Dan Breen and the IRA (6 page)

Witnesses later claimed to have seen a cart being driven furiously by two masked men with a third in the back. As Breen put it in
My Fight for Irish Freedom
, their ‘career of real excitement' had just begun.

Rewards of £1,000 for the capture of Breen and the others were quickly offered. Wanted posters featuring photographs of Breen were displayed outside RIC barracks all over the country and descriptions of Breen, Hogan, Robinson and Treacy were printed in the RIC's
Hue and Cry
.

Joost Augusteijn says that the RIC were so spooked by the killings that they suddenly perceived threats and enemies all over the place. ‘Everywhere it is pervaded with young men who show hostility to any form of control,' the south Tipperary RIC county inspector reported in January. ‘Imbued with Sinn Féin propaganda and possessed of arms and ammunition, they are a danger to the community.' In April 1919, the RIC reported that seventy per cent of the people were ‘in sympathy with the attackers'.

Paddy O'Dwyer boasted: ‘Whilst I was purchasing a newspaper in a shop in Hollyford the following day [22 January], two RIC men came to the door and stood there. One of them appeared to be taking a keen interest in me and was looking me up and down. Opening the newspaper, I read aloud, with assumed amusement, the story which it carried of the shooting of the constables at Soloheadbeg on the previous day. The policemen remained at the door listening and as I wanted to give them the impression that I was in no way perturbed by their presence, I then read out the leading article, which, in no uncertain terms, condemned the shooting. Any suspicions which the RIC men may have entertained of my connection with the affair were apparently allayed, for when a friend called me I left the shop without being in any way molested by them.'

Lord French, the lord lieutenant who enjoyed almost dictatorial powers at the height of the Tan War, famously said that the mere commission of the Soloheadbeg crime had dealt a severe blow to the Sinn Féin organisation.

An tÓglach
,
the organ of the Volunteers, edited by Piaras Béaslaí – a close confidante of Michael Collins who'd been intimately involved in drafting the constitution of the first dáil – weighed in behind the attackers. On 31 January, the paper stated that Volunteers were justified in ‘treating the armed forces of the enemy – whether soldiers or policemen – exactly as a national army would treat the members of an invading army.'

Richard Mulcahy, chief-of-staff at GHQ when the attack took place, later confided to his son that, ‘bloodshed should have been unnecessary in the light of the type of episode it was.' Mulcahy, a stickler for detail, order, and discipline, conceivably saw the unauthorised fight as a direct challenge to – or sign of contempt for – his personal military authority. He reckoned that Dr Kinnane, the archbishop of Cashel, who ‘many years after told me that he had regarded Soloheadbeg as part of official policy … withdrew his mind from such things and concentrated entirely on the religious and the moral aspect of his responsibilities and work. When, later, a monument was being erected at Soloheadbeg to mark the episode, he intimated to those concerned that he did not wish any priest in his diocese to be associated with it and that as far as the parish priest was concerned, into whose parish the president, Seán T. O'Kelly, was going for the occasion of the unveiling, he was to receive the president with all due courtesy, but not to be associated with the official proceeding.'

Mulcahy's tart disapproval was voiced privately to his son in the early 1970s, towards the end of his life. When writing ‘Chief of Staff – 1919' shortly beforehand for the 1969
Capuchin Annual
, he was rather more circumspect, saying that Soloheadbeg fell, ‘naturally into the general position of local initiative in reaction against aggression.' In the same essay he, more acrimoniously, claimed that, ‘no cure for the malaise in the army command in south Tipperary could be found in military manuals or in any order that could be issued from the general headquarters staff.'

Mulcahy wasn't always so cautious. Three years before Soloheadbeg, while incarcerated in Frongoch Camp after the 1916 Rising, he made a speech to his fellow internees: ‘To bring a revolution to a satisfactory conclusion we need bloodthirsty men, ferocious men who care nothing for death or slaughter or blood-letting. Revolution is not child's work. Nor is it the business of saint or scholar. In matters of revolution, any man, woman, or child who is not for you is against you. Shoot them and be damned to them!'

Mulcahy ended his political days as a Fine Gael opponent of Dan Breen in the Tipperary South constituency and some rancour concerning that situation – Mulcahy never once got more votes than Breen – may have coloured his attitude retrospectively.

Tom Garvin, in
Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland
, cites a Tipperary IRA leader who said that the real effect of the war sparked off by the Soloheadbeg ambush had been the intimidation of informers and of civilians generally, rather than the breaking of British power: ‘The RIC were at sea when they pimped and pried yet could not gather scraps of news through their ordinary sources in pubs and fairs, or by talking to men who had met men who came in from the country; or by talking to pub owners. The once prolific sources of talk-supply were drying up. In Tipperary due to Solohead the people were warned – afraid of talking – and so they kept their minds to themselves and their neighbours. As a result the south Tipperary people did not talk much.'

Jerome Davin, a stalwart of the Third Tipperary Brigade recalled: ‘One morning a party of military visited Rosegreen. This was unusual at the time [early 1919], so with a Volunteer I went to the village to see what they had been doing. I found that they had put up a large notice in the village offering a reward for information which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the persons concerned in the shooting of the two RIC men at Soloheadbeg. From a good friend and solid Irishman, the late Ned O'Neill, I got a sheet of notepaper, on which I wrote in block letters the following words: “Take notice that anyone caught giving information as to the shooting of the peelers at Soloheadbeg will meet with the same fate. Signed, Veritas.” I then tore down the poster which the British soldiers had put up and replaced it by my own notice. I mention this incident specifically because it was later, on two occasions, the subject of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons.'

At the inquest into the deaths of the two Soloheadbeg constables, county council worker Patrick Quinn gave some confused evidence as to what he had seen and then he collapsed in a fit. He was removed from the room. After a brief second spell in the witness box he had to be sent to hospital, suffering from a complete nervous breakdown.

The coroner said that Constable McDonnell had been in Tipperary for thirty years and a more quiet or inoffensive man he had never met. The inquest heard that McDonnell had been shot in the left side of the head and that, from the track of the bullet, he must have been in a crouching position and been fired on from behind.

As for the Big Four, as Robinson, Treacy, Hogan and Breen were now known, they took to the hills. ‘We were to be outlaw raparees,' Breen said, ‘with a price on our heads.' They moved fast and they moved often. They were only welcome in certain homes and districts; they could only trust certain families. A safe house was only safe for a day or two. Breen said that former friends shunned them, preferring the drawing-room to the battlefield.

Hogan, Treacy and Breen moved around together from the day of Soloheadbeg on, but Robinson returned home to Kilshenane, only later hooking up with the others. ‘I went to Kilshenane to fix up contacts,' he explained, ‘and to find out what the reactions were.' According to both Eamon O'Duibhir and Breen, Robinson went back to Kilshenane with the intention of resuming his bucolic life as a farm worker. O'Duibhir said that he ‘tackled the work again but, after Soloheadbeg, he was no longer able to come to Kilshenane except on the quiet.' Breen said, ‘Robinson was separated from us then, as he apparently had intended to carry on with his work at Ballagh with Eamon O'Dwyer.'

There is some dispute as to how long it took him to rejoin his comrades and there are signs that he had no idea where they had gone. Paddy O'Dwyer recalled that, a few days after Soloheadbeg, Robinson visited him at his Hollyford home: ‘Séamus was anxious to get in touch with Treacy, Breen and Hogan.' O'Dwyer couldn't help Robinson because he had no idea of their whereabouts.

Breen claimed that it was some weeks afterwards, when someone told Robinson that he was about to be arrested in connection with Soloheadbeg, that he went on the run and joined the other three. ‘In fact,' Breen maintained, ‘I think it was about six weeks afterwards.' This would seem to be a wildly incorrect recollection.

Robinson had certainly joined them by the time Treacy called a meeting of brigade officers at Donnelly's of Nodstown, near Cashel, on 23 February. At that gathering, Robinson drafted the proclamation which ordered all British military and police forces to leave south Tipperary under penalty of death. It said that all upholders of the ‘foreign government' found in the county after that date would be held to have forfeited their lives. GHQ refused to ratify the proclamation, pointing out that the Third Tipperary Brigade was effectively making policy on the hoof and on behalf of the entire revolutionary movement. Breen, in
My Fight for Irish Freedom
, said that, ‘We could not understand their reluctance, seeing that ours was the only logical position.'

The proclamation – despite the Dublin objections – was distributed throughout the brigade area. Robinson said that it was intended to put things on a war footing.

Maurice Crowe said that: ‘After Soloheadbeg I again came in contact with Seán Treacy, Dan Breen and Seán Hogan near Galbally. We proceeded from there to Lackelly and Doon, where we again met the brigade commanding officer, Séamus Robinson, and from there we went to Croughmorka. I was then sent back to get the RIC men's rifles which were hidden near the scene of the Soloheadbeg ambush. I did this in company with Tadgh Crowe of Solohead and brought these arms to my home in Glenbane. They were in the custody of my brother, Edmund, until they were handed over some months later to Dinny Lacey of the Fourth Battalion.'

His mission completed, Crowe commenced the difficult task of linking up, once more, with the hard travelling Soloheadbeg co-conspirators: ‘When we got to Doherty's, they had gone on to Kennedy's of Glengroe, at the foot of the Keeper Hill. We proceeded there but, when we got to Kennedy's at 3 a.m., they had gone to Hewitt's of Ballinahinch. We stayed at Kennedy's until the following evening and at last located the others at Hewitt's where we stayed until the next evening and proceeded mostly on foot to Castleconnell where we met Seán Connolly … We went from there that night to the Falls of Doonass to a watchman's hut at the Turbines. Here we stayed a couple of days until a message came as a result of which Robinson and Treacy went to Dublin and Breen and Hogan to east Limerick.'

As they made their way to Dublin, Treacy and Robinson's car broke down outside Marlboro jail and several British soldiers came to their assistance, eventually getting the car going. On arrival in Dublin word was sent to GHQ that they were in town. They got a message telling them where they were to meet Michael Collins.

‘Michael was waiting for us on the street with his notebook out,' said Robinson. That this meeting was to be on the street instead of in an office was the first indication Robinson had that, ‘if we [the Big Four] were not exactly
persona non-grata
, at best we were decidedly not warmly welcome in any HQ office … they were rightly afraid of our blazing trail being followed by spies.'

Collins seemed to be keeping his eyes peeled, watching everyone in the street without moving his head.

‘Well,' he said, ‘everything is fixed up; be ready to go in a day or two.'

‘To go where?' Robinson asked.

‘To the States,' Collins replied.

‘Why?'

‘Well, isn't it the usual thing to do after …' Collins allowed his sentence to trail off.

‘We don't want to go to the States or anywhere else,' Robinson insisted.

‘Well,' said Collins, ‘a great many people think it is the only thing to do.'

‘Look here,' said Robinson, worried that Sinn Féin-style pacifism had taken hold of GHQ, ‘to kill a couple of policemen for the country's sake and leave it at that by running away would be so wanton, as to approximate too closely to murder.'

‘Then what do you propose to do?' asked Collins.

‘Fight it out, of course.'

‘Mick Collins,' Robinson said, ‘without having shown the slightest emotion during this short interview, now suddenly closed his notebook with a snap, saying as he strode off with the faintest of faint smiles on his lips but with a big laugh in his eyes: “That's all right with me”.'

Gelignite is made using a type of gun cotton dissolved in nitroglycerine and mixed with wood pulp and sodium or potassium nitrate. Its composition makes it easily mouldable and safe to handle without protection, so long as it's not near anything that could detonate it. It is one of the cheapest of explosives, mainly used for large-scale blasting in the construction and mining industries. It burns slowly and cannot explode without a detonator. Because of this it can be stored safely. Unlike dynamite, gelignite does not suffer from the dangerous problem of sweating: the leaking of unstable nitroglycerine from the solid matrix.

The Soloheadbeg gelignite – over one hundred pounds (forty-five kilos) of it in three wooden cases – was initially hidden in a ditch by the roadside at Lisheen Grove – Treacy and Breen's old meeting place – and covered with leaves. They dumped the horse and cart elsewhere, and scattered a few sticks of gelignite nearby as a decoy.

From the Tuesday of the ambush until the following Friday – 24 January – the boxes were left untouched. A small team of local Volunteers and Cumann na mBan women observed and guarded the concealed booty from a distance. Larry Power from Donohill and Norah O'Keefe, Breen and Treacy's good friend, organised this.

On one occasion a military truck drove right up to the hiding spot and broke down. This false alarm led to the decision to move the explosives somewhere less vulnerable. On the Friday night, Tom Carew (subsequently intelligence officer of the Third Tipperary Brigade) and his brother approached the explosives dump driving a cart loaded with timber. The brothers put the three cases on the driver's seat, covering them with an overcoat. Carew then lit his pipe and drove off at a leisurely pace. As they moved away from the Grove several military vehicles passed them, stopping Carew because he had no lights on his cart. He told them there was no need for lights as there was a full moon.

Carew then hid the consignment – covered with hay – in a mangold pit on his farm at Golden Garden, near Cashel, until a more secure hiding place could be dug on a part of his land where cattle foddered. All soil and sand was removed from the pit and thrown into a nearby stream. The boxes were then inserted into the hole. Alternate layers of clay and stones were placed on top of them, and finally, the topsoil was replaced.

There the booty rested until, one day, fourteen lorries showed up at Golden Garden. Over 200 RIC men and soldiers spread out, armed with spades, picks and long spikes. They also had meticulously detailed maps of the farm. The raid that followed went on for hours.

‘When it started,' Desmond Ryan reported in
Seán Treacy and the Third Tipperary Brigade
, ‘Carew was out working on the land and managed to conceal a revolver and get rid of some ammunition. As he entered the house he was placed under arrest and armed guard along with the other members of his family.'

The British forces carefully scrutinised and probed the entire farm. Carew, alert to the fact that he had probably been the victim of a well placed informer, could hear excited shouting going on all around the farmhouse.

Eventually, down by the stream, a shrill whistle was blown and there was animated yelling. Virtually every one of the searchers dashed to the scene, leaving only a handful of men to guard the Carew family. ‘On the very spot where the dump had been sunk,' wrote Ryan, ‘the raiders were working furiously, spades, picks and spikes all in action.' The spikes were thrust deeply into the exact place where the boxes were buried. It subsequently emerged that a spike had even struck one of the boxes and broken off a splinter of wood from its lid.

Amazingly, the men failed to discover the boxes and eventually the search was called off. The gelignite rested easy at Golden Garden until the following November, by which time the tentative war which its capture initiated was getting into full swing.

Around 10 November one box was sent to the south Tipperary brigade HQ, one to the Tipperary town battalion and one to the Rosegreen district. It was first used during an attack on Drombane Hall in January 1920.

‘Shortly before the Truce, what was left of the gelignite taken at Soloheadbeg was used to destroy Ballydrehid and Alleen bridges,' said Tadgh Crowe. ‘Ballydrehid Bridge was blown up by the battalion staff, that is by Brian Shanahan, Arthur Barlow, James Maloney, Matt Barlow and myself. I was present too at the destruction of Alleen Bridge. That was about a week before the Truce and I may say that I felt a sense of relief at seeing the end of that gelignite. Its history and its hairbreadth escapes from recapture by the military and police after the Soloheadbeg ambush … were almost as varied and as exciting as those of any of the men who took it.'