miles and is little indented. The whole area of the county is 1970 square miles, or 1,261,971 acres, of which 6400 are water.
In shape the county might be likened to a pear lying obliquely on its side, the narrow stalk-end being in the mountains, while the rounded bulging head is the north-eastern sea-board. The flattest portion is the region lying north of the Ythan, called Buchan, and even this can hardly be called flat, for the level is broken by Mormond Hill, near Strichen, rising to a height of 810 feet. All the way to Pennan Head the contour of the land is irregularly wavy. The narrower portion in the S.W., called Mar, is entirely mountainous, and midway between these two extremes lie the Garioch and Formartin—districts which are undulating in character. A crescent line drawn from Aberdeen to Turriff, the convex side being to the S.W., would divide the county into two parts, which might be described as lowland and highland. The lowland portion contains the lower valley of the Don as far up as Inverurie, the valley of the Ythan and all the remaining northern part of the county. South of this imaginary line the ground rises in ridge after ridge until it culminates in the lofty Grampian range of the Cairngorms. The bipartite character of the county, which is reflected in the occupation and pursuits as in the character and language of the two populations, is of some importance, and yet must not be pressed too far, because the population in the one half is practically insignificant as compared with that of the other It follows that when Aberdeenshire men and Aberdeenshire ways are referred to, nine times out of ten it is the lowland part of the county that is in question.
Pennan, looking N.W. Showing old and new houses of Troup
The boundaries are, on the east, the North Sea, and on the north as far west as Pennan Head, the Moray Firth. There Banffshire and Aberdeenshire meet. From that point inland a wavy boundary separates the two counties, the Deveron being for part of the way the dividing line. Above Rothiemay the boundary mounts the watershed between Deveronside and Speyside, and keeping irregularly to this line past the Buck of the Cabrach, and the upper waters of the Don, reaches Ben-Avon. Thence the line moves on to Ben-Macdhui with Loch Avon on the right, and at Brae-riach Banffshire ceases to be the boundary. For several miles, almost due south in direction, Inverness comes in as the county on the west. The southern boundary touches three counties, Perth, Forfar and Kincardine. At Cairn Ealar, which is the angle of turning and almost a right angle, the direction changes and runs east alongside of Perthshire to the Cairnwell Road, and crossing this leaves Perthshire at Glas Maol, where it touches Forfarshire. The line continues east but with a trend to the north, passing on the left Glenmuick,
Glentanar and the Forest of Birse, in which the Feugh takes its rise. On the top of Mount Battock three counties meet, Forfar, Aberdeen and Kincardine. Henceforth we are alongside of Kincardineshire and the line bends north-west with a semi-circular sweep round Banchory-Ternan and the Hill of Fare to Crathes, from a little beyond which, the bed of the Dee becomes the boundary line all the way to Aberdeen. In all this area of high ground the line of march is practically the watershed throughout, marking off the drainage area of the Don and the Dee from that of the Deveron and the Avon (a tributary of the Spey) on the one hand, and from that of the Tay and the two Esks (south and north)on the other.
Loch Avon and Ben-Macdhui
4. Surface, Soil and General Features.
From what has been already said of the contour of the county it may be inferred that its surface is extremely varied. Every variety of highland and lowland country is to be found within its limits. Near the sea-board the land is gently undulating, never quite flat but not rising to any great height till Benachie (1440) is reached. From that point onwards, whether up Deveronside or Donside or Deeside, the mountains rise higher and higher till the Cairngorms, which comprise some of the loftiest mountains in the kingdom, are reached. At that point we are more than half-way across Scotland, and in reality are nearer to the Atlantic than to the North Sea. Less than half the land is under cultivation. Woods and plantations occupy barely a sixth part of the uncultivated area. The rest is mountain and moor, yielding a scanty pasturage for sheep and red-deer, and on the lower elevations for cattle.
In the fringe round the sea-board no trees will grow. It is only when several miles removed from exposure to the fierce blasts that come from the North Sea that they begin to thrive, but the whole Buchan district is conspicuously treeless. Almost every acre is cultivated and the succession of fields covered with oats, turnips and grass, which fill up the landscape as with a great patchwork, is broken only here and there by belts of trees round some manor-house or farmsteading. Except in a few places the scenery of this lowland portion is devoid of picturesque interest, yet the woods of Pitfour and of Strichen, the policies of Haddo House near Methlick, the quiet silvan beauty of Fyvie, which more resembles an English than a Scotch village, the wooded ridge that overlooks the Ythan at the Castle of Gight, are charming spots that serve by contrast to accentuate the general tameness of this lower area.
In the higher region, the south-western portions of the county, agriculture is, to some extent, practised, but it is necessarily confined to narrow strips in the valleys of the rivers. The hills, which are rarely wooded, and that only up to fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, are
rounded in shape, not sharp and jagged. They are, where composed of granite, invariably clothed in heather and are occasionally utilised for the grazing of sheep, but this is becoming less common, and year by year larger areas are depleted of sheep for the better protection of grouse. All the heathery hills up to 2000 feet are grouse moors. Throughout the summer these display the characteristic brown tint of the heather—a tint which gives place in early August to a rich purple when the heather breaks into flower. Long strips of the heathermantle are systematically burned to the ground every spring. Such blackened patches scoring with their irregular outlines the sides of the hills in April and May give a certain amount of variety to the prevailing tint of brown. They serve a very useful purpose. The young grouse shelter in the long and unburnt heather but frequent the cleared areas for the purpose of feeding on the tender young shoots which spring up from the blackened roots of the burned plants.
Further inland still, where the hills rise to a greater height, they become deer-forests. As a rule these forests are without trees and are often rockstrewn, bare and grassless. It is only in the sheltered corries or by the sides of some sparkling burn, that natural grasses spring up in sufficient breadth to provide summer pasturage for the red-deer, which are carefully protected for sporting purposes. Here too the ptarmigan breed in considerable numbers. The grouse moors command higher rents than would be profitable for a sheep-farmer to give for the grazing, and every year prior to the 12th of August, when grouse-shooting begins, there is an influx of sportsmen from the south, to enjoy this particular form of sport. The red grouse is indigenous to Scotland; it seems to find its natural habitat amongst the heather, where in spite of occasional failures in the nesting season, and in spite of many weeks’ incessant shooting, it thrives and multiplies. Deer-stalking begins somewhat later; in a warm and favourable summer, the stags are in condition early in September. This sport is confined to a comparative few.
The highest mountain in the Braemar district is Ben-Macdhui (4296 feet). A few others are over 4000—Brae-riach and Cairntoul. Ben-naBuird and Ben-Avon, which last is notable for the numerous tors or
warty knots along its sky-line, are just under 4000 feet. Loch-na-gar, a few miles to the east and a conspicuous background to Balmoral Castle, is 3789. Byron called it “the most sublime and picturesque of the Caledonian Alps,” and Queen Victoria writing from Balmoral in 1850 described it as “the jewel of all the mountains here.” Its contour lines, which are somewhat more sharply curved than is usual in the Deeside hills, and the well-balanced distribution of its great mass make it easily recognised from a wide distance. This partly explains the pre-eminence which notwithstanding its inferiority of height it undoubtedly possesses. Due north from Ballater are Morven (2880) and Culblean, and due south is Mount Keen; a little east and on the boundary line of three counties is Mount Battock. Perhaps the most prominent hill, and the one most frequently visible to the great majority of Aberdeenshire folks, is Benachie, which stands as a fitting outpost of the vast regiment of hills. It stands apart and although only 1440 feet in height is an unfailing landmark from all parts of Buchan, from Aberdeen, from Donside, and even from Deveronside. Its well-defined outline and projecting “mither tap” render it an object of interest from far and near, while the presence or absence of cloud on its head and shoulders serves as a barometric index to the state of the weather.
Benachie
5. Watershed. Rivers. Lochs.
As we have already pointed out, the watershed coincides to a large extent with the boundary line of the county. The lean of Aberdeenshire is from west to east so that all the rivers flow in an easterly direction to the North Sea. On the west and north-west of the highest mountain ridges, the slope of the land is to the northeast, and the Spey with its several tributaries carries the rainfall to the heart of the Moray Firth.
The chief river of the county is the Dee. It is the longest, the fullestbodied, the most picturesque of all Aberdeenshire waters. Taking its rise in two small streams which drain the slopes of Brae-riach, it grows in volume and breadth, till, after an easterly course of nearly 100 miles, it reaches the sea at Aberdeen. The head-stream is the Garrachorry burn, which flows through the cleft between Brae-riach and Cairntoul. A more romantic spot for the cradle of a mighty river could hardly be found. The mountain masses rise steep, grim and imposing—on one side Cairntoul conical in shape, on the other Braeriach broad and massive, a picture of solidity and immobility. The Dee well is 4060 feet above sea-level and 1300 above the stream which drains the eastern side of the Larig—the high pass to Strathspey As it emerges from the Larig, it is a mere mountain torrent but presently it is joined at right angles by the Geldie from the south-west, and the united waters move eastward through a wild glen of rough and rugged slopes
Linn of Dee, Braemar
and ragged, gnarled Scots firs to the Linn of Dee, 6-3/4 miles above Braemar. There is no great fall at the Linn, but here the channel of the river becomes suddenly contracted by great masses of rock and the water rushes through a narrow gorge only four feet wide. The pool below is deep and black and much overhung with rocks. For 300 yards stretches this natural sluice, formed by rocks with rugged sides and jagged bottom, the water racing past in small cascades. The river is here spanned by a handsome granite bridge opened in 1857 by Queen Victoria.
Old bridge of Dee, Invercauld
As the river descends to Braemar, the glen gradually widens out, and the open, gravelly, and sinuous character of the bed, which is a feature from this point onwards, is very marked. Pool and stream, stream and pool succeed one another in shingly bends, clean, sparkling and beautiful. At Braemar the bed is 1066 feet above sealevel. Below Invercauld the river is crossed by the picturesque old bridge built by General Wade, when he made his well-known roads through the Highlands after the rebellion of 1745. Here the Garrawalt, a rough and obstructed
View from old bridge of Invercauld
Falls of Muick, Ballater
tributary, joins the main river. From Invercauld past Balmoral Castle to Ballater is sixteen miles. Here the bottom is at times rocky, at times filled with big rough stones, at other times shingly but never deep. The average depth is only four feet, and the normal pace under ordinary conditions 3-1/2 miles an hour. From Ballater, where the river is joined by the Gairn and the Muick, the Dee maintains the same character to Aboyne and Banchory, where it is joined by the Feugh from the forest of Birse. Just above Banchory is Cairnton, where the water supply for the town of Aberdeen, amounting on an average to 7 or 8 million gallons a day, is taken off. The course of the river near the mouth was diverted some 40 years ago to the south, at great expense, by the Town Council, and in this way a considerable area of land was reclaimed for feuing purposes. The spanning of the river at this point by the Victoria bridge, which superseded a ferry-
boat, has led to the rise of a moderately sized town (Torry) on the south or Kincardine side of the river.
The scenery of Deeside, all the way from the Cairngorms to the old Bridge of Dee, two miles west of the centre of the city, is varied and attractive. It is well-wooded throughout; in the upper parts the birch, which would seem to be indigenous in the district, adds to the beauty of the hill-sides, while the clean pebbly bed of the river and its swift, dashing flow delight the eyes of those who are familiar only with sluggish and mud-stained waters. It is not surprising therefore that the district has attained the vogue it now enjoys.
The Don runs parallel to the Dee for a great part of its course, but it is a much shorter river, measuring only 78 miles. It rises at the very edge of the county close to the point where the Avon emerges from Glen Avon and turns north to join the Spey. It drains a valley which is only ten or fifteen miles separated from the valley of the larger river. In its upper reaches it somewhat resembles Deeside, being quite highland in character; but lower down the river loses its rapidity, becoming sluggish and winding. Strathdon, as the upper area is called, is undoubtedly picturesque, but it lacks the bolder features of Deeside, being less wooded and graced with few hills on the grand scale. It has not, therefore, become a popular
Birch Tree at Braemar
summer resort, but its banks form the richest alluvial agricultural land in the county—
A mile o’ Don’s worth
twa o’ Dee
Except for salmon, stone and tree.
This old couplet is so far correct. The Dee is a great salmon river, providing more first-class salmon angling than any other river of Scotland, while the Don, though owing to its muddy bottom a stream excellent beyond measure and unsurpassed for brown trout, is not
now, partly owing to obstruction and pollution, a great salmon river But the agricultural land on Donside, which for the most part is rich deep loam, about Kintore, Inverurie and the vale of Alford is much more kindly to the farmer than the light gravelly soil of Deeside, which is so apt to be burnt up in a droughty summer. In the matter of stone, things have changed since the couplet took shape. The granite quarries of Donside are now superior to any on the Dee; but the trees of Deeside still hold their own, the Scots firs of Ballochbuie forest, west of Balmoral, being the finest specimens of their kind in the north.
The nether-Don has been utilised for more than a century as a driving power for paper and wool mills. Of these there is a regular succession for several miles of the river’s course, from Bucksburn to within a mile of Old Aberdeen. After heavy rains or a spring thaw the lower reaches of the river, especially from Kintore downwards, are apt to be flooded, and in spite of embankments which have been erected along the river’s course, few years pass without serious damage being done to the
